You know you are a ______ when….

I have been busy the last few days as there has been a good ground swell. I am start to think I am more a surfer than a climber. Several reasons lead me to conclude this, the first off I was first in and last out surfing the other day and it was half decent. Secondly I am out so much that some of the locals have start to recognise me and some have deem me fit enough to talk to.

I know everyones idea of surfing is easy going hyper friendly people. Don’t get me wrong they are generally just that, but I guess like an unknown climber coming into a climbing wall with all the big boys and girls training. There is a degree of earning respect among you peers, whether that be ability, effort or just being a nice person.

Whilst I am no surfing god by any stretch of the imagination I am also not to bad apparently. Having only been surfing since October which doesn’t seem that long ago, I have to remind myself I have pretty much surfed every surfable day since. All those days out in knee high surf or mush when no one else was about trying to work on my take offs, lefts and rights as I devised my own effective practice regime seems to have paid off as I am regularly leaving the sea having had more than one good wave a day and that after all is what it is about. One wave that makes you wanna paddle right back out for more.

So anyway my thought was both for climbing and surfing, how do you know you are one or the other? So I have devised a little game that I invite you to add to.

You know you’re a surfer when…

  1. There are more wet pants in your car than in your wardrobe.
  2. There is more sand in your bath than on the beach.
  3. You actively encourage depressions coming in from atlantic.
  4. You have multiple surf predictions sites, beach webcams and weather sites cached in you internet browser. (I actually think I shutdown the rhosniegr webcam as I click refresh so much last week!)
  5. You have discussions over fin configuration.

You Know you are a climber when…

  1. You have more rock shoes than normal shoes.
  2. You bookshelf is essentially made up of climbing guidebooks to obscure places.
  3. You have more than 200m of rope around the house, some of which you wouldn’t tie a dog to.
  4. You have the rainfall radar cached on your internet browser
  5. You have discussion about routes that require miming the crux sequence.

Please add to if you think there are other telltale signs you are a climber or a surfer.

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