Spurious Logic

Ego Surfing

So I surf. Not very well, but like a lot of software developers I'm into geeky technical sports so I own the gear (surfboard and wetsuit) and I happen to live next to a surfing beach (it's shit but it's local so I get out as often as I can). Over the summer it was totally flat. Like pancake flat. Nary a ripple. The last 4 days though we've been on the tail end of hurricane Danielle and I've been out regularly.

Actually, that not completely true. I don't live next to a surfing beach. I live next to two beaches. One of which is always busy between 10:00 and 18:00. The other is always empty.

Yesterday I went to the busy beach as it catches the swell better which results in consistently bigger waves (which sometimes turn into mush if there's too strong a breeze). There are two surf schools on this beach so there's always a bunch of learners floating in the water, holding on the sides of their boards in the white water. Slightly more experienced surfers paddle out that bit further, catching bigger waves while swimmers paddle in and out around the shoreline.

I was there for maybe 20 minutes getting more and more frustrated due to overcrowding on the waves and the bodies who would pop up in front of me whenever I did catch a wave.

So I got out and headed to the other beach. The other beach has smaller but cleaner waves. When the first beach is unsurfable this beach can be perfect. I've seen overhead barrels (once in the last year) which you usually don't get anywhere away from the west coast.  And it's about a kilometre longer than the crowded beach. I headed out and within 5 minutes I had already caught more waves than I had in the 20 minutes at the first beach.

I was the only person in the water.

Sure the waves weren't big but they were just as catchable as those at the other beach and I could actually enjoy them because I didn't have to worry about running someone over or the ego of the other sufers.

Sitting out there in the mist from the waves hitting the beach I couldn't help thinking about the actual purpose of what I was doing. I wasn't showing off (there wasn't any audience) and I wasn't socialising (there wasn't any crowd). The only answer I could come up with was "I want to get better at surfing".

But why? As a life skill it's completely useless. I'm unlikely to ever be in a life or death situation where being a better surfer is the determining factor for success or failure. I'm not so good that I'm ever going to make a career out of it. So why do I feel the need to spend time to improve this irrelevant skill?

A lot of the time the kids out surfing are out there with their pals. I get that; it was the same when I worked in the internet café and the counter-strike players would descend en-masse after school. That's a social thing. Other times, with the slightly older crowd there's an almost competitive edge. Ego comes into play and there's a desire to succeed. To catch the wave they didn't. This is the worst crowd to be in as it infects you as well and the joy washes away. I also see the office workers come into the water after work to unwind (this is me sometimes). But why dedicate time to this expensive and pointless hobby?

Sometimes you just want to be good at something.

Image from Flickr user Lanpernas 2.0 used under creative commons non-commercial attribution usage