Surfer, Heather Lee

Today I learned many things. I learned how to put my bicycle on the bike rack of a city bus, I learned that it is not wise to thinking about surfing whilst driving, that cycling and skirts don't mix and lastly that my name is actually Heather. Intrigued? Let's continue. 

The skirt and the bike rack 

 Today I worked at our curb side Kiosk. This meant that instead of getting to work by 5:30 I had to be in at 5. This wasn't a big deal because I would be leaving at roughly the same time, but I since I didn't want to be at the bus stop at 4:30 I decided that I would ride my bike. Since it's only 3 miles or so down to Waikiki I figured I could easily make it in under 30 minutes, but wanting to give myself plenty of time I left at 4:30 anyway. 

I must say, it really was a nice trip. Because it was 4 am I didn't have to fight traffic of any kind and also because it was 4, there was no sun to sweat under. Oh thank heaven. There were only two annoyances on the way in: 

1. Regardless of the fact that our bike is a woman's cruiser designed with a lovely dip in the frame to accommodate female attire, my skirt was repeatedly caught in the back wheel. 

2. At one particular stoplight a car with three eastern European twentysomethings pulled up and started chatting at me. "Hey how fast does your bike go?"(Quietly Summer replies, "Fast enough.") "You wanna race?" ("If you want to loose...") "Maybe we should just take your bike now!" (Thinking: "Holy crap. They're going to steal my bike! Dang it Summer! Why can't you just keep your mouth shut!") 

The light turns green. They rev their engine and peel out. I breathe a sigh of relief and slowly bring my bike up to top speed of 10 miles per hour. 

Working at the kiosk was fun and exciting. The people who came in were of a different breed then those who normally frequent our pool side shop. In contrast to the "Medium decaf iced soy late with a half pump of hazelnut, 1 pump of sugar free vanilla and nonfat whipped cream" coffee drinkers, kiosk customers are your no frills types who just want their coffee so they can function. It doesn't matter what it tastes like, just give it to me now. Please.  I admit, I like their straight forward approach. 

In addition to the new customers, I got to work with cool Steven (Yes. Joke fail Steven. Thankfully i've let that whole issue go). It turns out that Steven is a complete Halloween junkie. During our shift he regaled me with fantastic stories of Halloweens past, of winning $500 prizes with $5 costumes, terrifying tourists with his fake dead body, and his plans to win multiple prizes this year with his ever improving scarecrow serial killer costume. Suddenly baker Steven seems a little more bad ass and terrifying. But in a cool way. 

Before I knew it my shift was over and it was time to go home. I had planned to stay in Waikiki to learn how to surf from one of our regulars Justin, but when I called he said that all the boards were rented out and maybe we could go later in the day. Yeah, ok. So I unlocked my bike and got ready to head home. That's when I discovered the flat. -sigh- Oh bother. It looks like I will be walking my bike home instead. 

Not too keen on walking my 20 lb bike 3 miles uphill at noon, I made the executive decision to strap it onto the front of my bus and ride home instead. For the sake of time, because this story is rapidly turning into a journal entry rather than a short concise blog, we'll just say that the first bus came, I tried to take down the bike rack, got flustered, failed and ended up waving the diver on rather sheepishly. (They don't get out and help you here.) Pride hurt, I started walking. After 3 blocks I read myself a stern lecture on the idiocy of pride and asked for help. When the second bus came, I followed the directions I had been given and executed the process flawlessly. Score for the home team!

Surfing

I met Justin at the surf shop shortly after three. Donning my rash guard so I would at least look the part, we picked up our boards and set out in search of surf. As we began I felt pretty good. "Hey, this isn't as bad as I thought it would be," I mused as we headed out into open water. A minute passed. And then two. "Hey, just so you know, if you get tired I can tow you if you want," Justin called from ahead of me. "How humiliating..." I joked.  2 minutes later my arms began to burn and I realized that there was no way that I was going to make it out to where we were going to be surfing. A minute after that, much to my relief and prideful dismay, Justin towed me the remaining distance.  

From there, things got a lot better. We went over the basics and I began the process of rolling, turning, planking, kneeling, and eventually standing! It was genius! I missed a lot of waves but I did stand up for several and actually managed to ride two for a significant amount of time. On the car ride home I was so caught up in remembering the feeling of riding the wave that I nearly drifted into a car in the other lane. Note to self. Don't think about surfing while driving. 

Misnamed

I have noticed a disturbing trend since my freshman year of college. I have found that if someone didn't know my name they would automatically default to "Heather." Strange but true. This afternoon when I got back from surfing I received a sign from the universe that perhaps I had been misnamed. I opened my mailbox and saw not one, but TWO Real Simple magazines waiting for me! "Strange," I thought. "Who is this other one for?" When I read the address label I nearly fell over laughing.