Surfed in the Victorian Teams Titles today. First surf in Vicco on a shorty since well before Easter. Didnt want to do it, way too cold way too old. It seems that the local A Team has something better to do this weekend, like Bali or the snow or work or the girlfriends twenty first or the footy final etc etc. If we cant do any better than a paddle boarding soon to be fifty then we really must be scraping the bottom of the barrel. Even draughted my young bloke who turned twelve today.
As the teams titles is a tag team event I found myself surfing the last slot in the last division on a bitterly cold and rainy Jan Juc Saturday. As luck or the draw would have it my young bloke, a Cadet surfing in the Juniors, was the surfer immediately before me. Now I will be the first to admit my enthusiasm was at about zero. Paddle boarding at least keeps you out of the water and I reckon the water in Victoria at the moment is hovering at around eleven degrees. Being just back from the tropics, windswept and rainy Juc was the last place I wanted to be. Our Power Surfer in all his wisdom decided to spend twenty five minutes searching for the perfect peak which left the rest of us about five minutes each to scratch out our two waves. Spent a whole lot of time trying to calm the young blokes nerves and convince him to take as long as he needed to catch his two waves, after all, the longer he takes the less time I get, which sounds like a pretty good deal. Anyway, he tags in and hits the water,paddles about twenty five metres off the beach, turns and catches a reform and procedes to shred it to the beach. The tent full of Lonny Boardriders go nuts and he turns around and heads back out. Straight off the bat he does exactly the same thing again including a little floater and step off onto the beach, runs up, tags me and tells me to "go hard Dad".
Thats it. I'm out there frothing like a twelve year old, the water is brain numbing cold, the surf is crap and I've got four minutes to catch two waves and my ticker is beating out of my chest with pride.
Right now I'm stuffed, feel like I have gone ten rounds with Mohammed but am solidly stoked on surfing and life in general.
Happy Birthday James and Happy Fathers Day all and if nothing else we did manage to beat Warnambool.
Cheers
Sparx

Well done Sparx.
Awesome effort, Happy Fathers Day.