New Zealand Odyssey: Week 14, Surfing It Is

First trip to the beach.

One of the things that I had hoped to be able to do while I was here -- a long standing dream of mine actually -- is learn to surf. However, after being here a while, the reality of our situation forced me to reconsider. But dreams, if powerful enough and if shared with a 13 year old boy unconcerned about the bottom line, loom large.

Last weekend, we went to a local sport shop that was having a sale on all stuff water related. Our plan was to buy wet suits for the family so that we could enjoy swimming at the beach; the ocean is cold this far south, even in summer.

Over the past couple of months, I had shopped around a bit for surf boards and had found the one that I thought would be good for us to learn on. But the investment was going to be sizable, and so, I had decided that we weren't going to surf, that there was plenty else to do, that surfing would just have to be one of things that I wouldn't get to do.

After all, isn't one of the hallmarks of adulthood realizing and accepting the fact that you're not going to get everything you want in life?

When we walked into the sport shop looking for wetsuits, the price for the boards that I wanted was one-third off retail, just for that day. So I impulsively decided to buy two of them.

I write this about one week after the purchase, and we've been out four times and will go out again today. Alex is so excited that he's actually willing to get up early to go out for an hour before school. And we also have two body boards, so going to the beach is now an exciting family affair.

We're all true beginners on the ocean: big waves, rips, we've been having our asses handed to us. But I know from learning many other sporting things that it'll all gel eventually; new neural pathways take time to form. You can teach an old dog new tricks, it just takes longer.