Getting sunburned is always rough, but I've discovered that getting sunburned on the backs of your legs and your butt is pretty much the worst. Putting on underwear suddenly becomes an ordeal, walking becomes a study in how to create the most negative space around your thighs. You have to choose between the lesser of two evils - pants and certain chafing, or shorts and potentially agonizing sudden contact. Sitting becomes a wholly traumatic experience.

Learn to love the shade, but beware the coconut trees

"How did such a thing happen?" you might wonder... "How did Sara, who is usually so careful about complete and total sunscreen application, commit this horrible misstep?" Well, to be honest, it has happened before. I think my brain blacked out the memory, though, because I didn't particularly think it was going to happen again.

So! To answer the question, surfing is how it happened. Surfing is really compelling sport - it combines patience, physical strength, timing, balance, and above all, a tremendous respect for the playing field; which is basically the vast, unbelievably powerful, and sometimes unpredictable oceanic tides. It is exhilarating and exhausting, and so wonderfully unlike anything else when and if you manage to catch a wave.

The day started out great. I woke up to a breathtaking southern-facing view of Waikiki and the ocean. Ribbons of turquoise and green near the shore, feathering out to the sapphire blue of deeper waters until the horizon hit the sky. Mark and I decided that this was going to be our first day of surfing. Whereby I applied multiple layers of sunscreen everywhere, then put on my bikini, then put more sunscreen on. We skipped on down to the surfboard rental place, picked out some longboards (longboards are a better choice for the smooth, rolling, beginner's waves of Waikiki). We headed to the beach, which we could see from a distance was typically packed with people. As we walked down to the waves, we passed people laying out in the sun, and I saw one poor guy seriously broiling in the sun. He was already lobster red from his face to his belly, and I thought, somewhat smugly to myself, "poor guy didn't apply enough sunscreen. Too bad he didn't know any better...man, that's going to hurt him tomorrow. {sucker} " Little did I know that I was enacting my own bit of dramatic irony.

The lovely breezes of Waikiki which send the palm trees swaying and cool relief to the tourists sweltering in the tropical heat, also make carrying a ten foot board in an extremely crowded area tricky. I had to affect a crab-like stance and edge my way to the water, dodging children and sunbathers. With my leash attached firmly to my ankle (the thing that keeps your surfboard from careening away and potentially knocking out some poor guy in an inflatable duck), I watched as Mark smoothly dived onto the water, belly flat on his board, like some sort of graceful tan floating seal. I tripped on the sand, threw my surfboard in the water, and taken by surprise by the sudden dip in the water, took two unsteady steps and flopped halfway onto my surfboard, like a confused walrus. I righted myself, and with Mark's coaching tried to find the "sweet spot" on the board. Basically, you are laying belly down, with your spine forming a straight line, and your sternum slightly lifted. Usually you place yourself on the back two-thirds of the board, but you are basically just trying to find the right place to balance your body so it is easier to propel yourself through the water. Because remember, we're just at the edge of the beach, and we still need to get ourselves to the place where the waves form. How do we do that? It's called paddling out, and it hurts, a lot.

Now, I consider myself out of shape, but essentially athletic. However, most of my latent muscle strength is core-down. My arms and shoulders? Not so much. And paddling out is what it sounds like - using your arms to move your stationary body and board forward, against the tides, until you find a good spot to wait and watch. Mark described it as moving like a crocodile, alternating arms (almost like an abbreviated freestyle motion, just not lifting your arms as high), keeping the arms strong and pushing through the water. All the while you are paddling, you are fighting against the tide, and sometimes it feels a little like one of those old Wiley Coyote cartoons where his legs are desperately moving as fast as they can, but he's stuck in one spot and he looks down and suddenly realizes that its because he had reached the edge of the cliff and is positioned over a vast abyss.

Anyways, there is a point in time when you finally make it out past where the waves are breaking. If you are a real surfer in real surfer conditions, I believe there is something called a line-up, where surfers politely wait to catch waves. Again, I don't really know, but I think that its common courtesy for each wave to have one surfer, and if you drop into a wave that already has someone riding it, you are a very bad surfer and communally shamed and ridiculed. But in Waikiki where pretty much everyone is learning, observing the rules of surf etiquette is less stringent.

See that little line of dots near the boats? That's the line-up

We were surfing at high tide and the waves were pretty soft and "roly-poly" as Mark put it. They were the kind of smooth, gentles waves that break late and low, which is great for swimming, but not so great for surfing. Still we tried. Waiting and watching is a big part of surfing. Mostly you go from belly down to sitting upright with your legs dangling in the water on either side of the board while you wait for a wave that looks rights. Once you find one, the wave starts to swell aways back from you, and you quickly push yourself from the upright sitting position back down in to "paddle-position" facing the shore, and when the swell is roughly ten feet away from you, you start paddling as hard as you can towards shore (and I mean as hard as you can) until you feel the wave catch the board. As soon as you're in front of the just-beginning-to-break wave, you use your exhausted paddled-out arms and shoulders to push your body up and draw your legs and feet up into a crouching position. If your timing is right, you can then stand and ride the board towards shore (again this is with a longboard, so we are facing the shore, riding towards the shore, not cutting sideways down the barrel of a wave.)

There is definitely no pee in that water...the waters of Hawaii are just naturally body temperature...

Mark and I surfed for two hours, and I only caught one single wave, and even then Mark had to push me into it (sometimes teachers or trainers help beginners get that extra bit of momentum needed to get in front of the wave.) And what did we do for the rest of the two hours, between those amazing and perfect 30 seconds of riding a wave? We paddled and sat, paddled and sat. And do you know what shifting back and forth from a sitting position against a wax-roughed board and salt water can do? That's right. It obliterates sunscreen.

But you know what? I experienced that rare, joyful moment of riding a wave with Diamondhead to my right, the sweeping blue ocean behind me, and the warm tropical breeze rushing towards me, so I'll take the sunburn this time. For the future I'm definitely investing in some boardshorts.

"paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle!"