Gee, it seems kind of crowded out here

Big, beautiful waves greeted me this morning when I arrived at the beach. You couldn't ask for a nicer swell. The only catch - the ocean was positively teeming with ugly yellow-brown jellyfish, millions of them, ranging from a half inch to several inches long, drifting around me, washing over my surfboard, bumping into my legs, tangling in my fingers as I desperately tried to paddle away from the horror, the horror...

In truth the psychological revulsion was much worse than the occasional stings, which are mild and utterly harmless. The sensation is akin to having something tugging on your arm hairs, and is irritating but not painful. Still. Yuck.

Notwithstanding the challenge of paddling through these swarms of tentacled sea-vermin - and perhaps partly owing to the slightly diminished number of surfers out in the water - I snagged some rides that undoubtedly constitute the best of my career to date. I successfully executed climb and drop sequences on several really screaming waves and a couple of times managed to stay on through the thunderous closeouts that followed. A stranger paddling out through the whitewater complimented me on one of my rides - a personal first.