Surfing Puerto Rico (Hurricane Erika) 1997

Wrote this for a Dos Equis contest

CHASING ERIKA

We’d flown to Puerto Rico from San Diego on a whim. I laughed off all those “waitress in the sky” jokes I’d heard since becoming a flight attendant and paddled out into the 8-10ft. hurricane surf. It was breaking perfectly making the 1 mile paddle worthwhile.
We surfed for several hours catching the rides of our lives, until our arms had nothing left to give. We began to worry when the 2 boats that had been anchored in the channel had gone in, each of them full of surfers. We hadn’t seen one fishing boat all day and our hopes of catching a ride dimmed like the setting sun. We would have to paddle.
The ebbing tide and the offshore winds fought us the whole way in, and the thought of big fish with big teeth was on our minds. It was a long, long paddle. At times I was very concerned about making it to the beach. On flight home I sank back in my seat and hummed the Replacements song “Waitress in the Sky” and fantasized about my next adventure.

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