King of the day - yup, again

V-land again. Twice. Went Tuesday mid-day, then Wednesday DP-style.

Good swell, 4-6, but super lumpy and short interval. Tuesday was storm-surf conditions for a while, churned up water that was brown-green and murky. Wind was a little more northerly than usual, making some sideshore conditions. Was super crossed-up and hard to judge, peaky all over the place. But every few minutes the peaks would line up just right for some sickies, especially on the inside. Both days, whenever I paddled to the outside, I always regretted it and wished I had stayed on the inside, even though you take an occasional beating (the inside was absolutely dredging). Fairly crowded (20-25 guys) until about 2 hours in. Not sure if people got sick of the conditions or what, but I suddenly realized at one point that there were only 11 of us left and right then is when it cleaned up and started getting good. Mid afternoon, too, so I felt lucky. 4-6 ft with 11 guys, when does that ever happen?

Wednesday, I got out there at about 6 a.m., figured it would be clean and more organized. No such luck at first. The worst thing, though, through the whole session was my brutalizing rash. Holy crap I thought I was going to scream when I jumped on my board to paddle out. And pretty much the whole 2+ hours, too. I didn't realize it was so bad. Not only my stomach but my crotch, ankles, and back of my knees, too from my shorts and fin straps. It really made the session physically miserable, had to change the way I moved in the water - very little arm paddling, mostly slow kicking with reaching down every few seconds to move my shorts away from the sensitive areas. The waves, though, were pretty good. Choppy, stormy conditions at first with hard wind/rain for a little while that actually stung pretty good. When it cleared off, though, it got solid. Still sizeable, still crossed up on the outside, but I had it pretty dialed in on the inside, as did some othabrothasponjahs. A couple memorable ones near the end - this one I took off behind the peak, dropped into this gaping pit, looked up at the curtain and just smiled, got spit out high on the face, dropped down again for another shallow cover up, rose up on the face and dropped down again. Fun one. I knew it was good, too, because I saw the expressions on the faces of a couple guys who were watching from the channel, including a ripper of a bodyboarder. Probably one of, if not the sickest wave I've had at v-land. My last wave, I took off kind of deep again and went straight for a split second longer than usual. The lip was pitching hard and fast so I had to gouge my rail equally as hard to pull in. What an 'in' it was. Because of how hard I pulled into the barrel, I found myself high on the face as the lip hit the water. It was so hard and it hit so deep that I could almost see dry reef where the shockwave was and I sort of got pitched while in the barrel because I was so high, right onto that shockwave-exposed area. I was holding onto dear life and my board to avoid getting flipped right onto that shallow section. Dermis is still intact. Strained some neck muscles just under my chin/jaw, though, trying to control myself.

A good two sessions. Gotta lick my wounds now and heal, literally.