A Severe Case of Surfacockalitis

Hello, I am the surf widow.  No, my husband Mark isn’t dead , he is alive and kicking.  I become a surf widow on the weekends.  He surfs, and surfs…every weekend.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining.  Being a surf widow has its perks.  It is far better being a surf widow than a golf widow or football widow.  Surfing keeps him in incredible shape and instead of watching him just sit in front of the TV totally involved with his sports on the weekends,  we spend the day in Santa Cruz at the beach.  Plus we go on some really great tropical vacations. 

During the day Mark, who has a PhD in electrical engineering, works at a national lab working on all kinds of scientific things that I will never understand.  Occasionally if there is a large swell coming in during the week, he develops this condition we call “surfacockalitis”.   The only known treatment for this condition is to take a day off of work to be submerged in a large body of salt water for a period of 2-3 hours while absorbing UV rays.  When he has a flare up, we head off to the local treatment center…also known as Santa Cruz and the Pacific Ocean!

This Thursday he had a severe case of Surfacockalitis.  Apparently there was a huge southern swell coming in from New Zealand causing this sudden flare up.  So off to Santa Cruz we went.

It was a day where the ocean was nothing but those beautiful loud crashing waves, coming in one right after another.  No two looked the same causing the ocean landscape to be an ever changing living work of art.  You could feel the strength and power of the water without even being in it. The tremendous waves were accompanied by a high tide making it impossible to get down to the beach.  That was fine with me as Mark had asked me to video tape him out in the big surf on his stand up paddle board. 

A stand up paddle board is a surfboard on steroids.  While it doesn’t necessarily have to be a lot longer than a normal surf board, it is a lot thicker and wider.  Instead of laying down on it, you stand and use a paddle to get in and out of the waves.  He has had a SUP for about a year, and this was to be the first time he was taking it out in really large and rough conditions.   Here is the video footage I took and Mark edited into a video.  Enjoy!