Summer doldrums and passing afternoon thunderstorms

I believe I've talked about them before...the summer doldrums...that time during the summer where the waves flatten out. Brian, my surf coach, called me this morning before I headed to Galveston to tell me the waves were fading fast. He was in the middle of a private lesson and, although there had been some small surf for his lesson, the waves were flattening out. I told him I wanted to go anyway. I spoke with Andrea and she desperately wanted to be out on her board also. So we met at our 43rd street pier. Once I arrived I saw just how flat the surf could be. It was definitely going to be a day to practice swimming out and turning the board. And that's exactly what we did. We hauled everything down to the beach and paddled out. A couple of small waves came through for us to practice the pop-up and one or two decent rides. And then, the sky turned black. It started to rain, but there wasn't any thunder and lightening; at least not at first. The wind started to shift and Brian suggested we swim out and over to the other side of the jetty. Just as we made the swim over (I still need to work on arching my back more), we heard the first clap of thunder, which of course means that lightening wasn't far away. Brian thought we should swim in and that's what we did. When we made it to shore, the skies opened and the rain came down hard and fast. The native surfer, Brian, said we should go stand close to the wall for some protection, which we did, but we still got soaked as did our towels and coolers, etc. A beach rat came out to play during the storm and not being a fan of any kind of rodent, I got a little miffed at the creature who thought it might run over to play around our feet. A loud "shoo" kept him away. The rain was the result of a norther heading our way that wasn't going to quite make it all the way through. It would switch the winds a little, cause some rain and, basically, flatten out the seas. Too bad! I'm hoping that the wind shifts enough to give us better waves on Sunday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.