Friday, 13 July 2018

Surfing the mighty Garburator by Max Feild

At Keeners, it is extremely hard to do something that should come so easily: taking a rest day. I have struggled with this immensely so far, as I have failed to take a rest day and, therefore, will not get one in my entire session. Sunday of week two was supposed to be my day. I slept in, I ate a nice breakfast, and then I took a nap in my hammock for about an hour. After some of my friends came over with their gear on, saying they were going down the main channel to see if Garburator was in, I was intrigued. I honestly didn’t think Garb was going to come in. I heard that the water levels needed to drop a great deal, and I wasn’t sure if it had reached that level. Either way, this was probably going to be my only shot at surfing the famous Garburator wave that was the home of the 2015 World’s. So myself, and five other Keeners geared up and started paddling down the river. I was mostly upset with myself for letting my rest day slip away for something that wasn’t guaranteed, but once we made it to the rapid, it was all worth it. I’ve never seen a wave quite like this in my entire life, and nothing even comes close in the Southeast. Catching it was easy as anything I’ve ever done and riding it felt incredible. It was so fast and powerful. You seem like you have control from the sidelines, but to me it felt like I was simply keeping myself straight while the river tossed me around. I tried to doing a few tricks, and succeeded in a select few. Other, much cooler tricks, the wave did for me sometimes. My friends and I stayed out there, taking turns videoing and surfing for about 4 hours before we started our exhausted but triumphant paddle upstream. I lost my last shot at a rest day, but I will never regret spending those 4 hours on this spectacular wave. That one day, that I could have spent sitting in an ENO and playing fusball, became one of my favorite days ever that I will never forget.

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