“Whoa! Ow! Ewwww! Ye-aaaaaay-yah!”

Oh, and “Cowabunga!”

SATURDAY, JUNE 22ND

I had to drop my earphones to try to figure out why Trish was yelling at me.  It was tough because the Super Heat was ‘ON!’ Kelly Slater and Felipe Toledo trading excellent scores. 9.1 topped by a 9.5; two more excellent scores, one each, and Kelly needed another wave to win.  Scary barrels, final turns into whitewater head and a half high. 

Great heat.  A minute and a half to go.

“What?”

“What? You were screaming.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you; if I hadn’t been awake I might have had a heart attack.’

“Fine, fine; can I just… I want to watch the last… thirty seconds.”

“Sure. Cowabunga!”

I’m sure I didn’t say ‘cowabunga.’ I never say cowabunga.  Dude. Then again, I wasn’t aware I was screaming.  Earphones.  And me, to borrow a phrase one of the WSL commentators used to describe what Wade Carmichael did when he saw the waves at the Brazilian Pro contest, “screaming like a toddler.”

Next time…

That might be tomorrow.  Early. With earphones and the door closed.

SUNDAY, JUNE 23^RD–

I was feeling like I was coming down with a cold for a couple of days.  I was right. It seems like, when I have a day where I don’t absolutely have to be somewhere, a day where I can sort of chill out… sniffle…

I didn’t manage to get up early enough for the start of competition in Brazil, got streaming when the second women’s semifinal was on.  Stephanie and Carissa.  It was a bit of a shoot-out, or tube/air-out, with the scores going back and forth, and, with a minute and a half left and Stephanie needing a good score to win, Dru called me.  Admittedly, I wasn’t super into the competition, but I was kind of rooting for Steph (and I’m not sure why I root for competitors like Gilmore and Slater who have certainly won their fair share of competitions- but I do- with some room in my fan-head for underdogs Silvana Lima and Sebastian Zietz), but, again, it’s not an interruption unless you care about what is being interrupted.

At least now I was awake.

Eventually Sally Fitzgibbons and Felipe Toledo would win.  I de-streamed when the final buzzer went off.

I might have screamed if I hadn’t been sick.  Next time for the WSL, Jeffry’s Bay.  Oh, yeAH; UH HUH!