I think even is a bad session you can always find one little thing that went right. I no this is an odd reference but I surfed Waimea one time and had the miserable luck of getting obliterated on the drop and snapping my leash plug leading to an awful swim to the beach that seemed to take hours. It was only my second wave of the day and the first wave was a giant shoulder hop that a wheelchair bound SUPer would have made. I got to the beach, barely and crawled back to my stupid shitty truck completely defeated and feeling like quite the chump. I went to Foodland to drown my misery in a 40 oz of Mickeys and some Donuts(like i didnt already have enough donuts). As I was sitting at Three Tables watching the back of the waves unload at the Bay I started to replay the shitfuck session that just went down, yep it was awful as I remember it, I did nothing right and I should have known better than to try and take off where I did on the second wave, as a matter of fact I did know better which made me feel even worse. But...
Well as I rewound the session again going all the way back to walking down the beach to paddle out by myself it dawned on me, there was a breakthrough in the session that had not occurred to me. And this wasnt just one breakthrough but a monumental shift in my approach to surfing. I paddled out by myself, yep, no buddy no other guys on the beach, no waiting for a wiser older sage mysto like person to tell me where best to paddle out, just me solo. Not to say there wasnt a handful of guys already on it but this was the first time I wanted to surf the Bay and regardless if I could find someone to join me or not I was farking on it. Than there was the paddle out, slightly mistimed as I raced down the slope of the beach with the backwash heading out to sea I jumped on my board and started paddling as hard as I could. Ha 20 feet into it and Im staring into 10 ft shorebreak on a 10'1 gun, gosh Im fucked bailing not an option, I go for a hail mary duckdive that bearly feels like it submerses the board but sure as brown trout it worked. I duckdove waimea shorebreak on a 10'1 gun and didnt get killed, how the hell did I do that? And when I had snapped the plug and I was stuck out there with no board and an really crappy swim ahead of me, Felipe Pomar paddled up to me and asked if I needed help and if I knew how to get in, and I was able to say probably for the first time that I didnt need help and that I did actually know how to get in and that I better get swimming if I know whats good for me. And just like that I went from Droopy Dog to Top Cat, I successfully paddled out solo through hell shorebreak only to get my ass handed to me, rip the leash plug out and send me scurrying/crawling back up the beach tail between my legs and I could not have been more stoked. From then on, if I found a wave I was on it where as before I would run around and try to find someone to go with me and make sure they had tested the waters previously, now it was different and life changing, and it was good.
I refuse to proofread this post so I apologize for misspellings and run-on sentences, I need more cafe.