Day 1 of surfing (last sunday) was humbling to say the least. A crunched shoulder and gallons of saltwater in my nose were all I had to show for myself. My spirit was crushed for a few days, but I couldn't let those waves defeat me. Thursday posed the perfect opportunity- Kuhio Day. The state of Hawaii has several unusual holiday, and this is one of them, in honor of Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalani'ana'ole. This meant that no one expected me to be at work- all state employees get the day off. I worked diligently in the morning writing lectures, and headed to Waikiki after lunch to get a surfing lesson. To put it simply, I rocked it. I got up on my board every attempt with the instructor, and ALSO got up twice on my own after the lesson. I would have surfed longer, but my arms were getting tired from paddling out. Thats the price I paid for rockin it and almost making it to the beach- more paddling to get back to the line up. The key to my success was the bionic arm.
Sideburnz and I decided to designate this Sunday as Surfing Sunday. One of our "jobs" is to try out lots of different surfboards so we know what we want to buy. UH has a leisure sports office that rents lots of neat outdoor toys- kayaks, snorkels, camping gear, and surf boards- and their rates are really cheap. This morning the Xtracycle and I rolled down to the leisure sports office to get some boards for tomorrow. In retrospect, this was awfully ambitious. I had never carried 1 surfboard on the Xtracycle, and here I was, attempting to carry 2 boards back home. The girl at the rental desk thought I was nuts, that's for sure.
With the wideloader on the nondrive side, I strapped one surfboard down. The second one proved to be much more difficult. The wideloader wasn't wide enough to securely support the 2nd board. I settled to pushing my bike with both boards strapped down- the trade off was no room for my leg to pedal. Half way between the leisure office and home, there's a gate with a narrow space for bikes and scooters to slide through. I'm not sure how this worked, but I squeezed everything through the gate.
Unfortunately, the squeezing reorganized the surfboards, so I had to tie down my load again. After some strap readjustment, I was able to pedal the rest of the way home. Here's how it looked- I had to untie the 2nd board otherwise my bike was going to tip over.
Tomorrow I'm hoping for one board per bike, but we'll see what Sideburnz says. I'm looking forward to 1-3 foot waves at Waikiki tomorrow, perfect for us newbies!
2 comments:
Looks like it's time for a second wideloader and a couple of longloaders...or the making matt pedal his own thing would probably work too.
Yup, a 2nd wideloader is on the Q order. Too bad it takes a month to get a Q order delivered around here.
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