Tribe of Zen

Beep-beep. Beep-beep. BEEP-BEEP FOOL I SAID BEEP-BEEP! WAKE YO' ASS UP!  Okay maybe that's not the exact sound that my alarm clock uses but it seems like it.

I started the day by shoveling food into my mouth. 9 times out of 10 it's something healthy. But today it's left over pizza and green tea. Not very healthy I know but I convince myself that the green tea balances it off.

I grab my wetsuit, my surf bag and my keys and run out the door. ... ... ... then I run back inside because I forgot my wallet. And a snack. And water. And my phone.  And god knows what else.

Get to the beach with music playing loudly in my car. The windows are up so it's not too bad. (Can't be environmentally conscious if I am adding to noise pollution). I park and walk to the storage container. Time to start pulling out the equipment for the day. First the portable tent (40-50 lbs). Carry that to the beach. Then wetsuits or rash guards. (20-30 lbs per bag). Carry those to the beach. No need for a gym when you work for a surf school.

By this time my colleagues are starting to arrive and together we pull out the surfboards and carry them down to the beach. Surfboard after surfboard makes it down and then eventually we are ready to go before the first student gets there.

With just 5 minutes remaining before the first class starts, the bulk of our students have arrived. So we all inhale the last of our breakfasts, guzzle down some water and excessively lather up on the sunscreen. 9 o’clock and its Go Time! Size them, suit them and over the “Land Lesson” we go.

Everyone has their own quirky spin on teaching a “Land Lesson.” While focusing on telling my own, I can’t help but over hear my fellow co-workers explaining certain repetitive phrases like: “Finding that sweet spot” or “Nose diving, also called Pearling”. I finish off my spiel with a round of enthusiastic high fives followed by a “yew!”, the internationally shared term by surfers expressing their stoke.

My first class is a gentleman from the Ukraine who had surfed before, just not with us.  I decided to take him out past the break where outside sets would give him a bit of a challenge. We surfed for a solid hour & a half. Instructing him which waves to paddle for, or not, the dynamics of surfing and occasionally paddling into a wave or two of my own. At the end we dragged our 9′ boards across the sand from where the current had pulled us, and dropped them at our feet. You could see his smile from Brooklyn.

During down time instructors huddle under the tents to get a couple minutes of shade before teaching the next round of students. The traditional lunch is a classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or two. Unintentional communal water bottle sharing is a daily routine. If you bring the biggest canteen expect it to be passed around.

Taking a break, I peel off the top part of my wetsuit and lay face down in the warm sand in to close my eyes. Soon after, I’m awoken by a loud fart near my face, sounding as if a duck were stuck inside of my co-workers wetsuit. Letting one more loose, he finishes checking his phone and nonchalantly walks away. Just another norm, in the life of a surf instructor.

This time I have a “semi-private”, a group of 3 teens, one from Maine and the others from Canada. I have them strap leashes to ankles and we head out into the creeping high tide. Fighting the longshore rip current I move from one student to the next. Telling each eager teen to hop on the board as I scope out the best waves to push them into. They’re all popping up on their own half way through the lesson and I feel accomplished by my teaching abilities.

Walking back after rinsing off their no longer sandy but still salty ocean soaked wetsuits, they all run over to tip me with wads of one dollar bills in their hands. They smile and thank me for a good time. Before I take anything from them however I leave them with one last lesson. You thanked me but now we have to thank the ocean. A little hokey I know however it's only polite.  I take the cash and stuff it in my wetsuit and finish lugging three wetsuits back to hang up for the next group.

Two lessons down. Two to go. The tent is surrounded by tourists and eager future surfers signing in for their lesson. I laugh at overheard conversations, “Man, my nips are raw from that foam board” and “Pass the Vaseline, I’m starting to chaff from this wetsuit.” There is a pink board resting in the sand indicating I have a private lesson. She’s a young woman teaching English to children in the Middle East. We talk the differences between there and her hometown of LA.

Walking into the water I watched her cautiously fight the white wash rolling straight for us. One wave after the other, with the occasional one knocking her straight off of her feet. Finally reaching the sand bar, I help her turn the board around with the nose facing the shore line. Struggling to hop on the board, I hold the rocking foamie to keep her from toppling over. I turn around to see the crumbling white wash coming our way and give her one solid push into the crashing wave.

It only took a split second to realize what I had done terribly wrong. The leash attaching her ankle to the surfboard had wrapped around my calf. I was captured. It didn’t take much for the leash to quickly tighten as the wave took her and pulled me with it. It felt as if my calf muscles and ligaments were going to rip in half. Even after the pulling ceased, the excruciating pain continued as I held back tears by cursing under my breath. The look on my face must have been blatantly obvious that I was hurt. She asked if I was okay. I tried to put on my best fake smile and said, in an unusually high pitched squeaky voice, “It's all good!” I struggled through the rest of the lesson. 90 minutes seemed like a lifetime. Looking down at my watch, it finally read 2:25 PM. Time to go in. However the number 1 concern is “Did the student have a good time?” And she did so mission accomplished.

My 2:30 lesson was waiting for me on the sand, practicing her balance by standing on one leg.  She was a tanned, brunette beauty that instantly stole my heart. 8 years old and enthusiastic, kids are secretly my favorite lessons to teach because they always have fun! Full of energy and spirit she told me her Hawaiian inspired name and we slapped a sandy high five.

She lasted about 15 minutes in the ocean, then asked if we could take a break. A break turned into the entire lesson of us playing on the sand and running into the crashing waves. We built sand castles and raced each other, letting her win every time she had a smile from ear to ear. I told her she was my new mermaid friend as she looked into my eyes and giggled. Throwing her on my shoulders and spinning her around into the ocean she persisted in asking “Can we do that again?!” Sand fights, summersaults and naming sand crabs was the end of our time together.

At 4:15pm it’s time to pack away our portable office. Prop each surfboard up. Sweep off the sand. Wrap each leash around the fin. We carry the 28 boards that were being used back to the storage container, break down the tent and then hang up the wetsuits in our white, milk truck/surf van. We are exhausted and sun fried. We all say goodbyes with a casual “later” or a lethargic thrown up peace sign, knowing we’ll all be seeing each other tomorrow.

Since the boss was not on the beach I text him with an account of the day’s happenings, how much was collected who paid their balance and which instructors were paid. Headphones back in my ears and I hop into my car and head for home, with just enough energy to eat some grub and maybe watch a movie. Lacking all motivation but to fall into bed and leaving my sand covered sheets as is. “Consider it exfoliation”, I tell myself as I doze off into a sandy, salty dreamland.

But that's the life of a surf instructor. Salty hair, sunburns layered under soggy pruned skin, water logged ear drums and sand everywhere but enough memories and “stoke” to last a lifetime.