For anyone in the UK, Surfers Against Sewage are organising countrywide paddle-out protests to complain about the state of our rivers and seas next Saturday, the 17th of May.
I never thought there would be much connection between surfing and skiing, but...
I'm in the Three Valleys in France at the moment, but I'd been having problems controlling my line and speed on pistes that are steep or icy, so I decided to get a lesson.
My instructor pointed out that I wasn't pushing my knees down and into the front of my boots enough and that I should reach forward and down with my inside hand.
Light bulb!
"Oh, you mean compress the front leg and push the coffee cup through the turn!"
I then had to explain about OMBE and surfing, but using that simple thing, which i already knew, made it so much easier 👍🙂
This is something that's only obliquely surfing related, however I thought people might be interested (it's a bit of a long story, but stick with it 🙂 )
Part 1: When I was surfing at Croyde last week, I managed to flatten the battery on my car fob (I'd lain on it in the Aquapac inside my wetsuit) and had all sorts of problems getting into the car.
So I went to a local supermarket to see if they carried spare batteries. They didn't, but a bloke behind the counter said "I'm a nice guy, I think I've got one in my car, hang on..."
A few minutes later he comes back with the battery, so I say "What do I owe you?"
He says "Don't worry about it."
So I said "Ok, how about I give some money to the RNLI?"
"Sure," he says.
(The RNLI is the Royal National Lifeboat Institution whose volunteers are present on Croyde Beach during the daytime in the summer to help surfers and bathers.)
So, no problems, I make a note to do this...
Part 2: Yesterday, on X/Twitter, someone made an obscure and arcane reference in a reply. I happened to recognise what they were talking about and made a joking response in a similar vein.
To my amazement they then said "I'd made myself a deal that if anyone got one of my references, I'd donate $100 to their favourite (genuine) charity."
"Seriously?!"
"Yes."
"Ok, give to the RNLI!"
So, because a random guy did a stranger a favour, the UK's water safety charity is now $100 better off!
Is anyone else having problems trying to follow the discussions on here? There doesn't seem to be any sort of proper message threads like you get on regular bulletin boards/ forums and the default setting is "popular" rather than "newest" which doesn't help either ☹️ I find it very difficult to figure out which message a reply is referring to.
