20th Anniversary Skimboarding Season: Session #05 — Return to Shimoda, Izu

I made my third trip to Shimoda, Izu on August 15th and 16th, but my first time to go solo. It was also my first time to ever drive solo in Japan as well. I rented the venerable Nissan March and made the drive from Shinjuku to Shimoda in under four hours, although I was taken by the navi-chan a way I didn’t want to go and this greatly reduced my overall ability to enjoy the trip, by at least 50% actually.

Still, I ended up having my greatest skimboarding session of the year so far. … Somehow I skimmed for 3 straight hours with no breaks at all. This is a throwback to the 3-hour sessions I’d regularly have in my high school and college skimming days. In the past few years, I usually put in 1.5 hour sessions, so you can see how stoked I was to be on the sweet sand of Ohama Beach, to have such good waves, and most importantly to have a skimming partner. The same Japanese guy I met last year, Kazakazu (sp?)… It was very good to see him again. It has been years and years since I had a skimboarding partner, not since I’d say about 1998, if not longer.

The waves were quite good. The highly sloped banks of Ohama beach that are also tightly packed make for excellent entry into the water. I was running full on. In this way I was able to get some truly great floaters, rising some 5 feet up into the air up on the top of the just breaking waves, before gently gliding back down to the sand along with the crest of the wave. Other times I would rip huge, arcing flairs.

We skimmed until nearly the sunset. It was a great summer afternoon, as ideal as it can get in such times.

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