Since we may have to wait for the wave that comes once every few weeks in the Gulf of Thailand, we'd rather make do with what is best for us...and that is windsurfing.
But will this make us semi-nurds?

Call me chicken or lazy, but I'll stick to 'web surfing', thank you very much! Of course the chance of a torrid tryst with some "Gidgety" broad is also reduced to zero, but at my age, that's not such a big deal!!

I surf. It is one of the least equipment oriented sports I have ever done. That is part of its appeal. Yeah, we might all want a quiver of boards, one for every condition, but that isn't where the fun lies. Not much nerdy talk about equipment really. And, not a heck of a lot of waiting. I suppose there are surfer snobs who only want to be on a 10 foot plus wave, but for most of us, anything that moves us works.

We play sports for the magic moment. The perfect golf shot, the pull-up jumper from 15 feet when we feel like Kobe, or the solid ding of a baseball ricocheting off a metal bat. These are all perfect moments. But, surfing has something no other sport has. It has the extended perfect moment. From the moment the wave starts to pick you up, through the pop up and the drop, and the bottom turn, and then the feeling of power as you pump your board, all of it has that same moment of perfection we crave. But, unlike hitting a great tennis or golf shot, both of which are over in 1/4 of a second, surfing's moment last a good ten seconds. There is a point riding the wave where that Edenic place has gone to just being something really fun, as you cut and carve back and forth across the face, but those first ten seconds are something you can't get anywhere else. Well, maybe there is one other place where you get that extended perfect moment, but I can catch 20 waves on a good day. The one other activity that springs to mind with such an extended bliss part you can't have 20 times a day, and also....it is way, way, more costly.

If I'm not mistaken, crew from Captain Cooks Endeavour watched residents of Tahiti surfing in 1769 using smoothed pieces of old canoes, not Hawaii a decade later.

It is an exelent and very exiting sport, as well as kitesurfing too!! they are my real pasion with economics and managment. It is simply living life at it fullest.. Those are sports that sells by presenting awsome images and a particular way of life (life style) very apealing to those visionaries or adventurers and efective in the marketing and merchandising world. Develops a fundamental part of human well being often forgtoten by the monotony standarisation and duplicity of the mases.