(Please note that this is mainly for my own documentation and so perhaps a bit more, no, a LOT more detailed than you care to spend time on.
Skip around as desired and enjoy my little-old-lady-adventure!!)
We left Velbert around 6 AM on Saturday morning for the six hour drive to München.
I have always been quite comfortable driving the infamous German Autobahn between 150 and 160 km/hour and regularly hit 180 (110 mph) this time around.
Our wonderful little Renault Clio diesel was quite zippy and takes corners well (and for five weeks, we paid only $360!! That's from Europcar, of course.) Diesel is the cheapest fuel all over Europe and the car is prima efficient. And, BTW, it was brand spanking new - first drivers!
There should have been no problem early on a weekend before summer vacation , but NOOOO, there had to be a bad accident on the way. We were an hour and a half away from the final destination, just coming into Nüremberg at about 160 km/hour, when this happened quite suddenly:
 |
| It's a parking lot. |
 |
| People were getting out of their cars to socialize, pee, borrow cups of sugar...I got out to wipe the Brötchen crumbs
off of my seat.
|
It took over 1/2 hour to creep 1 km and there was not a single exit for about 3 km. Then we got off and went around it all.
All the autobahns we saw in the area were at a dead stop.
Later, a couple from Konstanz who sat at our Bierstube table told us that a big transport truck had jack-knifed that morning.
But SantoLoco surf shop is open until 20:00 (that's 8 PM). After figuring out where in the city it was buried and where to park, we made it to Eisenmannstraße 4 by 15:30.
As many of you know, my goal in München was to go surfing.
 |
| Note selfie-stick. |
 |
| Cool skateboard bench outside the shop. |
Look at the board they loaned me:
 |
| WTF?? |
I tried to get a REAL board, but I think they do this on purpose to keep people from endangering their lives.
The dudes in the shop all assured me that this soft twin fin would do nicely at the baby wave.
My plan: warm up and train on the baby wave deep in the Englischer Garten and then graduate to the main wave by Haus der Kunst beneath the Prinzregentenstraße bridge. But not on this board.
I asked if I could get something more.....appropriate. You would not believe the higher-than-though retort from those German speaking surfers working the cash register: "Unmöglich! Die Profis selbst können es nicht sofort schaffen" and then dropped a bunch o' names from the surf world - pros who ate sh** over and over again until after a few hours they maaaaybe figure it out. Hah! I've never experienced such intense and snobby localism, not even at Salt Creek or on the North Shore.
The idea was just NO. You CAN'T. You WON'T.
Ok, so I was off the hook. I would not have to make a fool of myself in front of 50 locals and 200 on-looking tourists with video cameras. Phew. I was down with that, and quite sure that the baby wave would be challenging enough for a 52 year old outta shape mommy anyway.
The rental wetsuit was a throwback to the early '80s: a 3/2 mm cheap piece o' @#%* with a typically leaky back zipper (mine are all zipperless, with taped seams, of course) and they only had mens small (I wear an mens xs). So it was a bit roomy. Luckily I had packed my little paddling vest (yup, for paddling in Venice, Lugano, Konstanz) and that gave me an extra 2 mm and filled in the empty space in the cavernous suit. Good thing, too, as you will find out.
 |
| Requisite bloddy shark jaw. Because there are sharks in the Eisbach. |
 |
| I have NEVER surfed a squirrely twin fin in my life. |
We could take the metro (surfboard on a train! awesome!), walk or drive over to the Englischer Garten.
Julian, my cameraman, nixed the train idea.
Boo.
Would have been so much more dramatic.
We took a chance and drove, hoping for parking. And.... there was free parking!
 |
| Walking to the car through the Altstadt. |
But first we had
 |
| My squire, Julian. |
 |
| Frauenkirche (famous church hundreds of years old- older than the USA) in the background. Where in Cali would you see this?? |
 |
| Geschafft! |
 |
| Unloading in the free parking spot. |
A five minute walk and we arrived at the spot.
 |
| Walking the sidewalks of München with a surfboard. Who'd 'a thunk?? |
Luck would have it that there were exactly two older (read 35-40ish) guys sharing the baby wave. Just two guys! No onlookers!! Yay!
 |
| "Swimming prohibited. Fatal." |
I suited up.....
.......and dove in to cross the Bach (creek) to join the line-up on the other side. (For those of you not familiar with blogs, click on the arrow!)
I asked for tips from the lokes.
Then I went for it.
I tried again and again.
This is so exhausting. Hauling out of the current each time was similarly "exhilarating" as paddling out on a freezing double overhead day, and nearly as scary - zooming along the rock wall and having to grab it with your bare hands was quite eye-opening.
If the board gets stuck under the current, it takes a LOT of energy to drag yourself up onto the wall. In fact, even just scooting out on the little ledge is stressful because the wall leans slightly forward and sort of pushes you forward, so you are using all your muscles to stay precisely balanced up until you jump. Maybe if I did this every day......
I know it seems like an easy jump into the wave, but when you are actually there it is far in front of you.
After three failed attempts, I figured out where to attack and land: right next to the wall.
Can you imagine how disappointing that was?
I'm not giving up.
Then, I crushed it!
My goal was to hang five and style out for as long as possible on the face of the wave, maybe flash a couple of peace signs (picture it). If only I had MY board (famous last words)...... I tried!
Anyway, I held out as long as I could.
In that crap wetsuit.
It was BUTT COLD.
The high this day was 14˚C (57˚F) and that was at, like 14:00.
I started at 17:30 and now it was 18:30, i.e. early evening.
The water itself was a bone chilling 12-13˚C.
(53-55˚F - the coldest it ever gets in SB, which is when I bust out my 3/4 mm wetsuit, booties and hood).
After that last wave, I could barely pull myself out onto the wall. I really really wanted to keep surfing, but I was shaking so hard that I decided I wasn't ready to drown in the Eisbach. I sat for a while trying to figure it out. A young dude came over and told me that he had set up a rope on the other side of the wave, which made it really easy to get into the wave (darn! too late!!).
Thanks, I said, but I gotta get out. How do I do it? He told me, "to get out, you have to fight the current and climb up the other side (which is higher than this one), or float downstream and 'watch for the easy place to climb out' somewhere around the corner."
I did the latter. It was gnarly zooming down at high speed, looking for the "easy exit", thinking "hey, this must be it!" and trying to grab onto some little boulders with bare frozen hands. IT WAS SOOOOO COLD!
As soon as I had walked the 1/2 km back to the spot, about seven new guys had showed up and the energy there was way different. I just lucked out that I had the wave all to myself and had no pressure to perform. The universe sure was smiling upon me!!
Here is someone who has been doing it for a bit, but I think is still a bit of a beginner:
KUDOS to Julian for doing an amazing job as director and cameraman (applause, please.) It was cold just standing there with the camera, too.
 |
| My little souvenir from SantoLoco surfshop - a shell friendship bracelet with German flag colored beads! (View from our youth hostel window, too.) |
Note that the second surfer in this vid is a female :D
Even if you don't surf, you will appreciate this undertaking:
Winter Surfing in München
And for those of you surfers who are thinking of moving to München (read Steph), there are not just three standing waves in the Isar and on the Eisbach, but there is also THIS over by the airport!
So I "surfed" Munich. I can cross that one off my Bucket List. At least for now.
Now on to that one thing that Müncheners do best.....
Zum Augustiner
See next post for some truly and uniquely German behavior.
No comments:
Post a Comment