...where you try to get your washers into a hole created by burying a sawed-in-half soda bottle in the sand. There is nothing better than hanging out with other people who love taking really stupid games DEADLY SERIOUSLY. (The fact that I'm related to two of them and we've been doing shit like this our whole lives made it even better)
I did however manage a teeny tiny bit of ego recovery when I managed to hold my own in BEACH WASHERS, the poor man's version of horseshoes that we played every night at sunset...
At the north end of the beach, there's a river that's pouring into the Pacific. It was still high tide so we had to take off our shoes and wade waist-deep through it!
Thirty minutes later, we pulled up to the beach and saw that the waves at Playa Colorado were working! We decided to unpack later and grabbed our boards and headed into the water. The break is about 50 yards offshore in very shallow water and after watching the sets for a few minutes, I paddled right out with Chris, Steve and Gove. I managed to paddle to the outside in-between sets, but as soon as the first set of waves came in underneath me, the blood drained from my face and I remember turning and saying: I'VE MADE A HUGE MISTAKE! Hahaha.
A few weeks prior to the trip, Chris had called me and very diplomatically mentioned that he didn't want to question my surfing abilities (I had only been surfing like 20 times so I wasn't offended), but the breaks at Playa Colorado were challenging so I might want to work on my fitness level before the trip. So I'd spend the last 4 weeks starting a fitness routine: jogging, BURPEEs, sprints at the track. But the minute that first wave went under me and folded closed at 30mph, I realized NOTHING could've prepared me to surf this wave. As someone who prides himself on being relatively athletic and not-afraid of much sports-wise, I was in literal awe as my cousins paddled into wave after wave with absolutely no fear. After 25 minutes of paddling around behind the break and watching, I decided it was time for me to head to the shore before I got myself killed.
Despite being only about 50 yards away from the shore, I had to ask advice "HOW DO I GET BACK TO THE BEACH?" Answer: "Time it well, and paddle like your life depends on it, because if you get caught on the inside in 3 feet of water, it's gonna hurt!" Faaaaaaaack!
Luckily, I made it back to dry land without getting pummeled. I made friends with this handsome beach hound and watched my cousins and Gove rip it up for the next hour. HUMBLED!
...flyers to hang up in Rockaway that afternoon! Now that I'd started working for myself and didn't have to go into an office every day, we'd decided to try to rent a beach house for the month of August!
