Catch A Wave | One Shot
[Dated: August 2023]
Tad post rehab enters a surf contest...
It was tough, being fresh out of rehab with too many thoughts and not enough good vibes around him. His uncle tried to support him, but Tad’s biggest support in those early days was the ocean. Every morning he would go out with his board and try to catch the most epic waves. Sometimes he would succeed, other days he would get some basic ones but he’d still return to his uncle’s house with a big smile on his face.
About a week or two into his stay there, he caught a flyer about a surf competition, and despite how out of practice he was… Tad decided he’d enter. For the fun vibes and to see what kind of competition he’d have.
His heat started early in the morning, and he paddled out into the ocean with five other surfers that he didn’t really know. It didn’t really matter. He greeted them all cheerfully while they sat out there and waited for the heat to start. Once it did it got a lot more serious. One of the boys, a cute looking blond one caught the first wave, and he managed to shred a little bit before letting go of that wave.
Some serious looking guy with dark hair got the next, and he did pretty well until he overturned and tumbled off his board into the water. Tad winced, because it didn’t look like the most comforting of falls. But then he caught sight of a really good wave, and he started paddling hard, just barely beating one of the other dudes in his heat.
But this one was Tad’s wave, and it was gonna have an awesome vibe. He got in position and carefully pushed himself up to his feet. For a moment it was like he was sitting on top of the world, precariously balanced before he properly dropped into the wave. He did a bottom turn smoother than he had in his last ride before the competition. But he was in the zone, feeling the power of the ocean and communing with it.
Now he was pointing back toward the lip of the wave. Shifting onto his heel side, he aimed his leading shoulder toward the beach. He got a low stance on his board, adjusted his weight and then started turning again, adding weight to his toes and releasing the pressure on his heels. It was like he took the shape of a figure 8 with his board before he got back onto the curl of the wave.
His ride was going amazing. He just needed to think of what else he could do to try to gain him some points on this wave. There was only so long he would be able to ride it. He built momentum and power again with another bottom turn before he drove the surfboard up the wave at a diagonal, nearly vertical angle. As he hit the top of the wave where the lip was coming out, he pulled the weight with his head, letting the lip of the wave project him into the air. As he went into the air, he immediately grabbed the rails of his board with both hands.
As he was airborne, he bent his knees and looked over his inside shoulder, rotating his body and the board, eyeing a good landing zone high on the wave. For a moment he thought maybe he over rotated, but he managed to land on the wave with his knees bent, spinning out smoothly and returning to the wave. After that he did another quick little tail slide before he finally brought himself out of the wave, grinning from ear to ear.
It took a while longer before he managed to snag a second wave, this one not quite as powerful as his first, but he still managed to do a kickflip and slide his board along the top of the wave for a bit before dropping back in and doing another bottom turn. He got out of that one a little less satisfied than the first wave but…he’d done pretty well. At the end of the heat he was able to move on.
And at the end of a few rounds, Tad managed to get second place! Which was a lot better than he imagined himself for just entering on a whim. Tad grinned from ear to ear and took pictures with his uncle and celebrated the satisfying win. He’d soon be moving back to England and far away from the surf world. But at that moment, nothing else mattered. He could just enjoy being a surfer and the love of the ocean and the taste of a good victory.