When I started to surf, over ten years ago now, Bali was just hitting the surfing map. It wasn’t on my radar of places to go and I was so lucky that I have surfed both coasts of the United States, Hawaii, Australia, and Wales (the most unlikely of them all!).
Surfing wasn’t the reason we traveled to Bali, but I had this glimmer of hope inside me that maybe, just maybe, there might be a low-key place for me to get out of a board with a long rolling wave. More than anything, knowing I can’t push the left arm too hard or it’ll pop, I know that if the waves are low key enough, I can get to the backside of them and at least listen to the sound of the board as it hits the gently lapping water.
The one ocean spot we traveled to in Bali was a crazy, soul-less tourist infestation. There were good things about it, but there were so many people and so many of them out on the waves that I knew instantly I wasn’t going to get out there. It was the complete opposite of any other surfing experience I’ve had, even the mecca of Waikiki.
I haven’t trashed the surfing dream forever, I know there will be a day that life will get me back to Rat Beach in LA on a warm September day after school has started, the beach is empty, and the surf is nearly flat. I will have that opportunity to at least ride my board Orangey as a body board and hear that lapping sound I miss so much, and that chance to connect with God as I do on the water.
But in Bali I mourned the opportunity I wouldn’t have there, of being on another ocean, of meeting people on the water and the beach, of another unique memory of the trip. I have to remind myself there are other memories, there are other opportunities.
Still I mourn what I can’t have and by acknowledging it and all it taught me, I’m understanding why it was part of my life, if only for a short time.