Two days before Christmas in 2020, I was going to watch the Australian Surf Movie Festival with a friend of mine. I was really looking forward to this evening, so I was extremely disappointed when three days before the screening, the organiser cancelled the showing due to a C-19 outbreak. I wanted to arrange plan B, but something came up for my friend, so I stayed without a plan for that day. The uncertainty due to the outbreak and cancellation put me in a bad mood. On top of everything I started feeling sick, so I needed to take a PCR test. I was in isolation for two days waiting for the result.
Not being able to see the ocean amplified my mood. Finally, the result came back negative, although I didn’t feel much better, and I still had a mild fever. To get some fresh air and to cheer myself up, I drove down to the ocean. On the way to the beach, I saw that the sky was covered with nice, shaped clouds, promising an epic sunset.
As I approached the beach, I was stunned by the perfect barrelling waves of 4–5 feet in the offshore wind. I couldn’t have imagined better conditions. Like a stroke of magic, all my misery disappeared. I pulled over and ten minutes later I was rushing through the sand straight into the water. Time was flying, and the waves were rolling in constantly. The sky slowly started to change. Everything started glowing in scarlet colour. It was like a dream. The whole situation was so unreal I couldn’t believe it. I was spinning around like a mad man in my awe. The water turned into liquid gold. It was one of the best sessions of my life.
The memory of this day is a good reminder that not every bad thing that happens to us is a curse as without the cancellation I would have missed this amazing experience.
