My Surfing Experience

I’m no longer just surfing the internet but surfing for real! Here’s my story:

I never thought I would ever learn and even enjoy surfing for real. It looks so difficult and something I would never ever dared try. But I guess the cliche is true never say never.

Last Saturday was one of my best beach trips ever. Thanks to Jonel of Let’s Go Sago for organizing a surfing event for his 1st year blog anniversary the Let’s Go Surfing!

We left Manila at past 1am from our pick-up point in McDonalds EDSA, Quezon Avenue we got to San Juan Surf Resort in La Union at past 7am. We were asleep most of the time but woke at 4am for the bus stop to do some streching, CR break, yosi break and the likes. The beach looks awesome! Simply breathtaking.

The first batch of surfers wanna be started their surf lesson at 10:30 am. We were divided into three batches, a 10:30am, 2:30pm and 3:30pm.

Luke Richard Thomas Landrigan or Luke Landrigan for short was our surf master in all three lessons. He also owns the Billabong Surf School. Incidentally he is the Philippine national surf team captain and Stoked Inc-Billabong Surf Squad captain. He is also the cover for Men’s Health May 2009 issue. He has been surfing since he was 8 years old and he loves to teach people how to surf. And I say he does very well in this profession. He was so nice and low profile all the time we were with him.

If you want to learn surfing Luke Landrigan is the right guy to go to. Surf lessons at Billabong Surf School is P200 an hour, plus the surf board rental for P200 an hour. So that would be P400.

Luke cheered me up when he saw me stand on my surf board after a couple of times try. He is very encouraging and his cheering made me believe I can do it! Too bad there was no pic of me standing on the surf board. I guess my camera man for that day was too mesmerized with the other surfer chic with me Cher that most of the nice surfing pics he caught was her! (Not that I am bitter lolz!)

My surfing guide was very nice too, a 19 year old boy Fernando (sorry I didn’t catch his last name), who has been a surf guide for 2 years now. He also joins competitions and is under Luke’s team.

Instead of placing the surf “leash” on my anklet, he placed it below my knees. He said that positioning is for pro, so maybe he thinks I am a fast learner. He even wanted me to paddle but I refused because the board is too wide for me and I can’t reach the waters. But actually I was just being lazy because I was so tired pushing myself up to stand on the board.

If you want to have wash-board abs, surfing is the thing. I felt like doing a million push-ups during that 1 hour surfing lessons. My shoulders, chest, tummy (no abs here) and legs feels sore after. But it’s all worth it. Besides I haven’t done any exercising before this and we didn’t do any streching exercises before riding the waves. But it’s all worth it.