P.R. November 2005

Page 6 - Sabell Days

Ok then, we’re not going to belabor things with an excruciatingly detailed and numbingly repetitive account of every day’s waves.

What comes next is a hodgepodge of several smaller days that ran on through the end of our first week, with the center of the tale surrounding the adventures of a very pretty woman named Sabell. Not ISabel, just Sabell.

On day number four, the waves had diminished to a plenty frisky enough chest high and we had earlier noticed a tall statuesque woman with wild curly long red hair, carrying a longboard, and she was back at it on this day. I had only given her cursory notice, because at first glance it appeared as if she knew what she was doing on the board, and I therefore wasn’t watching her with an eye toward any potentially dangerous situations developing with her at the center of them. Instead, I was doing my usual psychotic long period studyment of the waves, the water, the bottom geography, the shoreline geography, the wind, and everything else having to do with gaining a more complete understanding of the medium we were hurling ourselves into every day. So call me a weirdo for not staring at Sabell’s ass if you want to, ok? No harm in that, especially if it makes you feel better, superior to me, or both, in so doing. I can’t care.

Well, as it turned out, she was a rank beginner and very definitely in need of a bit of help. Seems as if her boyfriend had more or less just tossed her into the water, and then paddled off to do his own thing with not so much as a backward glance over his shoulder to verify that she was doing ok. This may sound more than just a little cold at first, and that’s exactly how Lisa took it at first, but subsequent events have given the both of us to reconsider our first impression of Chris’s abandonment of Sabell in the ocean at Maria’s. More on that as things unfold.

Anyway, on the first day we actually met Sabell, I was out pooting around on the waves, having my usual silly fun on them without a care in the world.

While this was going on, Lisa, from the safety of the shore, was watching Sabell get kicked around by waves that were larger than she was ready for, and becoming more and more alarmed at the fact that she was getting her kicking completely alone, with no one around to offer encouragement, assistance, help, or anything at all.

Eventually Sabell more or less washed up on the beach, well-beaten by the waves, and Lisa immediately zeroed in on her and wanted to know, RIGHT NOW, what the hell was going on with her. Sabell said that her and Chris were down here on a surfing vacation, and that Chris was out surfing and that she, Sabell, was also out surfing, but not doing very well with things.

Lisa’s alarm had by now converted itself into anger at Chris for being such a callous bastard, and among whatever else the pair of women exchanged between themselves on the beach together, Lisa advocated that Sabell get a proper surf lesson from yours truly, who, at that time, was still out in the ocean playing like a little kid, and blissfully unaware of any drama developing on the beach, and further blissfully unaware of any obligations that were being assembled in my name.

Tra la la.

So here I come out of the water, fat dumb and happy, and here’s this knockout broad standing there talking to Lisa, and Lisa immediately sets upon me with recruitment in mind, and me being me, I permit myself to be recruited. For free. I’m on vacation, right? No sense in turning this into some kind of damned job.

A small note here on good looking women if you will. Lisa is plenty damn good looking herself and has every confidence in herself, and also in me. Lisa don’t fool around on me and I know it, and I don’t fool around on Lisa and she knows it. End of story. The sorts of entanglements that jealousy ensnares weak people within cannot bind either one of us, and so we go about our daily business without much regard to all that goddamned crap that most couples seem unable to rid themselves of. Call us lucky, call us stupid, call us what you will, but it won’t matter what you call us ‘cause we’re a very self-contained pair and tend to ignore crap that comes from any and all quarters.

So howdy Sabell, and what’s this I hear about you needing surf lessons? Lisa has already filled her in on the silly little learn to surf book that I’ve written and has further advised Sabell, rightly or wrongly, that I’m just the guy to sort her out, surf-wise. It would appear as if I already come pre-recommended.

Come to find out that her and her boyfriend are from New York, and are down in sunny Puerto Rico for some warm water surfing. Sabell has only just gotten in to this shit at the tail end of the summer just past, and Chris is still a newbie himself, having only surfed for four years and is still working the bugs out of his program.

Sabell is no lightweight. In fact, she’s a chemist. For real. Radiochemical spectroscopy. Did several years of work doing spectroscopy on molecules containing radioactive isotopes of various atoms. Serious shit. Has a master’s degree and was toying around with getting a PhD, but decided she didn’t want to actually TEACH the shit, but instead rather enjoyed the work itself, which makes the PhD more or less useless for her purposes. She says her natural gift is mathematics, but half way through college she discovered chemistry, discovered she had an aptitude for it, and also discovered that it was a lot of fun. So she wound up majoring in chemistry instead of mathematics. Probably a wise idea, ‘cause job offerings for mathematicians aren’t exactly growing on trees. Right now she’s taking time off from work to learn how to surf and just generally enjoy herself, and has no real plans for much of anything for the time being. Chris, according to Sabell, is in “Wall Street” and I let it go at that. Chemistry fascinates me. Money annoys me.

Sabell informs me that she’s “ridden bigger waves than this” and would have me believe that she’s farther along the road of surfing than I might suppose.

I’ve heard plenty of this kind of talk over my years of giving surf lessons, and instead of arguing, I simply make a mental note of it for further evaluation later on.

We hang out and talk for a bit, and I rest and drink enough fluid to restore my health to a sensible level, and then I pitch in to all the horrible stuff in my typical surf lesson safety lecture, with special emphasis on the local conditions right here at Maria’s, warning her about sea urchins on the bottom (of which there’s a plentiful supply, carpeting the place from one end to the other), the dreaded Pistons, rocks in general, and the current that runs down from the point.

She seems more or less with it, so I decide it’s time to head on out and see what the deal is with her.

We enter the water right there in front of the parking lot with the intention of working our way only partially out into the zone of breaking waves during a lull, and then catching a broken soup which will then back off safely before hurling Sabell onto the rocky shoreline.

Sabell is all confidence and has expressed a ready willingness to proceed immediately with this game plan.

But there’s a fly in the ointment.

Sabell has not spent very much time in the water at all, judging by her paddling muscles, or actually, the lack thereof. She tires quickly, even before we finish crossing the backoff on the way out, and I’m starting to get the feeling that we’re not going to be very successful with this.

But she’s DETERMINED that she’s going to do this.

The more I deal with her, the more I discover that this is one headstrong lady.

Well I finally get her out into the tail end of the breaking wave zone during a lull, and I tell her to sit right there and rest. One part of her is acting like she wants to take off on a wave RIGHT NOW, but the other part of her is gasping for air and is very obviously thoroughly exhausted and can barely paddle the board at all.

Hmm.

So ok, here come a few small waves and they break outside of us.

Time to catch one.

Sabell can’t even get the board turned around, and gets hit from behind at a much less than optimal angle and winds up getting beat shoreward and down-point where I tell her to sit up on the board (now in the backoff, thankfully) and breathe a minute. This she does, although somewhat unwillingly. And as she rests, and as I sit on my own board, right there with her, we’re drifting inexorably farther down the point at Maria’s.

Once she gets enough air to paddle, she immediately makes another attempt toward the middle of the breaking wave zone, and winds up with the exact same result as the first time.

We repeat the process another couple of times, by now drifting down past Piston’s, and I call a halt to the proceedings because this woman is SPENT, but doesn’t seem to know it.

She resists my instruction to go in at first, but finally starts paddling along beside me as I steer the two of us toward the “get out” spot farther down the point. Half way to the beach she finally volunteers that perhaps it really was a “good idea” to quit for now and go in.

Did I mention headstrong earlier? VERY HEADSTRONG LADY.

 Back up on the beach, walk back to where Lisa’s sitting, and it’s Rest Time.

Chris remains out to sea somewhere and still doesn’t know what awaits him on the shoreline.

Aside from her headstrong streak, Sabell is a pleasant enough person to be around, and is certainly more that just a little easy on the eyes in her skimpy red two-piece. I don’t mind hanging around with a pair of good-looking women in the slightest. It’s all just icing on the cake of yet another incredibly beautiful wavy day on a tropic island.

Chris finally comes in and we introduce ourselves all around, and he immediately takes to the idea of me showing Sabell a thing or two in the water. Lisa warms up to him right away too, so everybody’s all happy and nice.

Eventually, we’re all rested up and I ask Sabell if she’d like to try again and she agrees readily. This time, however, I’ve got a different plan, and I don’t intend to let her start calling the shots, but instead decide to take her over to the dead spot between the middle peak and the head of the point, and PUSH her into a couple. She’s not really sure about all this, but finally says ok and we’re off.

She runs out of gas almost immediately upon hitting the water. I get her over to the dead spot somehow and make a couple of attempts to push her into a wave, but her exhaustion has returned with full force and effect, and it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time.

Back to the beach we go, and this proves to be day number one of a whole little run of days with Chris and Sabell, and it foretells events to come with fair accuracy.

In the mornings, me and Lisa head on down to Maria’s and set ourselves up on the middle peak, which, while small, remains very well defined. The wind cooperates and it’s just peeling right along, with nice ruler edges and everything. Additionally, the crowd fails to show with the exception of a couple of guys driving a van full of surf lesson folks from some hotel somewhere, or something, but those guys never sit on the peak and remain completely out of the picture as far as Lisa and I are concerned. For a few golden days, we own that little peak and make the most of it while we do.

The waves vary from thigh to occasional chest high, and the left in particular just whizzes along with a see-through lip that dances and sparkles beside you as you fire down the line. The clear water affords a beautiful view of the bottom. Palm trees on the shore. Frigate birds overhead. Puffy white clouds. Verdant green hills just inland. El-perfecto air and water temps. No interference from ANYbody at ANY time. The 10-4 is doing its thing exactly as it was designed to, and it’s wall to wall noserides and silly slouching backwards rides, hands playfully skimming across that flickering lip.

Lisa and I repeatedly laugh and comment on the conditions, with both of us agreeing that if it got anywhere near this nice at……oh, say Cocoa Beach Pier, (which it can’t, but nevermind) you’d be surfing behind two pierced adolescent shortboard flappers and a scowling fat lady on every wave, with a minefield of paddlers and tourists ahead of you in the water, to slalom around as best you may. The Clue Train hasn’t made a stop at the pier in many a long year, and nobody ever gets on board.

I hope those guys are having fun, but I’m glad they’re not having their fun HERE.

Meanwhile, Lisa and I head in after session numero uno, and hang out on the beach till Chris and Sabell arrive.

Now that it’s nice and small, Sabell is at least making it out to the peak now. Her longboard is allowing her to ride the tinies, but Chris is not so fortunate. He’s got a little blue Pluto Platter, about five and a half feet long with round ends fore and aft and a quartet of cute little fins. It wants some energy that’s not to be had for the time being. He goes out anyway, but for the most part has to sit and watch the folks with extra rail in the water go gliding by.

Sabell has enough of an energy budget to catch her own waves, now that the paddle doesn’t involve working against any sensible whitewater. She just paddles around the peak, through the dead spot, and hey presto! there she is, sitting outside, pretty as you please.

No more being pushed into waves, thank you very much, “I’ll do this myself.”

Okeefine, whatever suits you kiddo.

Unfortunately, an ability to CATCH waves, does not necessarily lead directly to an ability to RIDE waves.

And an ability to catch waves, at all, also does not mean an ability to catch them at will, or even very often.

Lotta wasted energy being expended on take off runs that lead nowhere.

And, considering what’s happening every single time she manages to actually ENTER a wave, that’s probably all for the better.

Sabell has discovered some sort of weird way to get cleanly into waves, skim all the way down to the flat water out in front of them before they break, and then bizarrely pearl long past any normal point of pearling.

It looks awful, and I can only imagine how it feels.

Out on the flat, flying well ahead of a wave that is by now starting to break right behind her, still in a prone position, and only THEN digging the nose of the board underwater and just getting the living shit knocked out of her by the breaking wave as the board comes to a prompt halt, tail skyward, at the exact same instant that she’s getting seriously firehosed directly in the face.

Whoof!

But every single time it happens, she doggedly pulls the board back on its leash, struggles back on top of it, and laboriously makes her way back to the take off point. Again, and again, and again.

Gotta give this broad credit, she’s not one to take no for an answer.

Lisa and I marvel at her tenacity and willingness to throw herself into very obviously dangerous situations, and begin to gain a faint understanding of how we came to find her all alone on that first day, with Chris occupied elsewhere.

And on and on it goes, Lisa and I just enjoying the hell out of ourselves as the days languidly pass, sunny and warm, with these silly little waves just peeling and peeling, apparently for our sole pleasure.

Crowd? What’s a crowd?

The weekend arrives, and the waves just roll on, waist to chest high or so.

Lisa and I can’t get enough of Maria’s, so we’re spending our whole day down here, every day.

So we’re sitting under the tree, on the log, in the afternoon, and a family of six shows up. Blonde mom, dark complected dad, and four little kids, the oldest of which MIGHT be eight, and the youngest of which looks to be about four. Two blondes and two darkhairs.

The littlest of the bunch is a beautiful blonde girl, who runs around on the sand gleefully with a boogie board in her arms, but it’s clear that she’s not going into the water.

The other three are, however.

With infinite care and boundless encouragement, dad lines them all up on the beachrock at the go out spot right there in front of us, and gets them through the shorebreak. Three little boys. Mom sits and watches alertly from her spot on a towel under a young palm tree.

Dad helps, pushes, and generally keeps very close by as he works all three out into the “dead zone” between the point and the peak. Today is large enough that the “dead zone” isn’t quite dead and instead is occasionally breaking at near chest high level on me. This is WAY overhead the three kids.

Of the three, the blonde one is just completely fearless, so I dub him “Cousin Fearless” to the approving smiles of Lisa and Sabell.

Dad works the entire trio out past the zone of breaking waves and proceeds to start pushing them in to waves. Of the three, one of the little dark-haired boys has VERY long straight hair, and seems to be the least confident of the group. It’s a complete joy to watch dad select just the right wave for this little guy, give him the push that sends him into it, allowing him to scramble to his feet and bounce along until the soup backs off, and then immediately catch the next wave himself and go flying directly over to where this child came to a halt, and is now bobbing on top of his board, and then gently and surely work him right back outside for another one.

Cousin Fearless, meanwhile, is paddling for anything and everything, arms whirling like propellers. The kid just can’t get enough of this and is all over the place, taking off late and getting hammered, only to pop right back up and whirl back outside and grab the very next wave. On the takeoffs he makes, he surfs quite well, invariably going full bore down the line until the wave backs off or drops a section, which the kid always goes for anyway, until getting flung from atop his board by the white water. Nothing stops him. Nothing slows him down.

Our third intrepid mini surfer is on a red softboard, without benefit of fins, and this doesn’t seem to matter in the least, ‘cause he’s having a blast riding the thing laying down on it.

With all three of them going every whichaway, dad resembles the guy on the old Ed Sullivan Show with the plates spinning on top of sticks, trying to keep them all spinning at all times as he rushes first here, and then there, and then who-knows-where in a mad effort to maintain things in their very dynamic equilibrium. Dad pulls this off with grace and style, never missing a beat, never allowing a child to get too far away, and always maximizing all three children’s fun. It is a humbling display of parental love at its finest.

The current inexorably tugs them down point, toward the middle peak where there’s a dozen people or so surfing, but dad never lets it have its way. Periodically, he calls a halt to the proceedings, gathers his small flock together out past the breakers, and they all paddle together, back to where Dad feels it’s best for their fun and safety.

Cousin Fearless, meanwhile, is a blur of motion, and is catching about six waves to each other child’s one. Lisa and I both get a strong impression that this little rat is going to be a serious head-hunter one day, and for that matter, the entire island of Puerto Rico is going to rise up and dominate the surfing world sooner or later. It can’t fail to happen.

While the group was out having their fun, I went back in for one of my typical multiple sessions, and paddled right past all four of them on the way out. The looks on the faces said it all.

Later on, coming back in, I passed right by dad and the one on the red softboard, and hollered across to dad that his little group was “the best” and that someday they’re going to own the world. Dad’s smile was huge and the little one grinningly commented that he was on a finless board, by way, I suppose, of informing me why he was laying down all the time. I grinned right back at the both of them, gave them a double thumbs-up, and paddled on by toward the shore.

They returned the next day and the whole process was repeated for our, and their, exceeding pleasure.

Mom seemed to be particularly proud of Cousin Fearless, and urged him on with hoots and shouts on every wave, despite the fact that he was well offshore in a churning ocean and could in no way have heard her encouragement.

I case you were wondering, this is what the very best in life is made of, and it was a signal privilege to be able to share a little of the reflected glow, for just a small while.

Thanks guys.

Eventually Sabell grows weary of her crash and burn attempts to come to her feet. I’ve never seen her fully upright even once, although Lisa claims to have done so for a few brief moments before she immediately goes over the side, but a closer questioning reveals that it’s only happening on those occasions when Sabell doesn’t quite manage to catch the wave, and instead pops up for a split second as the wave passes beneath her, only to fall off the side as the board slows to a halt. I’ve seen this too, a few times, and am not counting it toward actual stand up rides.

And then, literally on the her last wave of the day this day, I figure out what’s causing that psychotic way-too-late-to-believe pearl out in front of the wave. It comes to me in a flash, as I watch her do it once again, and although I’d been watching it for far too long already, it just didn’t make itself clear to me what was going on. I watch her enter a wave, I watch her go all the way down and out in front, and I watch her pearl and get murdelized yet again, and suddenly I KNOW!

Hooray! Now maybe I can actually do something for her.

It’s connected to her fatigue!

For whatever peculiar reason, the extra work involved with actually getting IN to a wave, coupled with the work of gripping the rails tightly while accelerating down the face, is leaving her without sufficient arm power to push herself up and off the board in a way that will allow her to pull her feet smartly up underneath herself (which she does well on those occasions when she pops up without having actually having properly caught the wave) and come to an erect stance on the board.

Instead, what’s happening is that she hangs on for dear life all the way down to the bottom and out on to the flat, apparently tensing every muscle in her entire upper body as tightly as she possibly can, and THEN, and only then, making an attempt to push away from the board and stand up.

But she’s out of gas and can’t exert enough force to pull it off.

Instead, what happens is that she winds up placing all of her weight forward, right over her hands which are on the rails of the board, up under her shoulders, and then presses down as hard as she can in the effort to push herself away from the board, preparatory to springing to her feet.

So instead of standing up, she winds up with her upper body a couple of inches off of the board, and ALL of her weight forward, and then hanging up, right there. Physics, being physics, immediately kicks into gear and the result is not pretty. All of that forward weight, temporarily suspended on near-dead arm and shoulder muscles, causes the board’s center of gravity to shift suddenly and strongly forward. Too far forward. WAY too far forward.

Basically, she’s discovered a way to just FORCE the nose of the board underwater from a prone position, and she’s picking a spectacularly poor time to be doing it.

Sping! and it’s all just as clear as a bell to me in the blink of an eye.

Kinda makes me wonder what took me so long to figure it out.

Retarded figuring on my part notwithstanding, I’ve got it, and that’s all that matters now.

Back on the beach, I share my new insight with one and all, and the consensus seems to be that I just might be on to something.

We will surf again tomorrow, Sabell, NOT today, ‘cause you’re outta gas whether you like it or not. And when we do, we will allow me to, once again, PUSH your rebellious ass into the waves like I’ve wanted to all along, the better to preserve your upper body muscle strength for the serious business of coming to your feet, in the right place, at the right time.

Sabell is one whooped puppy, and puts up only token resistance, to the approving smiles of Lisa and Chris.

Next day dawns sunny, warm, small and peely.

Lisa and I arrive sufficiently early, that I get my share and then some before Sabell and Chris arrive.

Sabell still doesn’t like the idea of not doing ALL OF THIS, ALL BY HERSELF, but permits me to take charge long enough to give this newfangled idea of mine a try.

Out in to the dead spot we go, with nary a whitewater to deal with along the way.

After getting her set in the right spot, I instruct Sabell to sit and do nothing for a while, the better to rest those upper body muscles she’s going to be using here quite soon.

Grudging acceptance.

Whatever.

At last, judging by the look of her, she’s ready.

And here comes a wave.

So I tell her to start paddling, out there ahead of me, and I line the 10-4 up on the wave, and start my own takeoff run, rapidly closing in on Sabell from behind as the wave lifts me, and not quite running her over.

Instead, I come rail-bumpingly close to her left side, keeping my eyes on the tail of her surfboard at all times. I’m going to hit the tail of her board with my right hand, just above the heel of my palm, and if I mess this up, or if my hand slips off the tail, I’m going to get the holy hell chopped out of my hand as it slices on through her fins.

Nope, don’t want any of that, thank you all just the same.

Fortunately, I hit my mark squarely and shove as hard as I can, and suddenly I’m stopped dead in the water, and she’s flying away from me, into the wave. She stands up almost instantly, planting her feet surely and squarely beneath herself in a nice regular-foot stance, and by golly there she goes, standing tall!

She’s going straight off, and the wave breaks behind her, but on she sails, straight and true!

She rides like she’s been doing it for years, and then finally decides that she’s getting too close to the shoreline rock outcrop for comfort, and hops neatly over the left rail, grabbing and stopping the board cleanly as she does so. Tra la la.

Stokaboka!

So ok, Sabell can surf.

Unfortunately, her never-too-full tank of gas has been depleted by the work she’s done to this point, and the next several attempts result in wobbly attempts to get settled squarely over her feet and she does not repeat the success of her first ride. We wisely depart the water before anything untoward decides to befall us.

But no matter, Sabell, Lisa, Chris, and me are all just as happy as larks over that initial ride.

She’s done it, fairly and squarely, and nobody can ever take that ride away from her.

This is a good thing, because the two of them are leaving very soon.

We are offered dinner with them as thanks, but me and Lisa, being me and Lisa, we decline. Neither of us has the least interest in “going out” and are both of us are mystified by the whole concept of tying up time, dressing ourselves in some rig, no matter how “casual,” and then heading off to go sit inside of a container filled with gabbling humans, eating food we can prepare better by ourselves, and wasting our time on small talk and socializing.

Who thought that shit up? And where in hell did people get the idea that it’s the Thing To Do?

Nuts to that shit, says I. Ditto Lisa.

Chris and Sabell attempt to coerce us with their kindness, but eventually come to the surprised realization that we really DO NOT wish to engage in such a goofy activity, and are furthermore sufficiently steadfast about it that we WILL NOT allow ourselves to be talked into it. Period. Especially since we’ve just enjoyed several days of each other’s company, in that best of all environments, a sandy shoreline bordering a playful little wave with almost nobody else around to pester us. They regard us more than a little strangely, but resign themselves to things and allow us our idiosyncrasies. Which is just as well, I suppose, ‘cause there wasn’t a damned thing in hell either one of ‘em could have done about it anyway.

I’m guessing that if we didn’t have fun hanging out together, here on the beach at Maria’s, then Joe Restaurant Keeper’s best idea of a Swell Time isn’t going to get it either.

And so we part company, exactly as we met, down by the sea with the wind in our hair and the sun on our backs.

See ya!