Camping on remote beach Sunday night

Boy! Partly due to injuries, including a compoundly fractured arm from — yes, I know — skateboarding, stupid! — I pretty much quit surfing about 3 years ago. Plus it was getting more difficult to spring up from prone to standing. (Ah, what didn’t I take for granted in younger years?) But also, I really like what I’m doing in producing books and that’s meant a  lot of indoor time. And the water is so cold, and it’s such a hassle struggling into a wet suit and…and…

During these years I haven’t felt that great. Not bad, but not energetic.

I got a wakeup call when I visited Bob Anderson at his home in the Colorado mountains a few weeks ago. Bob’s the author of our book Stretching, and my visits there have always included long runs, walks, snowshoeing or cycling. Except I hadn’t been there for maybe 10 years.

We got in his car and drove about 45 minutes to a remote unmarked trail at about 9000 feet altitude, and went on a 4-hour round trip hike to the site of a plane that had crashed in the mountains in 1952. I realized I was out of shape. The next day, we “earned our dinner” by hiking up and down some really steep rocky trails with hiking poles. It was a wakeup call.

I’m swimming more, starting to ride a pedal assist bike, and getting back out with my Haut 10′ Surftek board. My 2nd time out, yesterday afternoon, got 3 rides, one prone, two kneeling. Working on getting up, but with some torn hamstring tendons plus codger stiffness, maybe I won’t be able to. Yesterday, I thought, even kneeling on a longboard is fun. Get over it! (One surfer here said to me as he showed me his new kneeboard, “I’ve gone over to the dark side.”) Not really.

Point is not to give it all up because age is limiting your chops.

I felt so great last night after getting out of the water.

How could I have forgotten?

The 2nd part of my hike on the Na Pali Coast consisted of going 2 more miles from the beach up a canyon to this 300′ waterfall, upon which I swam in the pretty cold water over to the rock face and got under the falls. I worried a bit about a rock or branch coming over the falls, but figured the chances were slight. A bunch of young people we doing the same.

By the time I got back to my car, I’d covered 8 miles (round trip) in 5-1/2 hours. It’s about 11 miles to the end of the trail (you can’t get through to the road north of Waimea (or at least it’s very difficult), so you have to backtrack, and this means spending at least one night camping. I talked to a guy who went in for 2 days and ended up staying 11.