Coming off the water on a smaller day. Any day surfing -- especially in warm water -- is a good one.
WAIKIKI BEACH -- I woke up before dawn today to the gentle rumble of breaking surf drifting through my window.
The thump and hiss of water thumping onto sand is usually restful, but this morning's waves sounded bigger and chunkier -- and very, very surfable.
I got up, looked out the window and just saw lines of whitewater breaking on the coral reefs just offshore. The air was balmy and warm, and the trade wind ruffled the palm trees below my hotel balcony.
But I couldn't see the surf, so I logged onto Surfline.com and Swellinfo.com to get the latest Internet surf report. Back when I was a kid, you had to drive, walk, take the bus or ride your bike to the beach to check on surf conditions. Nowadays, you can do that online.
But what you see on the screen doesn't always match what's happening on the water. I think this is cool.
The pre-dawn surf report on both sites called for knee-high waves at best. But, as the sunlight filtered through Waikiki's jungle of high-rise hotels, it was clear that the waves were bigger -- up to waist height and even a little bit bigger.
And those waves were clean and glassy.
A few minutes later, I was paddling out to Canoes -- one of the many reef surf breaks off Waikiki. I happily paddled through some bigger waves as the lineup neared. Waikiki is a very popular surf spot, but the dawn patrol usually finds few surfers on the water.
I suspect Waikiki's nightlife -- one bar has 130 different beers on tap -- keeps many of my fellow surfers in bed until 10 a.m. or so. A few locals -- beach boys getting in a few waves before the day's lessons began, an older couple and three kids -- were bobbing up and down on the swells and talking quietly.
The water -- at 77 degrees -- felt warm and silky on my skin. I'm so used to surfing the Northwest -- and pulling on a full wetsuit -- that getting into a warm ocean is a delight. Few things in an outdoor life beat surfing in shorts and a rashguard. I almost felt naked out there without 4 millimeters of neoprene rubber coating my boday.
Every now and then, a set of bigger waves -- up to three or four feet -- rolled in, and everyone caught a wave or two.
I sat in the lineup for a couple of sets, as I wanted everyone who was already out there to catch at least one wave before I joined the party.
Bobbing up and down on incoming swells is pretty relaxing -- especially when the rays of the rising sun warm up your back. I was staring out to sea -- looking for incoming swells is a constant deal out there -- when five or six walls of water marched over the horizon and headed for Canoes.
My heartbeat bumped up a notch as the swells neared. I let the first two roll under my board -- and then saw a nice swell -- it was about a four-foot-high wave, which looked enormous after two days of thigh-high surf -- rolling for me.
The peak of the wave -- that glossy, darker section that shows where the wave's power lies -- was in my path, so I turned my legs into eggbeaters. My board pivoted to face the beach, and I flattened myself onto the bumpy pattern of surf wax.
I looked over my shoulder, and the wave was about 10 feet away. It looked bigger, as I was now flat on my belly, and I started to paddle slowly. As the wave neared, I paddled faster, and I felt the surge pick up my board.
I was on my feet less than a second later, and I felt the ocean's power under my feet. The breaking water of the curl roared in my right ear as my board hissed over the face of the wave. I felt like I was flying.
It was the best wave of the trip, and the Internet said it wasn't even supposed to happen.
But it did.
