Tago faces the Pacific Ocean whose wide variety of waves breaks into the shore of fine, slate gray sand. This setting is perfect for high performance surfing except for one thing: it's deadly!
We call our shore baybay and to it we attach the term ayuan, which means it begs relentlessly until it gets what it wants. So when we say that our baybay is ayuan, we mean this: it takes souls by force!
Every Tagon-on with the gall to go swimming at baybay knows that he has to watch out for higit, which happens when waves recede from the shore, dragging bathers to death with bizarre, brute force. Oscar Duque and Policarpo Medrano were two of the casualties. Poly, like Oscar years earlier, was already heading for home after swimming with a friend when he soiled his feet. He ran back to wash, never to be seen again.
And so it is with a sense of danger that Tago’s youngblood flirt with higit as they engage in their new sport--- skimboarding!
It has already come to my attention that boys go skimboarding in baybay, but it was only last summer that I saw two of them clutching an attractively painted board. Knowing that skimboarding or skimming is as alien to Tagon-ons as text messaging is to fish, I was intrigued: How do they do it? Who taught them?
My bestfriend Wiki told me that skimboarding is a boardsport in which a skimboard (a smaller counterpart to a surfboard) is used to glide across the water's surface. Unlike surfing, skimboarding begins on the beach, it starts with the dropping of the board onto the thin wash of previous waves. The players may use their momentum to 'skim' out to breaking waves, which they then catch back into shore in a manner similar to surfing.
Wow, just about perfect for Tago!
Last week, we went to baybay to know the extent of damage wrought by the recent flood. And we chanced upon a group of half-naked boys building sand castles. About them were five or six skimboards scattered like they were tossed by waves. Not far from them, perched on a stump, were upturned glasses and a plastic pitcher whose residue gave us a hint of its previous content.
Then a chubby boy picked up his board that carried an eagle, threw and ran onto it while it was gliding across a thin layer of water. But he fell even before I could blink. Then another rider glided over a layer of water towards a wave and when he reached it, he shifted his weight and wrapped around it, spreading his hands as the wash of waves propelled him back to shore.
I found myself clapping!
I borrowed the skimboard of one rider and inspected it. While professionals use a skimboard in “composite” construction of fiberglass, carbon or kevlar, this rider used a ply board that he salvaged from a bunkhouse of the contractor of Tago-Lapaz bridge. I ran my hand throughout its length to see if it had a nose lift or a rocker, a curve from nose to tail known for better control of bigger waves. I found none; what it had were dents.
Wiki said that riders generally favor a board made of length reaching about their mid-chest height when stood on end and with a thickness that ranges from 3/8 inch to 1 inch, this rider’s board however was nowhere near these specs.
I returned the board to the rider and asked him for a shot.
Seconds after we walked away, I looked back and wondered if their parents had told and warned them about the lore of our baybay. But as they glided across a thin layer of water with their skimboards, I saw not fear but a carefree spirit being unleashed.
The gods be damned!
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