leg rope

At the poing this happened, I hadn't been surfing very long at all. I know this because I only had one board. It was a 9' 6" single fin Native that I bought used at PB Surf Club for $400. It was a beautiful... I'm gonna say late summer day. A longboard day with big fat green lines rolling in. Just rolling in and eh, barely breaking.

We came up the stairs near Diamond St. I bet I set my board wax up in the grass so it could get nice and melty. We were exhausted and probably thinking of beers and tater tots at Bubs.

"You know what your problem is?" This big goateed guy said to Frank. I didn't know who the guy was. Did Frank drop in on him? We are big guys, but this guy and his crew were bigger. I was already slinking away, like I don't know this Frank guy. I don't know if he said it twice, but it seemed like there was a long pause. It was very dramatic in a cowboy movie type of way.

"What?" Frank said raising his eyebrows, and I imagine he lowered his stance so he wouldn't be knocked over to easily. There were probably a few other guys out there with us, but at this point Frank might as well have been alone. I think the pigeons stopped looking for scraps and looked up to see a smackdown.

"You're leash" the guy said with a grin. "You'd catch a lot more waves if you didn't have that leg rope." Ah, he must have seen us struggling.

So this was our saying for a while. "You know what your problem is?" We would say and jab a finger menacingly at someone, sneering and eyelids scrunched. "You need to have better posture while sitting at your desk, here let me demonstrate!" or say something similarly benign and do a 180 with our demenour.

Now I don't see Frank that often anymore. We hardly ever surf together even though, sadly enough, he live less than a mile from me. But next time I see him I will pull that line out.

On a side note, I almost always wear a leash because I don't want to clobber some poor kids day. Nothing worse than getting a find stuck in your head while building a sandcastle. I always surf like I don't have one and try to end my ride one my board or with the board in hand.