“Surfers have a perfection fetish. The perfect wave, etcetera. There is no such thing. Waves are not stationary objects in nature like roses or diamonds. They’re quick, violent events at the end of a long chain of storm action and ocean reaction. Even the most symmetrical breaks have quirks and a totally specific, local character, changing with every shift in tide and wind and swell.”
― William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
I was never good at surfing. I spent more time sitting on my ass at crappy surf spots waiting for waves than I ever did surfing. The locations with the good breaks were crowded with locals who frowned (often verbally, sometimes physically) on outsiders taking up space on their waves. I never did do crowds very well, so I avoided those places. Probably why that phase of my life didn’t last very long. Probably why I never got very good at surfing.