Primitive audio version this week, live from my bungalow. Listen direct on Spotify.

 

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Ten days of surging adrenaline thrills

 

It’s a 52-hour expedition from Sydney to Monkeys Surf Resort, on Telo Island off the coast of North Sumatra. Two flights with an airport hotel night in between, then a pitchy 17-hour overnight boat trip.

It’s all worthwhile when that first epic set wave comes your way. You see its darker grey outline kick up over the outer reef, you paddle like your life depends on it, and you’re on your way. You lock your rail in and descend a screaming green wall of water. The lip looms overhead. You drop your hand into the wave face to stall a little, the water spins over your head, and you’re in the barrel. The tropical sun glints through the crystal water above. The pure speed is like nothing else you will experience. Time stands still. You look down the line. In the distance, the classic Indo palm tree backdrop looms through your tiny water porthole.

Can you make it out? Foot to the floor and go for it. Yessssssss! You burst out into the sunlight, the foam ball hissing on your tail, the hoots of your crew ringing out across the water. The pulsing adrenaline makes the long paddle back out a pleasure. Then after two hours of wave after wave joy, you drag yourself back into the boat and its celebratory Esky of hard-earned Bintangs. Nowhere else can you feel this truly alive.

Or so I’m told. Because I am a pretty woeful surfer and cannot do this, other than the Bintangs part.

The photo at the top designed to trick you into believing the tube-riding fantasy is one of the other guys, Mike.

A three-legged buffalo wallowing in quicksand

 

I missed the formative learn-to-surf years, despite growing up in the surf-intensive northern beaches of Sydney, then Tweed Heads. I went to schools full of cool blond surfer guys, all named Shane. I was a bespectacled library-dweller, and the Shanes hated me. So I didn’t try surfing until I was thirty.

I do like it. I’m a big fan of the ocean in general, I like the camaraderie with my mates, and just getting on any wave feels tremendous. A group of us have gone on an annual four-day trip to the same place up the coast for decades. Beach breaks really depend on the random whims of nature, so a couple of good days is a massive win.

This year, finally, we committed to the long-floated dream of the Indo expedition.

Reef breaks are more machine-like, delivering long, dependable runs. Bookings on the island are ten days, enough to surf yourself stupid. They take a maximum of twelve people, with only seven of us here this week, so you’re not battling a swarm for every wave.

I’m just not very good at it. Everyone else hops on the wave with dolphin smoothness and rips it up with cool-looking turns and cutbacks, while I am a three-legged buffalo wallowing in quicksand.

I’m blind to the subtle peak movements and reef vortexes that define the correct take-off point. I miss the turns that get you to the next section of the wave. So instead of getting the full 200-metre run, I get consumed by the foam and pushed onto the reef. Where you get grated like a goddamn carrot.

 

Coral is not cute like in Finding Nemo

 

This is the downside of the reef surf experience. Finding Nemo and Windows screensavers teach you to think of coral as colourful and beautiful. And it is, at a safe depth. It’s also razor-sharp and teeming with weird, nasty bacteria, fungi, viruses, parasites and miscellaneous toxins.

Coral spores teeming with all this evil debris get embedded in the wound, a long-term infection bomb that will seriously fuck you up unless you scrub it hard and swamp it in bright red Chernobyl-strength disinfectant potion for days.

I got grated on days two and four. After that, as I paddled for each wave, my mind was jangling with alarm bells. I’d go over the falls, get rag-dolled underwater for extended periods, then a high-speed wash toward the coral. Each time, I’d wonder if this would be the one that ends with the reef slam that delivers a trip-ending set of wounds.

That did not happen and the Bintangs kept me pacified. With two or three long surfs a day in some quite punchy swell, it’s unbelievably physically draining and we’re all jacked up on various painkillers 24/7. The pain of unfamiliar effort feels good.

After a few days you get permanent ocean rocking sensations around the clock, especially in confined spaces. I’m writing on a couch in the bungalow between sessions, and the laptop is moving up and down in my field of vision. It’s all great.

 

Comfort can be the enemy

 

I really do recommend having an extended crack at things that you’re just not good at, from time to time. Things that you enjoy, but know you will never get even half good at.

As you go through life you develop your chosen set of skills, and it’s pretty rewarding. Within those boundaries, not much gets thrown at you where you haven’t got this. In a group situation, people look to you for leadership and advice. They pay you compliments. It’s a sweet feeling, and you’ve earned it baby.

Yet in many ways comfort is the enemy.

Spending some time doing things where you are some degree of clown is rewarding for its own sake, and also a useful perspective on what it’s like for others just starting out.

How often, at work or elsewhere, do you tell people “just do this”?

That thing you do from pure reflex, that’s so hard-coded into your mind and muscle memory that you’ve forgotten it was once difficult.

With that little “just” in there, like it’s a simple instruction that any fool can follow with minimal effort. So they feel like a loser if they don’t get it right away.

 

Modest outdoorsy achievements

 

My friends and the two surf guides have been very supportive. We’ve been deconstructing my matrix of defects, and their patient tips are much appreciated. Now I have a head full of new instructions to tell myself as a large wave comes my way. DO THIS DO THAT MAKE SURE YOU DON’T DO THIS PADDLE HARDER LOOK THIS WAY NOT THAT WAY.

Thinking too hard, I mix them all up and go face-first into the washing machine again.

Yet with the luxury of ten days here, I’ve become less hopeless. Just in the last day, I can finally catch reef waves reliably and kinda steer around on these long, amazing walls of water. It fucking rocks. And the crew are stoked for me.

 

 

I’m still leagues below everyone else on the trip. I’m still asking them endless dumb-ass questions out there. But I’m as pleased with these modest outdoorsy achievements as I was with say, writing a book like the natural-born nerd that I am.

Plus it allows me to not think about the businesses for periods of up to two hours, which never happens and is an incredible win. I love the businesses, but too much thinking about them isn’t productive.

I will return with better ideas and perspectives, having scrubbed my brain clean earning my Best-Trier participation trophy here.

Another Bintang? Don’t mind if I do.

 

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