Surfin’

Being able to live in a city that is next to the sea gives us the opportunity to seize the day. Especially when surfing has become an important part of your life, that thing you cannot stop thinking about everyday. To begin, I must say I´m just an enthusiast. I´m still learning how to properly ride the waves, but I´m pretty satisfied with the results I´ve reached so far.

Seven years ago I moved to Mar del Plata, that one city I´ve been visiting every summer with my family, to begin my university studies. Believe it or not, I always knew I had to live next to the sea. Something inside my head told me this was what I had to do. As soon as I arrived, apart from starting my studies I had to find a way to practice a sport and clear my mind. I´ve always practiced sports such as tennis, football and rugby in my hometown so I was used to training and in good shape. Surfing had always been in my mind but there was something that didn´t let me practice it, the distance to the sea. My hometown was 730km away from Mar del Plata. Now that I was here, I couldn´t miss the chance to at least try.

That day finally came, together with a friend we decided to take a surf lesson and made pretty good: we could stand up and “ride” a couple of waves. After that, I bought my own board.

Watching other guys surf gave me the impression that surfing was easy. I was totally wrong! Although I could stand up and “ride” some waves, I got tired very fast. My arms were not as strong as I thought and my technique was awful. I spent more time rowing than actually trying to surf. That was disappointing and very frustrating. I felt down many times, and couldn’t stand up properly.But that was just the beginning.

“If you are not falling down, you are not learning”.

After two years of getting into the sea with a quite big board and learning the basics (paddling, standing up and riding at least some seconds the wave) I could finally make another step forward, I bought a smaller board. But with that, I knew a new challenge was arousing. So I decided to start training at the gym at least twice a week. I do not like gyms, but I knew I had to train to be able to dominate the new board and enjoy my time at the sea.

Apart from that, in order to get better you need to know the weather conditions and how they affect the tides. It´s not enough with training, getting into the water and having a surfboard. Reading , watching videos , analysing movements and becoming interested in what you need to know helps to improve considerably. Technology here plays a very important role, there are many websites and apps that let us explore the conditions of the wind, tides and forecasts.

My favourite one is called Windity which I discovered last year and it has become a very important source of information as it displays the data about the weather, winds, tides and temperatures in a very appealing way to the user. Generally, most of the websites that display this kind of information are obsolete and present the data without any kind of processing. This leads the user having to imagine, think and trace a map inside it’s head to finally understand what will happen, for example, the next day with the sea. Windity does that for the user, presents in a very nice way all the complicated data inside a 3D World Map surface, which takes your current location as default, making everything easier for the user.

Getting back to surfing, once I finished my studies and started working I had less time for being in the water. But that, far from becoming a problem, it taught me to seize the day. Together with my friends, we started getting up very early in the morning (5 to 6 AM) only to get into water before work started. Believe it or not, we got up from bed with a smile. Another lesson: when you really like something, you just do it no matter when.

“Do more of what makes you happy”.

What first seemed something impossible to achieve, it finally came real. Three years later I can say I manage to surf , but for that to become possible much effort was put along the way. I had to leave my house and start to live in another city where I didn’t have any friends, I got out of my comfort zone. Moreover, it is very important to have a purpose and that is what opens doors to new opportunities. In my case I came to study, which allowed me to get to know new friends at university and that led to surf lessons. It was not immediately, but it happened. Coincidences and circumstances led to a series of events that got me here, the place I’ve always thought of living and now I’m enjoying my stay willing to continue improving and travelling to new places.

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