Day 67: Surf's Up

Jonathan's main goal when vacationing in Hawaii is to learn to surf.  Surfing, as you are aware, is very cool.  Jonathan prepared himself to learn by growing out his beard, because he thought it would give him some "street cred" amongst the local surfer crowd.  Unfortunately, the age of the dirty, unkept surfer has been replaced by young, cut, abercrombie-looking, men-boys.  Jonathan's beard, although devastatingly handsome, just further separated him from the tan, smooth bodied surfers catching the waves in Hawaii.  Was Jonathan deterred?  NO!  He did, however, trim his beard and pay a guy to spend two hours teaching him to surf at Hanalei Bay.  Apparently, the surf conditions were perfect there for beginners that day (little waves).  Although he started off as shaky as a baby taking his first steps, by the end of the lesson, Jonathan was catching the waves and riding them in to shore like a semi-professional.  I was very proud of him, and so was our baby who cheered him on by kicking the whole time!

Why didn't I take surf lessons?  Jonathan forbade me...the stick in the mud. But I had fun watching from the shore.  Jonathan came away mostly unscathed, except for an injured tail bone from falling bum first and hitting the ocean floor and something called noodle-arms, exhausted arms from paddling out to the waves for two hours.

Here are some pics.

Jonathan's teacher, Brit.  Perfect name for a surfer, right?

This slide show will show you a series of pics of Jon surfing, like a flip book (You might want to press the forward arrow button to rotate through them at a faster speed than the slideshow does on autoplay.)