Lori “Owns” Surfing Leaving Jonathan in Her Wake

Yesterday I shared with you that my wife Lori and I were going surfing (we’re on vacation celebrating 17 years of marriage- HEY, NO OLD JOKES!!!) We did, and Lori “owned” (to use my kids’ words for “showing me up!”).

Neither of us have surfed before. So we showed up for a lesson and were each handed a huge “barge” of a surfboard that a Rhino could get up on. The slogan of this “surf school” is “For beginners and cowards!”

Now you have to realize that it was a HUGE ordeal for me to get Lori to even get out on the ocean on a board. She is scared to death of sharks and was sure that she would be shark meat regardless of any statistics you throw at her. But she made the mistake of mentioning to me how fun surfing would be and I jumped on it before she had a chance to change her mind.

So here we are yesterday at the “surf shop” getting ready. The day started out hilarious as they handed us these “rash guard” covers for our upper body (long sleeve shirts) so we wouldn’t get all scraped up. Then they told Lori that she should wear some long shorts to protect her from scraping up her legs. So they dress her up like a clown and I can’t stop laughing. Here’s my cute little wife who was wearing this cute little swim suit… and now she looks like something between a clown and a colorblind tourist in blue floral print (not that my red outfit was much better).

My laughing was short lived. It was time to surf.

After a quick “land lesson,” our instructor Ikeka took us out on the water. Lori rides the first wave all the way in and I fall flat on my butt. A photographer was there to document the whole thing. Look! Lori stays up even when I wipe out next to her, knocking my board into hers.

It takes me about four times before I really got the hang of it. Meanwhile, all the instructors are gawking at Lori because (despite her clownsuit), she’s trying all these cool things that the instructer is telling her like switching to fakey (jumping off the board and switching the other direction mid-wave). And then… I kid you not… she does another trick… she puts her feet together, faces backwards and rides it backwards!!!

She showed me up big time.

But we had a blast and got to ride a few in together.

Yes, the biggest wave we experienced was about 4 feet. Yes, our boards were barges. Real surfers would have laughed at us. But we had a blast. And Lori’s a lot more sore than me this morning! Ha!

If you’re married and haven’t done something like this together… I recommend it.