I Finally Surfed Today - and I mean SURFED!

After a couple of months I finally surfed. Paddling is hard work but you get stronger and fitter and that helps a lot. I paddled out to the larger waves today which were 2-3 foot: nice waves and a larger gap in between than recently. I spent nearly an hour of the familiar standing up on a wave - falling off - getting the next, but smaller, wave - falling - catching a bit of whitewater to boost the confidence etc. Then, and then, I paddled out and caught one of the bigger waves. Stood up. I was trimming - down the line! I had some balance - good position on the board which wobbled slightly up and down the wave as I experienced for the first time some of the speed of surfing properly. Then the wave broke in front of me and I surfed down and round the whitewater and caught more green wave on the other side for a while on the way in and as it finally all turned to whitewater jumped off (after what felt like about 10 minutes on the wave but was probably about 15 seconds). Ecstatic. I smiled, grinned and generally acted like a Cheshire Cat as I paddled out again. But that was it! I have got up on the odd green wave before - but that, that was proper surfing! That was fast sliding up and down the wave and with some balance and control. Woooohoooo! All the hard work and the difficult days paid off big time today...