Price of a wave

I surfed yesterday morning at the L-shaped lot with a couple library buddies. Who would have thought that there'd be multiple surfing librarians in the same town! It was pretty rad if I say so myself. The waves had cleaned up quite a bit with Hurricane Irene moving up the coast but I'd say it was probably 3-4 feet on the good sets. Conditions were clean with slight offshores although with a new moon and a full tide around 8am I was a bit skeptical heading down to the beach. Meeting up Jimmy Half Step and Melvil Dewey in the parking lot I coughed up $4.0 for parking. It's a shame that parking is $2.0 per hour at WB now. I have more to say on that issue but that's for another day. This day was all about surfing with fellow librarians on what turned out to be really fun conditions. I had brought my trusty Allison "Bird Dog" w/me and I ended up catching more than my fair share of waves. After about 1.5 hours I decided I'd catch one in to the beach. The tide was starting to change and the sets were becoming more infrequent. However, one came up and I caught a beautiful right that was my longest of the morning. It seemed to go on for quite some time and keep popping up a beautiful glassy thigh-waist high wave as I cruised along. As I peeled down the line a few youngsters noticed me and smiled at me in way that suggested excitement and fear that I might plow them over. Unfortunately, the wave finally closed out and I turned with the water to shore. It was a great wave and a beautiful one to end my day surfing. And it was worth way more to me than $4.0 ever would.