About surf socials
Or: Why Surfing is like being a kid again
In another post, Charlie spoke about how surfing is like yoga, this is about the ways it makes you feel like a kid again. It’s not about playing in the water and not having to worry about a thing, it’s about connections.
Solo travelling, not alone
Charlie always travels solo. She gets to decide where she wants to be and what she wants to do at any time. However, she usually stays in hostels or surf camps. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel like solo traveling anymore at all.
More than once, Charlie arrived at a surf camp like the one in Fuerteventura and was immediately offered a full plate of freshly cooked food from the barbecue. If not food, then it was a beer. And before you even unpack, you’re surrounded by lovely people, sharing stories of life and surfing.
Getting to know each other
Questions you ask first are usually about names, origins, and for how long you have been surfing and where. There is usually somebody who lived for a while in Australia or Indo. There is usually an absolute beginner who somehow ended up in a surf camp. Then there are people like Charlie who are constantly traveling and chasing the endless summer.
There is usually somebody who can’t stop talking about the epic surf earlier that day. There is usually someone who already checked the forecast for the next day and made a plan. And there is usually somebody with plenty of tattoos and a story to each of them.
There is usually somebody who always does the leftover dishes after the communal cooking. There is usually somebody who plays guitar around the bonfire. There is usually a yogi who gets up early in the morning to practice at sunrise. And there is usually somebody who quietly listens to all the stories being shared.
The question about a job or how somebody earns their living doesn’t usually come up until the third day. That’s because it doesn’t matter.
Like when you were a child
It really doesn’t. All you care about is sharing the stoke and catching the next wave. And you’re all friends immediately. It doesn’t take a full day to feel like you’ve been spending your whole life with this incredible bunch of people. Nobody cares about the jobs they do, the colour of their skin, the clothes they wear, their age, their circumstances growing up, how much money they make or anything of that kind. It is like being a kid again: You meet at the playground, you like each other and you play together until it is time to go home. You might not even remember the other person’s name, but you felt like you spent the day with family.
You carpool to the beach, share a towel, drink from the same bottle of water, cheer each other on in the waves, and remove stains of wax from the seats of the rental car. You cook together, remind the driver that he forgot his sunglasses on the roof of the car, and zip each other’s wetsuits up. The fact that you were just strangers the day before is only a distant memory.
The only difference to meeting another kid in the playground is that somebody might return home earlier than the rest and won’t return to the same playground again. If you’re lucky, you exchanged numbers or some kind of contact details. It will increase your chances to share a wave again, some time in the future, some place in the world – among friends.
PS: And if somebody created a WhatsApp group, you’ll get to walk down memory lane again every once in a while when somebody remembers the times you shared.
