Wiping out at Big Bay.
My son convinced me to don a wetsuit a year or two ago. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The putting-on process, me — eventually — dressed in it, and later, the attempt at using it in some moderate swell.
It wasn’t such a swell idea.
As a teenager, I was exposed to decidedly entry-level bodyboarding and a little bodysurfing, mild stuff, really. However, my children have concocted visions of their pops being a Kelly Slater understudy over various decades. This, unequivocally, never happened.
On a windy day, I presented myself at a surf shop at Big Bay on the Cape West Coast. At that stage, I was still attempting to impress my wife, which undoubtedly played a prominent role in accepting my eldest’s invitation to cut some tubes. Extraordinarily little cutting happened apart from significant huge dents to my ego.
To a non-surfer, a surf shop is a daunting, intimidating place. These shops smell of neoprene, sea, sex wax and suntan lotion (the coconut flavour). The floor is usually covered in beach sand and wet patches. The staff look disapprovingly down their sun-freckled noses at regular people.
The female patrons wear sarongs and bikini-tops or rolled-down wetsuits. Sun-bleached hair is matted with saltwater and sand, and often still dripping wet. The patrons are often flustered with adrenaline from exhilarating early morning rides — gnarly events only they can truly fathom, giving them a certain defiant arrogance.
Eventually, my height (and age) narrowed the available selection of rental suits considerably. Having been allocated a suitable attire by an irritatingly healthy-looking salesperson making tut-tut noises, the simple matter of putting the wet — and dare I say, still warm — suit on became the centre of my existence.
The average surf shop’s changing room is an afterthought. At best, it was a rudimentary and small affair that left me exposed and vulnerable. The process became a battle of wills with me contorting to get the unrelenting neoprene on. The battle took its toll when I injured my neck with a grinding snap right below my skull at the atlas.
Not being one to back down from a fight, I accepted the oversized rental board. Trying to maintain composure, I strolled down to the surf, burning my feet on the scorching white sand and battled the Sou’easter with the new ride more-or-less tucked under my arm.
The cold water took my breath away. It was going to be a long 20 minutes.
There is nothing elegant about a middle-aged dude being tumbled around by surf. There were maybe two rides between the washing machine treatment by the waves, a runny nose and mind-dulling neck pain.
I noticed my son’s dazzling smile through burning eyes and white haze. Payback.
Later, getting out of the suit proved more difficult still. The briny water made it coarse and tacky. There probably is also an appropriate disembarkation technique that no one told me about, real insider-knowledge stuff.
The outing didn’t feel like a Gunston commercial.