Armchair Traveller

If I hadn’t been in the water already, I am pretty sure I would have been just as wet through sheer nervous perspiration. ?One by one each of my charter mates paddled effortlessly onto a wave, carving down the face with the greatest of ease whilst grinning and hooting all the way along. Soon there was no one else left to hear my excuses of how I was waiting for the perfect wave or how they had been waiting longer so they should take this one.
The ocean seemed to take pity on my plight as it lulled into an almost lake like appearance and I gazed towards the shore and watched as everyone else paddled back towards me, fanned out like a flock of geese. ?Their shouts and gesticulations caused me to glance backwards where I noticed there was now a greater amount of water than sky bearing down on me. I turned and started paddling, one arm after the other flailing the water. I started to feel the sea begin that magical pull and propel me forward as well as a knot of fear tighten in my stomach. Dragging my hand I turned back and over the crest of the wave, howls of anguish from incredulous surfers drowned out by my perfect, unridden, wave breaking onto that Indonesian reef.
I couldn’t look any of them in the eye as I paddled back past them towards the tender for that lonely ride back to the boat. My spot in the line up would have to be earned yet again.
Despite the passing of time and many glorious surf sessions, that one wave comes back to me in my dreams. It forms in my mind; some times I ride it all the way to the shore, other times I escape over the top with that similar feeling of fear.
?Perhaps it is the one that got away that keeps us going back for more.