Surfing Indiana

X posted a piece on his favorite extreme sport. Today I found a piece on mine that I wanted to share. Lake Michigan: glassy, cold and peeling.

The waves look beautiful. Check out that glassy peeling right just beyond that wretched snow bank! I could be jealous. But I'm not. That's fresh water surf. While wiping out in fresh water and accidentally swallowing a mouth full may be more pleasant than what sometimes happens to me, it has its disadvantages.

Salt water provides lots of buoyancy. That makes surfing easier. I certainly need all the help I can get. My size, even when coupled with a sizeable board, displaces quite a bit of water. Knowing the difference between how I float in fresh water versus the ocean I can imagine sinking in quite a bit further in a place like Lake Michigan. Sinking into the Great Lakes and thoughts of their cold and unforgiving depths gets a little Gordon Lightfoot stuck in my head.

Salt water also has a much lower freezing temperature. So while the Pacific Northwest may be damn cold in the winter*, at least I never emerge from the water looking like this guy!

*Two weeks ago while out surfing I had neglected to put up my hood. As I try to spend as much time not under the water as possible, it often is not a problem. This day I went to scratch my head and realized I no longer had any feeling in my scalp. The hood went up and a more pleasant day was had.