Now, the cheating I indulged in was hardly the sort of thing that would earn me eternal damnation.  My friend Flavia from Quest, where I often hang glide, is a respectable surfer who has worked extensively in Brazil with the media. She shook her dark curls at me when I told her my first adventure with VISIT FLORIDA was to be a video, shot at Cocoa Beach, of me taking my very first surf lesson.

“You are going to be on film?” She asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Have you any experience acting?”

“No. Well. I had my picture taken for the yearbook in high school.”

“So you have no experience. And you will be not wearing many clothes.” She sneaked a look at my backside. “And you have never been on a surfboard before?”

“No,” I said.  Flavia’s expression was what I would have expected had I told her I planned to leap off of the Trump Tower wearing a squirrel suit. “Is surfing hard?”

Flavia nodded. “Very hard.”

I protested that practicing beforehand would be cheating. Flavia was only concerned that we didn’t have time to make a trip to the ocean so I could practice there. Half an hour later, we were paddling around the pond at the airport on surfboards, and I had started to see things Flavia’s way.

Maneuvering the board in placid water – without any waves to bump me around – was hard. Jumping up on it was even harder. After a few tries my guilt had entirely faded. If I was going to be successful, I needed all the help I could get.

(My folly was endless. Besides not knowing that surf boards are slipperier than greased banana peels, I also had not considered the 50-year-old-butt-in-a-bikini dilemma. My little sister Allison helped me with that one. “You may die surfing,” she said. “But you want to look decent while you do it. Buy some board shorts. You don’t want to be, um, hanging out there.”)

Thus prepared – having cheated, some might say – I made it through the first video. I crashed many times, but thanks to Erica, my kind instructor from Florida Surf Lessons, I did finally manage to jump up on the board. I screamed and waved my arms so that the film crew didn’t miss the miracle and expect me to produce it again, and actually rode the wave all the way to the beach. Note: Normally, the waves are gentle enough at Cocoa that you don’t get pummeled when you crash. Really. It doesn’t hurt.

My surfing lesson gave me lots more respect for the folks that have mastered the sport. This weekend, I’m going to scurry out to Cocoa Beach Pier to admire the East Coast’s best young surfers as they compete in Ron Jon Surf Shop’s 44th Annual Easter Surf Festival, March 20 – 23. Besides the Juniors, more than 300 professional and amateur male and female surfers of all ages will compete in divisions including the $10,000 Ron Jon Surf Shop Men's Longboard Pro, the Lost $3,500 Junior Men's Shortboard Pro/Am, the Lost Energy Drink $5,000 Men's Shortboard Pro/Am, the Wet N' Wild Women's $1,000 Shortboard competition, the Banana Boat $1,500 Junior Men's Longboard contest and the Ron Jon Surf Shop $1,000 Women's Longboard Pro/Am. Plus, there’s a Ron Jon Surf School clinic, autograph signings and free giveaways.