I always go for the latter.

As I have mentioned in blog posts too numerous to site here I am a fan of the fall.

a big fan

the water is still warm and the tourist have gone back to whence they came

the surf benefits from having swell from two directions at once

Saturday was one of those days

I had ridden the mat for a while and decided that the fish would be the go way to break things up

The first thing you notice about surfing a board after riding a mat is how hard they are.

Like sticking your mat in a vat of Viagra over night.

It's obvious I know, but still I absentmindedly tried to squeeze and cuttle the board into another shape but the deck and rails held fast.

Which is, in the grand scheme of things is just as it should be.

When you ride a mat you body surf the wave and the mat adds touches of brilliance to the task in the way it helps you flow across the water.

Riding a board, you surf the board and the board really has all the fun surfing the wave. 

I remember one wave in particular.

A nice little peak wedged up with just a hint of a shoulder.

When I ride a fish I like to start off by throwing a little turn off the top, just to get a little speed and to start the  rhythm of the turns to follow. Driving down the now steepening face I rubbed the belly of the fish on the wave trough like I was scratching a mosquito bite. It felt so good. Now in addition to the aforementioned good feelings what you have done is transferred the kinetic energy from your accelerating mass coming down the wave to the boards keels and like a compressed spring as soon as you stop loading them up they start to unload. That is once your downward and outward trajectory has reached it's apex the fins revert to their resting shape with a delightful little snap. If you have timed all this right you should get flung back up to the top of the wave in time to repeat this exercise in applied physics until the wave is done or until your head explodes.

I always go for the latter.