Episode 5: The Art of Learning with Leah Conroy

In this episode with Leah Conroy, we discuss the value of intense focus and consistent practice in the art of learning. Leah’s experience is vast. She began as a windsurfer in the San Francisco Bay and moved on to surfing in the rough waters of Ocean Beach. She worked as a biotech scientist at Harvard Medical School and a surgical technologist at Stanford, both of which impressed upon her the importance of donating blood. Leah also talks about the joy of returning to the piano later in life, the parallels of riding horses and riding waves, how to take care of yourself out in the water, and why every surfboard has its reason. I hope you will listen, I learned a lot from this interview.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] A return to piano
[06:10] The art of learning
[06:54] Taking care of yourself in the water
[14:36] Every board has its reason
[22:25] Windsurfing the bay and surfing Ocean Beach
[29:28] Donate your blood
[32:57] Riding horses and riding waves

Quotes:

"I wanna be able to look out at the waves and say that biggest wave that I saw breaking before I put my wetsuit on, that set wave. I want that one. I am not going to go out if I don't want that wave."

"I do believe that anything that's difficult to master, you should try to do it every day."

"I didn't mind becoming a surfer too at 29. People thought that was crazy, up in Ocean beach in San Francisco. Most of the people learned when they were about 10, and it just wasn't an endeavor that especially a woman would take up later, that was considered old."

Get in touch with Leah

• Instagram @bonzergirl
• Facebook Leah Brindley Conroy

More about Christine Foerster

• christinefoerster.com
• Instagram @christinefoerster

The concept, the Art of Learning, was coined by Josh Waitzkin in his book, The Art of Learning. 

Transcript

Leah Interview

Christine: Hi Leah. 

Leah: Hi. 

Christine: Welcome. Thanks so much for joining me today. 

Leah: Oh, thanks for asking me. 

Christine: Well, I wanted to start with you are retired and it seems that you are investing most of your time these days in surfing in the morning, and then practicing piano in the afternoon. And I'm curious about how these two practices inform one another.

Leah: I feel strongly that there's a parallel between artistic things and surfing, and I think I started noticing that surfing was actually an artistic endeavor when I moved down here and watched a lot of long boarders. That's the first time I really heard music while I was watching someone surfing. And then there are some amazing videos obviously of surfing and some videos are fantastic combined with music of all different types. So that interested me. Um, but I don't think that it was surfing that drew me to piano. I always wanted to go back to it, and it's just one of those things when you retire, suddenly you have the time to enjoy and explore things you thought you always wanted to do, but you had no time for.

Christine: Can you go a little bit into your history of playing piano? Because you took quite a break. 

Leah: Yes. I only had probably nine months of lessons. I was the youngest of three kids. My mother was not very  careful about watching me and my practice and pushing me like she did my brother and sister. So I'm quite a bit younger than my sister. I'm eight years younger and I think she was just sort of tired of pushing me and driving me and I was the kind of kid that was very active and was easily distracted doing other things. I loved riding horses and just being outside all the time, so I think that the lessons discontinued a little earlier than I would've liked. I was probably only about 10 years old, and then I did not play music, but I enjoyed music, obviously, the way people do until I went to college and I really wanted to play in a group. So it was a small college and they had a bar flute group and it was just recorders and I picked up a recorder and I was determined. I wanted to play in the Christmas concert in my freshman year at this college, and so I taught myself flute.

Leah: And of course with help, there was a teacher that was guiding us a little bit and that was very satisfying. And so then I bought an actual student flute, taught myself flute and played all through college just for fun for myself. Wished I had a piano. I just never, you know, when you're in college and you're moving about and staying with friends and living in funny situations, we just never had a piano at our disposal. So it was something I, even as an adult, I always wanted to go back to the piano. I think when you start on an instrument, there's that familiarity with the keys and I found it's very challenging to have both hands doing different things, and it's so good for your brain. I just knew if I played piano as an adult, I might, you know, put off Alzheimer's or whatever.

Christine: That's good thinking. I'm curious then, so considering maybe your approach to learning or the art of learning, do you think that it is a matter of just putting in the hours every day, or do you feel that you have a good ability with focusing intensely, or is it something else?

Leah: I do love to focus. I found out about that in college. It was the science and the art. I had a combined interest, so I was double majoring and I ended up working in the lab. I was at Harvard Med School, and then my first job was working in a laboratory. I didn't really think that that's what I wanted to do. I thought I would go to med school or something. I just, it didn't appeal to me to be inside. You know, bubbles and chemicals, but it turns out the focus, being quiet at the lab bench and working on experiments and looking at your data, I loved it. So I think the learning process for piano is similar to me. I really enjoy leaving the whole outdoor world. And kind of pulling inside and focusing for two hours on the piano music. I like it a lot. I do believe that anything that's difficult to master, you should try to do it every day. You can't always do that with surfing cuz the conditions are horrible and it's not really advantageous to go out. If it's awful, you can actually get hurt. But, with piano, Even if you only sat down for 20 minutes, I think that that reinforces what you learned the day before. 

Christine: Yeah. I think it's admirable. You say that you are working on a new piece right now and that you wanna just spend the whole day working on it.

Leah: I love that part of it. I think that's why I didn't mind becoming a surfer too at 29. People thought that was crazy. Up in Ocean beach in San Francisco. Most of the people learned when they were about 10, and it just wasn't an endeavor that especially a woman would take up later that was considered old. But you have to realize that up there it's a lot more rough than down here. So the comparison's a little tricky, but that process is key. I think, of just wanting to be a kook for a while in learning how to do something that you're not good at, obviously and keeping up with it. 

Christine: We had a fun surf session the other day, especially because you took me out, we paddled out right next to the North jetty. That was the first time I'd done that and I've always watched people do it and wanted to, but it was helpful to go with you for the first time and as we were paddling out, you talk a lot about the swell patterns through the harbor and I was wondering if you could elaborate right now on.

Leah: Sometimes the swell movement, actually it helps you if you paddle out by the jetty, right? Well, almost every day. Any day the jetty is your friend and the jetty will help provide that escalator effect. Out as long as you stay near the jetty, it's deceiving. Some people are afraid to go near the rocks, but actually that's where the current is the strongest and most contiguous all the way out. And that way you don't get hit by waves and it saves you a lot of energy. But, there are times when the swells are quite big coming out of the south and you could get close to being pushed up onto the rocks if you were just in the most awful position I could imagine. It doesn't happen very often where you were right next to the rocks and it pushed you in from the south. But any other condition, the jetty is the best place to paddle out if you wanna save some energy. 

Leah: And when you're learning how to surf, a lot of times preserving is important because it's tiring. It takes a while to build up the stamina, to paddle out repeatedly and also have the strength to catch waves and jump to your feet, and you wanna get as many waves as possible. So I always use the jetty. I don't, well I shouldn't say always, but, if I'm down there, it's very helpful for me cuz I don't feel, you know, that strong, I'm not as strong as some people. 

Christine: Well you seem pretty strong to me. So you just have to be wary of the stingrays and the fishing lines.

Leah: Those are the only two points. There are occasionally fishing lines. They don't fish there as often as they do the pier. It's not such a problem, and I do think a lot of guys wanna fish on the other side of the jetty because then their line will be drawn away from the jetty if they fish towards the harbor. If they're fishing towards the waves and the waves are coming to the jetty. It is a problem for them. They usually get them snagged, and I don't think people do it that often. And there are stingrays, but the stingrays could be everywhere. I don't wanna give you a false impression that they're only there.

Christine: Oh, I've seen them everywhere. 

Leah: They're everywhere. You just gotta be really adept at shuffling your feet and never forget. So every time you're inside after surfing. Try not to put your feet down. That's it. Just do everything you can. It's it. You might look funny, you know, falling on your belly or you know, doing a shallow kind of flop back. But I do that a lot in the summer. 

Christine: And then when we were paddling out, you said that you like to find a safe place. And you said, because you are the best person to take care of yourself out in the water. Right. And I really like that, that is one of the things that stuck the most with me with our surf session together. So would you go into that a little more?

Leah: I like to hear that you're listening. Well, I do feel it is a dangerous sport and it's not so dangerous and the waves are probably not the thing that are going to hurt you. It’s more the other people. And you know, you get hit by a board. There are other surprising things that can happen. I've seen people sort of run over by other people that were not very good surfers. So yeah, it's best to be very cognizant of your neighbors in the water and their skill level, what direction they like to go. I try to do a lot of summarizing in my head of the people that I'm near just to make sure that I'm safe. You should never go out as a beginner and expect that if something went wrong, someone will help you. Everyone else is out there pretty competent probably, and they wanna have a good time and they don't wanna spend their time helping others. It ruins their day. If something like that happens, I've come to people's aid and I'm happy to do it if they need it. But, for me personally, I don't go out if the waves are too big, if I will be intimidated. I wanna be able to look out at the waves and say that biggest wave that I saw breaking before I put my wetsuit on, that set wave. I want that one. I am not going to go out if I don't want that wave or don't go out if you think you'll just go and you'll stay a little inside of that wave, then you'll probably be interfering with other people and you could get in trouble inside as far as getting hit by someone that's really competent, that wants that big, giant wave 

Christine: You also mentioned too about staying away from the loudest guys out in the lineup, which I also thought was sound.

Leah: Yeah, they tend to be the people trying to control the whole lineup and the peak and they want a lot of waves and I think it's just a manipulative form of control and a little bit intimidating. They might try to form a little bit of a pack, but it's usually just one guy. Most people out there are there for the piece of surfing, so those are the kinds of people I like to be with. You might have quiet conversation here and there, but they're not yelling and hollering. And even if it's a lot of whoops, and you know, woohoo. I still think if that person is doing it a lot for just a couple people around him or her, it's probably because they want the rest of the crowd to think they're in charge. And so I avoid those people . 

Christine: Okay. It’s really heartwarming to see you and Eddie out there together. And it seems like you two, Eddie's your husband, right? And you guys have a lot of good camaraderie together. But it also seems that you kind of watch out for one another because you paddled out a little bit later and you asked how many waves he'd caught and then made sure that he caught the first one that came in on that next set.

Leah: Well, he's coming back from surgery on his foot just a few months ago, so I wanna make sure that his surf sessions are good ones now cuz it's very exciting that he's back out. He didn't surf for about two months, and he is 12 years older than I am and so everything's a little bit tougher for Eddie and the conditions were rough. So I definitely wanted to know how he was doing because I could tell you and I were probably not going to get a lot of waves. Kind of low tide leggy. It was hard surfing for a beginner. 

Christine: Yeah, I'm glad to hear that. Cause, and I went out and I told you from the beginning, I thought these waves are just, they're just peaking too high for my comfort level.

Leah: And that's why we went down to that other peak towards the middle, because I thought the waves, at least down there were smaller. The vast majority of the energy of the waves were coming into that north jetty from the south, and it seemed like probably not a good place for us to hang out.

Christine: Yeah, well, I did catch one, I wrote it halfway and my belly stood up and then fell off, and at least that was something. 

Leah: Oh, you were tough. 

Christine: Yeah. Then a couple beatings after that. 

Leah: Well, if you come up laughing or happy, that's a good sign. That's the main thing. 

Christine: You also suggested maybe considering getting a long board at some point for the smaller days, and would you talk about that?

Leah: So I started surfing like you did on a seven two fun board shape, at Ocean Beach in San Francisco where it's very rough and it was a nice in between size board, not too much to handle, and it's really nice to get going on a board that length. If you are fairly fit, which you obviously are, you're athletic in some regard, I can tell. So it's nice to start smaller if you're a small person. But the thing that I learned, I was only surfing for the first 15 years of my life. I've been surfing almost 35 years. I didn't surf very often because the conditions, and I was working for whatever reason. I wasn't actually surfing, riding a lot of waves when, you know, if you looked back on it, if I only caught four waves each session and I only rode a wave or, or went out once a week, that's not a lot of riding. So I started noticing that if I took a long board out to Waves in Pacifica where it's a little gentler and smaller, I could learn how to surf on the long board first. Get a lot of waves, get like riding time, and you start to learn how waves break, what to expect down the line. You get a little bit more in a rhythm when you're on a long board. Because you're catching so many, you might, I might increase my wave count from four to 12 and that helped me learn. So when I moved down here about 10 years ago, I was already interested in doing both. I had a little long boarding experience and I had the Shortboard experience and, and I found the blending of the two helped. Help me in both sports. I'm not a very good long boarder, but you do catch waves. You can't help but catch waves and that's very important.

Christine: Yeah, it does seem like it. I think your suggestion too, to go down south where the waves also a little bit more gentler and rolling is also that should be also conducive to a long board would probably be great. 

Leah: In this time of year, it's a little hard to find because we have the big south swells, so you have to look for a reef break or a place where those waves give you a face to ride. You don't wanna go to the harbor where if it's like a head high closeout wave, it's terrible on a long board. If you're learning.

Christine: So what size? You said about a nine foot was what you would recommend?

Leah: I have an 8’ 6” and a 9’. For someone our size, I think that's plenty. I mean now that I can see that you have basic skills for surfing. You don't need the sponge board. You should get one that has a nice rail, like your current board so that when you are riding, you can feel the fins, feel the rail turn and just do more of what you're doing on the shortboard, but do it on the long board. Don't worry about cross stepping, and all that yet, but I mean, down the road, that's a really great goal. I'm trying to learn how to do it now. At my age. Crazy. It's like it reminds me of when I went from being a skier to a snowboarder and I would go on the same mountain that I was very good at, going down a little bunny hill and I had a snowboard now with my feet both attached to the board and it was terrifying the first time I went down. It was so fun though. Like this, again, I'm enjoying the process of learning. 

Christine: So if you were to move then onto a long board, what is the process then of moving out? Is it, you're still kind of propelling yourself forward and pushing through the waves or lifting yourself off the wave? 

Leah: When you're off the board?

Christine: You're paddling out. I guess my desire has been to move down because I feel that it will be more efficient or easier to get out in the water. And then bringing more bulk, feels more cumbersome. It just feels like it'll be more difficult.
Leah: Well, that depends on the wave. I bet if you went to Sano, You just started paddling out on a longer board, you'd realize how quickly you get out. You'll get out twice as fast on the long board. They do have good momentum, don't they? And there are methods. A lot of times I will just lift my body right as the wave comes to me and let the wave go between my body and the board. Just stretch my arms and legs. 

Christine: Right. Okay. That's what I try to do right now.

Leah: You can't do that if it's too big. Yeah, if it's pretty big, then the turn turtle is good. If you're getting good at that turning, you don't wanna wait too long to turn turtle. It's no fun if you wait too long and then the wave separates you from your board and you’re upside down. I've had that happen.

Christine: Yes, I've had that happen before too. . 

Leah: I think you'll find it if the you're at the right break. The long board is the thing to have. I feel strongly cuz I have so many boards, I think I have 10 boards right now. Each board has a reason. They look very similar, probably six of them, but each one is different from the other. It’s a small change that makes one good for winter waves for choppier wave. For super smooth conditions, the lightness, the rail, the, the thickness. 

Christine: And you had a new board out on Tuesday, so how did that go and what was the purpose of that new board?

Leah: That board is my summertime smooth wave. Very, very light. It only weighs, I think seven pounds. That's pretty light compared to my other short boards, the same length. Those are running closer to eight and a half to 10, and it makes a big difference. So it's much more maneuverable because it's light and it has a point here, nose. So when I want to turn, there's nothing up in front of my feet that hinders me from getting it back down into the face. And I rode it again today and it was really fun. I like it and it's serving the purpose that I bought the board for. 

Christine: Oh, that sounds so fun to have 10 boards and know what each one is gonna do for you on any given day. I mean, I have one board, right? I have the old wave storm that, but, the board that Robin shape for me and I just have this, such a connection with this board. 

Leah: How long is it? 

Christine: It's a 7.’ He shaped it thinking of, if you're moving down from a Wavestorm, let's follow a little bit the shape of that, but, trim it down at least a foot. And I also wanted to be able to carry it under my arm, which is really handy.

Leah: Yeah, that's perfect. I love that board for you. It looks great. But I do think you'll be missing out on waves if you wanna surf a lot. That a longer board would be wonderful out. Even at the harbor in the winter time, many times we don't have very big waves. The northwest swells don't get into our area very easily with the wind and the travel time. By the time they come down here from Alaska, they're not very big. So we surf long boards frequently, all winter long, and you'll just find you'll paddle into waves faster. While you're learning. The key right now is just to surf as many ways as you can. And so having two boards and it's kind of a pain to have two if you don't have a big car. Eddie and I have a van, so we fill it up with boards. 

Christine: And the boards just live in your van? 

Leah: No, we, we put them in the garage every night, take good care of them, and we pull out different boards every day. We look at the conditions and this one might be better than that one. 

Christine: Yeah. I take really good care of my board too. I have the bag and I put it immediately in the bag and I put it carefully in the garage. I've got a shelf for it. 

Leah: That's good. They get dinged really easily.

Christine: So you mentioned learning to surf in Ocean Beach, and it would be really fun to hear a little bit more about that, maybe some of the challenges or technical difficulties or any of any story from those early days of learning. 

Leah: Well, I started surfing when I met Eddie, maybe a little bit before that, but Eddie and I were both wind surfers. I thought windsurfing was the most amazing sport in the world when I moved out from Pennsylvania, actually Boston to. San Francisco. The first time I saw a windsurfer, I thought, this is what I wanna do. This is fantastic. So we did that a lot. There were not a lot of people doing it in the eighties, but we were windsurfing Chrissy Field. We started expanding our quiver, so to speak, to smaller boards and smaller sales and going out to the ocean. And that's where I met Eddie and a lot of his friends and they were all surfers. So I started noticing that when it wasn't windy, I had nothing to do and they were all surfing. So you don't wanna surf when it's windy, that's when you're windsurfing. And it was the perfect combination. I thought, I wanna be able to do that when it's windy. I'm gonna be a windsurfer. And when it's not, I have surfing to do and so I started surfing with him and I immediately didn't wanna windsurf anymore. It was that compelling. I liked it so much more. 

Leah: It just the freedom of not having the sail and if you wanted to be out on the waves. It was just so much safer. The sail was scary a couple times. I was hooked into my harness on a wave and fell, and I was being dragged underwater with the sail on top of me. Oh, for the longest time, I couldn’t get myself out from under it. And that was a little bit scary. So I went, I really didn't have any fear of surfing. I thought immediately this is even more freeing and more fun, but it's very challenging up there because the waves are cold. Thicker. It breaks so hard. There were many days where I never got out. I just paddled and paddled and paddled, and I never even made it out. But most of the people were encouraging.

Leah: There were a couple bad folks, and I saw a couple things that scared me. I saw a fight once. They ended up in the beach and I came in and the fight between the two guys over some silly thing in the water. I don't remember. Someone took off on another person and the guy ran up to the young kid, and right in front of me broke his finger with his hand.

Christine: Oh! 

Leah: Just bent it backwards. It was the most horrible thing I could ever see. It was so violent. I couldn't believe someone would do that. Yeah. That made me not wanna surf for a little while. I mean, I knew no one would do that to me, but it was just that the anger and the silly volatility. That it could get taken to that degree. That was ridiculous. So most of the time I had very encouraging people around me. They thought it was great that I was trying. I had actually a time when I even wanted to surf big waves. Ocean Beach can get very big. It's well known for 20 foot excellent, 20 foot waves. 

Christine: Of course. 

Leah: And there was a time when I thought, well, maybe I wanna go out when it's kind of big, you know, 10 foot, eight foot and I got a gun. I would, had not been a surfer for very long, probably fewer than four years and I had a gun ordered custom for me and I got out in a big rip current because 

Christine: Wait, you're gonna have to discribe this, I think a gun is a particular kind of surfboard but… 

Leah: Oh. It's a long, skinny, pointy board that catches big waves and goes fast.

Christine: That sounds really scary. Gun. 

Leah: It wasn't like, that's not a big day. And I'm a small person, so my gun was like seven feet. You know, the really big guys that surf at Maverick's, their guns are 9, 10, 11 feet long, but the same shape, just think of a spear. Okay. And so when the rips are very big, due to the big swell, I found myself, I got out pretty easily on my gun. I was like, Oh, look at that. I got out and I'm out there with the big guys and I was afraid to take off on a wave. And I tried it a couple of times and I came in just terrified and held down a few times to the point where, you know, I thought, Okay, if one more wave falls on me, I will not be able to, get back to the beach.

Leah: You have to hold your breath so long and when you're down underneath a really, really turbulent big ocean like they have up in San Francisco, it is dark and you need to breathe so badly and you can tell you’re still at least 15 feet down and I am nowhere near the surface. so I have to calm down and wait till, you know, your arms and legs are going upside down. You don't really know where your board is. I've never had that experience here down in Southern California. It's all paradise and smooth. Gentle waves. It is no struggle. When we moved down to the harbor area. Eddie and I both said it was like Ocean Beach light. It was like a light beer because occasionally it gets big there and and feels a little thumpy. It's probably funner than like Terramar or something, but it's nothing like what we experienced in San Francisco and I don't ever really wanna do that ever again. 

Christine: And so you actually moved out here specifically for these waves or for these conditions? 

Leah: Yes. I know it sounds crazy, but this is where we came for vacations and we loved the warm water and we loved the fact that the worst day down here is a great day up in San Francisco. Very surfable, almost every day here. And comfortable and not as crowded. It's actually more crowded up there. You wouldn't think it would be because 

Christine: That's interesting! 

Leah: Conditions are colder and rougher. But, there are few places where you do have access to a surfable break. The Bay Area is huge, 6 million people live nearby and over, a period of 10 years of learning how to surf through the 90s, I noticed more and more people and it's very dangerous. There are many more people up there that surf a little bit and they're very incompetent and they're throwing away their boards. You know, at the moment's notice, they don't hold on to their equipment. You see a lot of head injuries. We loved coming down here cuz we felt like people down here started surfing when they were young and many of them are really pretty good by the time they're 20. And I never worried about people. They seemed friendly and they were used to good waves, And the territorialism was less down here too. 

Christine: Yeah, that's good to hear. Going back to being a tech at Stanford, I was wondering if there’s relevance there to surfing. So before we move on south too much.

Leah: Maybe the focus again, that comes to mind. The reason why I loved that job is how serious it was and how focused you have to be for a surgery. It's intense. And, and it's another one of those things where, you have a job and it's your job. You can't rely on other people if you're the person passing the instruments, it is something you absolutely are responsible for. So I enjoyed that focus. Some of these surgeries would last quite a long time. It was hard to maintain it. 

Christine: So when we were in the water the other day, you mentioned how important you think it is for people to donate blood, and I imagine this is because you worked on the front lines of many surgeries. 

Leah: That's one of the reasons. But I've been giving blood since I was about 20. My first job as a lab tech in, at Harvard Med School, we needed blood every day. It was my responsibility to go find donors for our experiments. We would process the blood and pull out all the different types of cells. In the group we would work with each one. And so I became sort of interested in the whole process of recruiting people to give blood. This is for research, so we were actually paying them. You're not allowed to do that anymore. I maintained my donating to the blood banks after that job because I gave so frequently and realized that I had good veins when I was working at the lab. And I thought, I'll just keep doing it for the blood bank.
Leah: And I did it throughout my life and we had blood drives that would come to Chiron and Novartis where I worked. And then of course at Stanford we had a need for blood and I really saw a couple of cases where you would go through 20 transfusion bags in one case when there was an emergency, say for a liver transplant or something. And I thought, Well, this is such an easy thing to do. It takes about an hour of someone's time, especially if you're healthy and you're not taking a lot of drugs. If you have good veins, which many surfers have, many surfers have sort of flexible lives too, where they could just go off to a blood drive. I just did one a couple of days ago right here at the St. Luis Rey Mission, and I think I was gone for an hour and that was it.

Christine: Okay. Well, you're encouraging me. I'm going to donate blood. 

Leah: Good. 

Christine: I'm gonna find a place and do it in the next week. Absolutely, it's really a good reminder. And I do have big veins, so I should be going every week. 

Leah: And they always love you.

Christine: It seems a pattern that I see with you is this ability to focus that you do this with piano. And time. But then you can trace that back to working as a tech surgeon. And I think also to, 

Leah: Windsurfing. 

Christine: Windsurfing and regular surfing. I mean, all of it really takes, it takes that focus and kind of determination. 

Leah: And a lot of patience and not minding the learning part. Yes. I was also thinking a lot today about surfing and my background training horses. The funny thing about surfing is it is a very artistic kind of craft, for a sport, there are not many sports where you really can express yourself. It's the opposite though with riding horses and training horses, because with that, you have to be minimally involved and you're letting the horse do everything. It's just bringing out the best in the horse with as few movements and keeping everything very quiet. Not to disturb the horse's ability to say jump fences in a course or, 

Christine: I know so little about that.

Leah: And that those two things related a lot to each other. So I enjoyed doing that when I was young. I bought a horse off the racetrack. It was just about a two year old horse, they told me it was three years old, it ended up being two years old and I got bucked off immediately the first time I got on its back. I had already been taking lessons for a while and I liked lessons, but this was something I really wanted to do was to have my own horse. And raise it and train it. And I did that until college and sold that horse. And then I did that a lot as an adult. That was one reason why I was so busy. I wasn't surfing as much. The responsibility of having horses is very tough. They have to get exercised and I enjoyed getting them off the track. They were horses that would be reserved by a trainer that had little potential to do something other than racing. After the racing career was over many, many horses get taken off the track early after one little injury. Their mentality, sometimes if they get hurt, they never wanna really run again, but they could become trail horses or jumpers or that sort of thing. 

Christine: So you're riding the horse and allowing the horse to be, it's very essence? 

Leah: We're allowing the horse to be it’s best self. 

Christine: Then there's gotta be something similar or some parallel to draw with riding a wave. Because every wave is different. 

Leah: You are right. But at the same, go with the flow. Like a phrase in my head, I remember my teacher saying to some other people, Leah just goes with the flow because I would get on an ex racing horse that didn't know anything and they're all over the place. They're like noodles. And I liked that energy. I just kind of went along with it and would guide it, and eventually they figure things out. But you have to be very patient and not react. If you react to it, then things can go awry. 

Christine: Because they are some of the most sensitive creatures to our emotions, they are in our feelings.

Leah: Yes. But surfing is, you have to kind of go with the flow. Every wave is different. You can't force things. When you start forcing, that's usually when surfing doesn't feel right. Like if you have the wrong board or you're trying to do maneuvers that aren't really good for that type of board. It's best just to just let the board do a lot of the work. That's really what long boarding is all about. Maybe you're more involved with the short board, 

Christine: But then there is also the artistic side that you keep mentioning, right? So it's like you're allowing the wave or understanding the wave. You have the right board, but at a certain moment when those things sync up, then.

Leah: Your own expression on the wave, a little expression, comes out. That's true. I don't think a lot of people can do that in the beginning though. It takes a couple of years to develop the comfort level. To start to have a style. 

Christine: But just to go beyond feeling awkward at every moment, which is where I'm still at. Just holding the board, walking with the board, putting the strap on. So this is one thing that strikes me all the time, is that the really confident experienced surfers are so smooth. They're just at every, everything they do. And for me, everything still feels quite awkward.

Leah: I admire too, and we have friends that Eddie and I always remarking when we pull into the parking lot and they can be so far away and in an instant just glancing at their silhouette on a wave, we know who it is and it's that style that comes out from a very good surfer. Yeah, I don't think we have it. I can pick Eddie out. I just know Eddie when I see him. Right. But, the really, really good stylish Taylor Jensen. He's a world champion. He surfs the harbor. He'll be here probably in the fall with his family. He's just amazing to watch, and you can pick him out four miles away. Because the essence of his surfing is so clear.

Christine: So lastly, you guys are actually packing up your van and your dogs and heading back north, right? 

Leah: Just for a little trip to see some friends and we are going to go surfing one day, at Pacifica. At the longboards spot. 

Christine: Oh fun. 

Leah: And I've looked it up and they don't get a South Swell. I think it's going to be like one foot. 59 degree water. We just wanna go back up. We haven't been there for a long time and I love to walk in the woods up there and there's a lot of open space.The beaches are open for walking on a dog off leash. It's just completely different. It's much more wild and it's a little uncomfortable. It can be quite foggy in July and cold. But I kind of look forward to that change. 

Christine: Well, I hope you have a wonderful trip. 

Leah: Thank you. 

Christine: Thank you so much, Leah, for taking the time today and for the time in the water the other day. 

Leah: You're welcome. 

Christine: I really appreciate it. 

Leah: I'm happy to give my senior perspective.

Christine: wonderful.