Kan Ironman on your résumé? Not even the New York Marathon? You can hardly be seen in the company. And can’t surf? You’re a poor wretch there. That’s why a friend of my wife decided to really ride waves now. His goal: he wants to surf a tunnel, a tuberide in mind. You probably know from pictures from Hawaii. So the friend traveled to the French Atlantic coast, there are a few famous waves, La Nord for example, right here in our holiday resort.
So it should be a tuberide. Why not? A goal not much bigger than saying here on the beach, I’ll leave my book for a while, take a crawl course over in the inflatable pool at the Club Sud children’s swimming school, and then next week I’ll swim over to New York, I’ve wanted to go back for a long time go visit my old friend Seb, an excellent swimmer by the way.
That didn’t work out with Club Sud. They actually only take children. And they don’t even have Atlantic crossings in their program. If you can’t do anything, I just keep looking at the surf courses on the beach. Your acquaintance will be in one of those, a few kilometers away.
Paddling. Jumping up. Crash.
The courses are all the same. Surf novices arrive, are wrapped in neoprene and given a board. Then it starts. First in the sand, which is always incredibly funny for the audience: Comédie-Française. The budding tunnel surfers are lined up on the beach with their giant boards, and Mr. Cool, the surf instructor, is in charge of the first exercise. Lying on the board. Jumping up. Lunge.
On the second day into the water, there are a few waves rippling there, a foot high, maybe thirty-one, and if there was a tube somewhere, you’d have to look for it with a magnifying glass. Paddling out, laying on the board, waiting for the wave. Then comes the mini wave. Paddling. Jumping up. Crash. This is how it goes day after day: tunnel seeker, desperate to get on that damn board and stand on it for a few moments. A lesson about eternal failure in the struggle for balance, a kind of school of life.
If the wave takes you with it, it feels like a miracle, like the perfect wave, thirty centimeters high. When the storms come in autumn and winter, La Nord gets eight meters high on some days. Then she also has tubes with her. Will my wife’s friend then surf them? I don’t think so. But who knows? A lot is possible in sport. Maybe I’ll swim to America next week after all. Let’s see.
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