If you’re from the East Coast, you know that Wintertime is for travel. One can only take consistently gray skies and bitter cold for so long. Winter waves often smooth this off-season struggle, but session satisfaction deteriorates significantly under cold conditions.
However, a Spirit booking and an Airbnb rental can only get one so far. Nine times out of ten, a person’s personality flies along with them. The way you live your East Coast life doesn’t just die because you have some ticket to a foreign island.
The East Coast breeds a fast-paced, worrisome lifestyle that can attach itself to longtime residents–plane ticket holders, or not. This might not be such a bad thing, as the East Coast is a pretty badass place to live. However, it is true that our general way of life is much different than that of a tropical island local. Furthermore, one might not ever realize the difference unless they are dropped into an overseas setting.
It’s a crazy thing to think about, but long adjustment periods exist for white, callous-skinned gringos when the clock starts ticking on Island Time. Newcomers are always easy to spot during a cold season siesta South (not just from the funny tan lines, and red faces). You might catch these people without a smile, or showing some uncomfortable body language.
For some, there are consistent and reoccurring thoughts toward future plans, work, or just keeping busy. It’s hard to imagine warm, Island-style fun being so hard to get used to. It takes time to ease into any new lifestyle; kinda like getting into a really hot hot tub… If that makes sense.
Most people feel some sort of discomfort in new situations, even if that situation happens to be in utter paradise. For surfers, a radical change of scenery can be even more dramatic. Getting adjusted to, or wiring a new surf break is extremely taxing on the mind and body–especially when sizeable swell arrives along with your plane.
Getting put in new situations or pushed to new extremes is how surfers (and everyone else in the world) grow and improve. It can be a character-building exercise to place oneself in untested waters (just at least scope the mysto reef break before charging head down).
Dealing, adjusting, and changing with unfamiliar circumstances determines the score one settles with new the challenges that life presents. Soon enough, new beginnings become trampled beaches. And down the line, that once worrisome traveler could just find themselves surfing perfect peaks with only the boys in the water.
Below are some photos of a Caribbean adventure in the making, enjoy…
P.S.
March’s Major Swell Event is happening EVERYWHERE near/around/in the Atlantic. Traveling or not, we hope that everyone is SCORING and staying safe. Please send any photos, words, thoughts, etc. our way and we can report on even more of this awesome world.