I'm sitting here in Southern California feeling desperate for winter. It hits, now and then, this feeling of loss. Somewhere deep within there rumbles the need for snow, sleet, icy roads. That haze of frost at dawn. Praying desperately for the heat to kick in, in the car--
I'm not kidding.
So that when I read an article about surfing in the frigid winter waters of northwest Ireland, I thought, hey, how about a little trip to Bundoran, Ireland.
"Bands of black clouds sailed ominously across the sky. Rain bucketed down in freezing torrents. Icy winds pummeled and churned the ocean." Ohmigod. Doesn't that sound beautiful?
Wild weather. Frigid, bleak, insane. This winter gigantic waves came in, waves up to 45 feet tall.
Surfing in Ireland. In the winter, the prime season for the huge waves. I have to go before it's all ruined. I used to want to ride the mail boat up the coast of Norway. The boat was small and rough around the edges. The real thing. On the day my kids grew up I ran to book the mail boat--
It had turned into a huge cruise ship, behind my back. It had turned into Club Med.
One surfer said blissfully that last year in Bundoran, it had been snowing in the mountains and hailing on the beach, when he was there. He lives in Southern California--
"Now that the word is out," says this article in the New York Times, "Bundoran and nearby towns, with their unusual masochistic appeal and promise of huge, storm tossed swells, have become international surfing destinations."
Outside my door the sky is blue and the palm trees wave in the warm breeze. I'd better book Bundoran right now.