Happiness is supposed to be hard work. You have to work for your moment on the wave. It doesn’t just come to you.

I think it’s supposed to work like this: you find your way to the shore with all your equipment. And then you lie on your board and you paddle and paddle. The elements bear down on you. You get knocked about. You paddle like a dog to get behind the wave where the water lumps up like inflatable speed-bumps, growing, and growing and scary and then you paddle out ahead of the wave so that it takes you along and then you stand and balance until the wave exhausts itself or you fall.

I don’t know what it’s like for them when they go surfing in the ocean, I mean it must be such a trip. Paddling man… The paddling alone will, you know, fry ya. (laughs!)

Nick Carroll, Keep Surfing, at 13:50 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz9bA0CovQQ)

There’s another sort of surfing where the wave appears to be endless. It stands there waiting for you. No paddling.

Munich is the capital of what is now known as “rapid surfing,” as in surfing on rapid water, “rapids,” on waves that stay in place: fast-moving water formed by circumstances.

It’s attractive, this place, in the middle of the city. A cool, clear river. The Eisbachbrücke, Lehel, at the southern corner of the English garden, the union of two streams into one. This is the goal. Surfing here is non-trivial. There are people who try to discourage first-timers, for good reason. I’ll have to get to know them, prove some worth. A good project needs quality gates. This is a good project.

You need to start somewhere. At present, my surfing is of the indoor variety. Some might say that starting here is cheating. But I’d argue it’s pragmatic. Water rushes out of an opening at great speed and is engineered into a standing wave.

On 16 July 2023 at a beginner’s surfing class at the Jochen Schweitzer Centre near Taufkirchen in Munich an instructor held my board and helped me get on it. I grabbed hold of a long metal bar fastened across the wave pool just in front of the standing wave. The beginning of a new project, a journey, an obsession, perhaps.