...and you're sittin' on top of the world.

On Saturday I checked off one of the goals I set for myself when I moved to Southern California to go to medical school. The goal was to try surfing and when I finally got around to it I was not disappointed with the experience. I headed down early in the morning with two of my classmates, one with some surfing experience and the other a first-timer like me. We went to Huntington Beach, put on our wetsuits and walked down to the ocean's roar. The biggest obstacle for me was overcoming my fear of the ocean. I'm not the strongest swimmer and growing up my grandparents, who lived on the Washington coast, constantly hammered the dangers of the ocean into me. I know that their words were wise ones but they didn't exactly help me to paddle out into the surf my first few couple of times. I slowly became more comfortable though with being thrashed around by waves and then getting back on my surfboard after a little time spent out at sea. The conditions were pretty choppy on Saturday but I was still able to ride a couple of good waves on my belly. The one time I tried to get up I ended up driving the nose of my board down into the water and then going head first over my board. Overall it was a great experience though and I plan on trying to make a habit of it and becoming somewhat decent.

The two classmates I went with both catching a wave.