the painful squeeze

makes the tastiest of juices

Ah dear reader, it’s been a day!

How often do you make choices that you know will hurt your but the pain is worth the experience?

When is ‘the juice worth the squeeze’?

Today?

Today was one of those hard squeezed days filled with delightful juice with a lingering aftertaste.

These days, traveling through the woods is forbidden. Rubber tyres on gravel will light forest fires that will cause puppies to abort baby rhinos and kill firefighters who won’t come anyway if you break a leg.

Or at least that’s what the people who are afraid of all of ‘the stupid people’ will say.

A quick note dear reader,

I find it somewhat telling that those who profess to love people and want to ‘do things to help people’ or who believe that people are good and worth saving with high taxes and lax justice systems are also those most afraid of the so called ‘stupid people’ who will burn down the forests.

I’m a bit of a shit or get off the pot kinda guy.

And here in Nova Scotia with all of its paternalistic conservative glory, we are a culture of people with VERY LITTLE faith in humanity.

Because you know, the stupid people, the uneducated ones who fix your cars and make your heat pumps work so that you can be a fucking desk monkey? Those stupid people who build houses and grade roads and operate backhoes so that your fucking basement doesn’t flood so that you can have a place for your kid to train their stickhandling?

Those ‘stupid people’?

If they go out into the forest, we’ll all die of aids from a bat that had anal sex at a wuhan wet market.

Anyway, thank fuck for the know it all desk monkeys who have decided to lock me out of the woods.

Because today?

Today I went surfing.

It’s been a year.

It seems I only surf massive hurricane swell at dangerous surf breaks that have nasty currents, jutt out into Atlantic shark corridors and generally end up crashing on rocks with T-Rex teeth.

I went out to the headland with Sue.

I’d tell you what headland and where but according to the surfers code, if I did, I’d have to kill you and your family as they sleep.

Needless to say, it’s a pretty special fucking place.

The wave moves like a freight train with a Bugatti Veyron stuffed up its arse powered by the reactor of an american Nimitz class submarine.

Boom!

(she’s a beauty)

In order to get to the wave you have to slide out over a lot of ugly, slippery barnacle covered cobbles.

Sue suggested that I bring reef booties to protect my feet.

But alas dear reader!

I love surfing barefoot.

So, against Sue’s better judgement, I did just that.

And what a time we had.

She had some massive bombs - catching them way outside then riding them into the boneyard! Her head disappeared behind the back of the wave, popping up only for a moment at a time as she cut back and disappeared below.

It was so much fun watching her go.

My waves?

They were the kind that caused me to howl and cackle and yeowl like a madman! Punchy, pushy, pitching steep and hollow, ‘the spot’ gave it all it could and we choked it down like a fat kid at a hotdog eating competition.

The entire time I rode?

I was so happy to feel my feet in direct contact with the deck of my board.

Well,

I was until it was time to get out.

I did my best to protect my feet.

But.

But the waves had been building by then. They were washing up over the cobbles.

I put my board on my lap and let the powerful surging swell push me up, bumping along my arse as I was dragged closer to shore.

But still that strategy had its limits.

By the time I was out, my feet were hamburger, shark food and shredded.

Barnacle wounds are deep. They take a long time to heal. My feet are red and swollen and still hurting.

An expert would say: Take precautions. But experts don’t seem to have much fun.

A fool?

Let’s have faith that the flesh will heal the feeling of surfing barefoot is worth the bleeding. It’s not as dangerous as some would have you believe.

And that maybe, just maybe the stupid people aren’t nearly as ubiquitous as you nanny state safety poofters think.

And if you’re still worried about the stupid people?

Wear a helmet when you drive.

You’ll reduce your risks of head injury

As for the rest of us?

A little blood in our juice just adds to the flavour of being alive.