Surfing.

Yes, really.

I took it up just about a year ago. A friend of mine is really into it - goes about three times a week on his way to work - and has a few spare boards, so we went out on a Saturday morning. He loaned me a spring suit and an 8 foot board and we were on our way into the water.

It was around 7am and the sun was up, but just a bit. We were at Sunset Cliffs, which is one of the truly great places on earth, and there were surprisingly few people out in the water. (It's worth mentioning here that if you hit the surfline at 5am in San Diego, you'll encounter more than just a handful of others out in the water. These people are serious about their surfing.) The waves were piddly things - maybe only 3 or 4 feet tall - but more than enough to knock me off the board.

I got out in the lineup, which is a sort of connect-the-dots line of surfers you can see a few hundred feet parallel to the shore, and waited for the waves. Most days, waves come in sets, and sometimes one can wait ten or fifteen (or more) minutes for good ones to come in. And as I sat in the lineup, just floating there on my board, I watched the sun making its way up the sky and heard not much but water.

And I was immediately hooked.

I barely ever get out - maybe twice a month if I'm lucky - and I'm terrible when I'm there. In the unlikely event that I'm able to actually stand up and ride a wave, the ride is brief. (For me, the typical ride on a wave is something like Thomas Hobbes' description of life: "nasty, brutish, and short".) I wait in the lineup until I find a good wave, paddle madly, and just as the wave starts to crest, I spring up from lying on my front to a sort of half-standing, half-squatting position...and typically fall over at that point. I'm usually churned underwater for a good five to ten seconds - which feels much longer than that underwater - when I fear that the front end of my board (9.5 feet of fiberglass) is going to crack me in the head. And then I pop my head up from underwater, grin, and let out a whoop of some sort. It is, both surprisingly and counterintuitively, great fun.

I've probably never enjoyed anything quite so much that I was quite so bad at. And I've got the gear to act like a real-deal surfer guy: a full wetsuit, a spring suit (basically a wetsuit with short sleeves and short pant legs), and a great (borrowed) longboard. There's a soft roof rack for the top of the family truckster (Subaru Outback wagon) and, importantly, a pair of flip flops.

I do this all for maybe 45 minutes, get out of the water, sit on the shore, and then watch the good surfers catch a few waves for a while. Shortly thereafter, I towel off, change out of my suit, drive down the street, and grab a burrito.

I think I need to go tomorrow morning.