Tea Break Adventures
There are advantages to lockdown and working from home. Tea Break Adventures is one of them! The main advantage is that it allows for some flexibility in working patterns. Take today for example. I usually work at the University Weds-Fri 9am-3:30pm. However, when working from home I almost always end up doing some University work on a Monday and Tuesday as well. I also tend to start quite a bit earlier than 9am and often end up working later in the afternoon as well. I do make up for it in many cases by having slightly longer lunch-break than usual so that I can fit in a run or a turbo trainer session while it’s light.
Today was a Thursday so I would usually be doing University work. I started at around 8am but around 10am I noticed that the sun was out. The tide was coming in and would be too high for a surf ski paddle at lunchtime. I therefore decided that a 10am ‘Tea Break Adventure’ was on the cards. Heading over to the beach at 10am would allow me to get a surf ski session in that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to. The tide would be too high later and who knows what the weather would be doing by then.
As it happens I only ended up being out for just under half-an-hour but the flexibility in my working schedule would have allowed me to stay out longer if I wanted.
Fruity Conditions
Once on the beach, the tide was a little higher than I had anticipated and it was soon breaking on the pebbles. Once on the water, the waves were a little bigger than I though as well. There was a solid 3 foot swell running with 4 foot sets coming in out the back. That translates to 6-8 foot faces which would be well overhead for a stand-up surfer. As a fairly short human sat in a surf-ski that’s easily triple overhead!
Coupled with the high tide breaking on the pebbles and the big waves was a strengthening wind. This was aded some chop into the mix. The tide was fairly big too so there was quite a bit of water moving about as well. Any one of these factors on their own would be OK, but with all of them adding up I soon decided that things were just a little too ‘fruity’ out there. I soon caught a big bumpy wave back into the beach. I jumped off in the shallows before hitting the pebbles and then scrambled up onto the pebbles so as not to get rinsed by the shore-break.
It may have only been a quick tea break adventure but it was better than not doing it and not something I would have been able to do if not working from home. I’m still likely to end up doing more than my allocated hours of work as well thanks to getting ahead of myself earlier in the week.
Then conditions look good for tomorrow as well and the surf may have eased off a little by then. Let’s hope for an action replay.
