The Best Things Come to he who Waits?
With just over 3 weeks to go until we leave for France, and me itching to get things moving, I have been thinking about instant gratification. And how sometimes it’s good to take things slowly.
Over the last year and a half, since we first decided to undertake this trip and get the idea signed off by my publisher, it’s been a real slow burn. Agonisingly slow actually. I have had to be patient, both with myself and with my knee following the operation to fix my ACL in March 2023, and that has meant learning to appreciate things that only come with time. Often my recovery has felt like I was taking one step forwards and then two back, which has made me turn to planning to get any kind of satisfaction. Each stage, from booking ferries, to organising bikes and coming up with ideas of ways to carry surfboards and keep our kit secure has taken me forwards in tiny increments. I’ve had to learn to appreciate each small stage as movement in the right direction. As others have jumped on planes, enjoyed a week in the sun and have come back again, I have plodded onwards, slowly, overthinking, over-organising, trying to make myself useful by slowly working through a long list of problems and potential problems.
And that’s okay.
75% of the carbon a surfer creates is through travel. We aim to reduce that to a bare minimum: a few ferries, electricity to charge the bikes and getting home so it really won’t be a carbon belching strike mission. It’s about slow, thoughtful travel for its own sake. It isn’t about breaking records or even getting it done. It’s about enjoying the journey and allowing it to unfold at its own pace. Even if we don’t get to our end point it doesn’t matter.
Previous van trips that I have organised, though not as instantly satisfying as jumping on a plane and sipping sangria a few hours from home, have delivered me pretty neatly to the places I wanted to go. A ferry to Spain or France, followed by a bit of driving, transported us to where we could begin the work or the play.
This trip, however, will require much more in the way of patience. We won’t be speeding away from Santander – as we have done before - with the promise of surf just an hour or so away. When we arrive at Roscoff we will still have to cycle at least 340km before we hit the Atlantic and the closest surf break at Pornic. I estimate that could be five or six days, just to get to the ocean. If we work really hard we could make it in 3 days but that might mean missing out on visiting places like Josselin or Rohan along the way.
In my daydreaming I have tried to imagine what it will feel like to reach the ocean after a week of travelling. How will my legs feel? Will I be hot and sore? Will there be a moment when all is revealed or will it be a gradual thing, with a distant, sparkling sea coming into focus as we ride? Will we smell the ocean before we see it? Will we sense its gigantic presence before we find a place to stop and swim? Will it be joy or just relief? Will we feel like we’ve made a huge achievement? Will we be daunted by the task ahead? Until I get there I just don’t know. And that’s part of the excitement.
Moving down the coast will be steady and sure, I hope. We won’t be able to race to catch the tide or nip to another beach to check the banks before paddling out somewhere better. We won’t be able to feel the regret that the place we left will be better tomorrow – that would be pointless and painful. We will have to accept what is in front of us and take it for what it is. I hope it’ll be liberating. There will be no going back and no racing forwards. We will be able to choose to move or stay still for a while. That’s it. No amount of scanning the surf cams will change anything. You either go or your stay and surf.
It is so easy to get what you want when you want it today. Surf trips parachute us straight into the path of an incoming swell wherever we want to go. The gratification can be more or less instant. You can be surfing Macaronis in the Maldives within 16 hours of leaving home or drop into a fresh swell in Lisbon in a few hours.
Modern society, like the modern surf trip, is geared up to deliver whatever we want, to our doorstep, whenever we want it, whatever it is: a cab, a meal, a new pair of jeans, our food. Even though I might enjoy a little hit of dopamine when the postie brings me the things I want, I sometimes feel that it completely devalues any kind of achievement. The satisfaction is temporary, like dinner that arrives pre-chopped in a box or going to a drive through. It fills you up but empties your soul at the same time.
I find this extremely uncomfortable, even though I do take advantage of it on occasion, simply because it’s so easy. I draw the line at fast food and wouldn’t dream of ordering a food box, but I do like to buy kit online. It’s too easy to use the internet to shop for things that are not available locally or to jump in the car to nip to the shops to get the things I have run out of. Unfortunately, this convenience comes at a price that’s more than the money we pay for it. Every transaction, for whatever it is we consume, uses up resources in its making and its delivery. All those delivery vans going up your road. All those fumes. All that carbon, the plastic, the packaging. All for what? A hit of dopamine? Afterwards all that’s left is something else to use and discard that, actually, doesn’t make you any happier in the long run. Feeling better, I would argue, is entirely up to you.
I am very much looking forward to hitting the road because it means escaping from all of that and living in a different world where the world is what’s in front of my handlebars. The rewards will be in getting wherever we get to, whenever we get there.
Can’t wait. Actually I can. And that’s the point.
