so i'm like a monkey stand right now
Hello people. I'm out here catching the sunset on Queens beach in Waikiki, Hawaii
I finally grew a pair and decided to try surfing
since the first time I tried it in El Salvador three years back
and i think I also caught the first ever wave of my life by myself and I wasn't
even standing up or anything but I paddled fast enough to catch it
and i'm so excited right now that i've decided that i'm gonna spend
the next 30 days practicing a little bit of surfing every single day
and see how far i can get with this
i have absolutely no idea about the proper etiquette of waxing a board but
that was my best shot at it. So for my underwater recording setup i have this
which is a floaty for my gopro strapped to my wrist
with the other end strapped to my wrist with a hair tie
No big waves
Oooh there's one coming
i was out there for two and a half hours My back is
literally f****ng destroyed right now okay so i wasn't able to catch any of
this with my gopro setup but i stood up on my board on my first
ever wave by myself today and then i did it again and again but
yeah i'm gonna try to get more of this on the gopro from tomorrow
This is day seven. I've gone surfing for the last six days straight
and today i decided that i'm gonna break that initial goal that i had set
previously of surfing every day for 30 days
i woke up this morning and my left shoulder
was sort of acting up a little bit and I have a long history with uh
problems with this left shoulder. So i'm gonna take the day off surfing today
because i don't want to aggravate the shoulder anymore and I've decided that
I'm also going to regularly start doing things to help prevent shoulder
injuries. Start training my upper back muscles and my
rotator cuff muscles I mean all this is kind of frustrating
because after six days straight i was finally starting to
get a hang of being on my board, getting a little more comfortable
finally starting to read the waves a little bit and now I've to take a day off
Hopefully i can get back in a day or two when my shoulder feels
better, but what I've also learned is that
taking a day off actually surfing doesn't mean
taking a day off learning. I 'm gonna try to use my off day
to work on my pop-up and i'm also gonna do this one thing which
experts on youtube keep telling me is very important to learn
which is learning to read waves and you can do that even when you're not in the
ocean So i'm just going to go out to the beach
side and check out some waves
So my shoulder was finally feeling better. Figured i would go out to surf
Got my new gopro wrist strap so i could get some videos
Got the best wave of my life and then i realized i dropped my gopro
into the ocean. Unfortunately you guys are probably not gonna get to see any
footage till i get another new gopro
all right this is the new gopro i'm
using. Hopefully this one won't drown I've gone surfing 12 of the last 16 days
i think i can consistently catch shit waves at this point
so hopefully i can get some on camera today
On the way out from the ocean yesterday I stepped on a sea urchin which i didn't
realize at the time and then at like 3 a.m i realized that
something was on my foot when i was going to the bathroom
and this morning when i woke up, i was in so much pain i couldn't even walk
so i pretty much decided i'm not hiking i'm not
going surfing today (or) any of that fun stuff but then
around 2 p.m my old roommate, Gert-Jan, called from the Netherlands because it
was like 2 am in the Netherlands and i started
drinking with him because he was drunk and then at 5 p.m after i hung up I was
still a little bit tipsy. I ended up going out to surf
and my rib cage on the left side and the diaphragm has just been bruised for the
last three days so it's not too bad walking but i know
it's going to hurt like a m********* when i get on the board and start
paddling. The waves are also supposed to be
huge today. They're supposed to go up to like 10 feet
in the evening. They're supposed to be a little smaller, I think six to eight feet
right now which is why i'm going out in the morning
the last time the waves were this big was eight days ago and
man... just paddling out there was the most painful thing I've done this month
it was.. just took 25 minutes to get out there and i think i legitimately hurt my
shoulders trying to "turtle-roll" when these massive waves
were coming in after they broke and just trying to hold on to my board. That hurt
but there's so much that's changed in eight days. I feel like I'm
so much more comfortable with my board and how waves break. Let's see how this
turns out
Today was frustrating I think I spent 95 percent of the time
trying to get to that one spot we were supposed to catch waves at
took about 30 minutes to get out here
So I was going over waves or going through waves or most of the times going
under it So it was not ideal. I think i stood up
on less than five waves because if you messed up your timing and you waited too
long, some white water wave would come and just get you and
take you out there anyways. So it was not the most fun day
in terms of waves caught and amount of work put in, but you know what
it was educational so i'll know what to do better next time out there in a
similar situation
Another supposed day of big waves. Let's see
how this goes
You can have the ball
If you hold on to it, she'll focus on you
Can I throw it?
Yeah you can throw it
(excited laughter)
day 21. This is my ninth straight day of surfing if i'm doing the math right
my whole body hurts
so today i learned how not to cut people off
heading out for day 23 of surfing and i think this is my 11th straight day in a
row I realized that in the last week or so
my shoulder and neck stopped hurting when I paddled
so I guess I finally built up that minimal strength required to paddle for
extensive periods of time There's so much that I've learned
There's so much you can learn about your positioning around the board or how to
position yourself fast when you see a wave coming. These small things no one
really tells you about, but once you learn it, you realize how important it is
Today is basically an obstacle course
Wooop
Woah! Woah!
it's the fourth of July About to go surf with a
raging hang over
(laughs)
it's been exactly 30 days since I started surfing
and today is going to be the 25th session
Let's see what I have learned
me: too many people stranger: there is a lot!
okay so it's actually been a full week since you saw what happened in day 30
but i figured i should shoot an outro and reflect on these 30 days while this
information is still fresh in my mind and share some things i wish i had known
when i was starting off which would have probably helped
I'm not talking about technical details about surfing because there's definitely
better tutorials than this on youtube. I'm talking about things that
i never found on youtube that i wish i'd known So number 1: do
not "drop in" on someone's wave. if you don't
know what that means which you probably don't if you're just
starting, look it up. Figure out what dropping in on someone's wave means and
make sure you never do it People get pissed. It's no joke. The worst
that's ever happened to me is someone took me aside for a talk
but at the same spot two days later i saw this guy almost beat up another guy
because he dropped in on his wave number two: watch out for vana or sea
urchin spikes or whatever you call them whenever you're getting in and out of
the water I've had sea urchin spikes stuck twice
in my toes in the last month and that is not fun.
One of the times i couldn't even
walk for like half a day number three: please use a foam top if you're starting
off because your surfboard can be a weapon if you
don't know how to use it and when you're starting off you
probably won't know how to use it number four:
if you're going to start off with the foam board, and especially as a guy
do not go out shirtless unless you're ready for your nipples to bleed. That
shit f*****g hurts number five:
Give it time
if you're not learning something fast, give it a few days
for you to get it
if the day's not good, give it an hour, an hour and a half
sometimes i wait like an hour 20 minutes for a good set
and then it's just on after that and I think that's one of my favorite things
about surfing is that it helps me get into this meditative
state where i'm focusing on nothing but the waves. I don't have my phone on me or
any other distractions and the only thing that's there is me
the waves, my ability to read waves, and my ability
to catch waves and it's a lot of fun once you get on
some waves. Man i just realized how beautiful that sunset is. I mean come
on look at it but anyways i'm going to end this video
here. So i have not stopped surfing since day 30. I've actually
gone every day for the last week So if you guys find this interesting i
can do more follow-up videos on what happens if you surf for 60 days or 90
days. Try to get some alternate camera angles. As usual if you
have any questions let me know in the comments and i'll get back to you
about anything you want to know Other than that, like this video
if you liked it. Subscribe if you want to see more. You know the usuals
peace out guys
you