Ice-cream headaches in the middle of summer...

You know the American Express card tag-line "Never leave home without it."? Well, I think I'm going to start applying this to my hoodie as well....

No real surf, but a pleasant enough morning, albeit a little overcast, air temperature a balmy 24C. Middle of summer. Desperate for a wave. Never thought for a second I'd need to keep my pip warm. Not that I ever need much of an excuse, I love my hoodie. There's a lot to be said for having a warm head. Despite making you look like a retarded turtle, it definitely does the job in helping you stay warm. 

Plus if you have dodgy ears like me, it keeps the water out a bit and hopefully keeps you away from the dreaded surgery that one eventually needs for Surfers Ear - that nasty condition when the bones in your ear canal get gatvol of being exposed to cold water and air all the time and shut down shop, literally. Then a nice man with a drill must come and buzz them open again. About as much fun as root canal I believe. But I digress....

Back to the cold water this morning. You know that when you can feel the water straight through your booties on your first step in you're in trouble! Booties, I like those too. Can't surf without them. Goes back to the days I learnt to surf at Muizenburg whilst in 4th year varsity. Now Muizies gets plenty of thick, slimy kelp pieces that wash into the shallows. 

There's nothing that freaked me out more than standing on these bloody things whilst I was trying to learn to surf. So I got booties - cos it meant that even when I stood on them it didn't feel quite as freaky! So there we have it, a pathetic female aversion to standing on icky things has condemned me to a lifetime of bootie surfing! My feet just don't seem to stay on the board without them. Which I experienced in a less than convenient moment a few years ago in the Maldives.

Decided it was time I tried to go bootie-less (for the vain reason that it looks kak in photo's when you're in boardies!) Plus I didn't have to venture out over any coral, just get dropped in the backline by the dingy. Nice decent size set comes through, about one and a half overhead. Stick the drop, so far so good. Get to the bottom and start leaning into the bottom turn - and DWAH! Feet slide off the board, and I face plant in the trough, with what felt like the whole ocean unloading on my head.

K, that solved the "trying to surf without booties" attempt in it's tracks. But I digress yet again. Back to the cold water this morning. When your hands are like iceblocks by the time you've paddled to the backline you know it isn't going to be a long surf. A rogue 2ft clean up set came through, and I snagged the first one (as most Millers regulars will know, there often isn't a second wave!) which I managed to milk to the inside.

On the way back out I had to duckdive the rest of the set - a whole 2 waves. Well, let me tell you, had there been a 3rd I reckon my head would've popped off. Jeeesh it was cold. Kloppende hoofpyn type cold. Luckily the rest of the session was dominated by basically unrideable 1ft slop, so I didn't have to deal with brain freeze again.

But still, it's the middle of damn summer......someone turn up the thermostat.