Those waves look good enough to surf.

Medium sized wind swell was the only thing in the water yesterday, and the wind generating it was blowing over it. That narrows the focus to a few NW wind protected spots that still produce with NW windswell. I wasn't even going to bother driving to the beach but a friend offered to drive the longer leg of the trip so, hey, why not. I brought the Pacheco expecting softy high tide windswell waves, and the mat in case it was worse than that, and off we went to 4.
The wind was on it and the tide was rising but there were ridable waves breaking across the inside and not too many people on it. When I pulled the mat out of my bag Z offered the observation, "Those waves look good enough to surf." suggesting that I should ride the hard board. To me they looked like I wouldn't enjoy myself if I took things too seriously, which is why I opted for the mat. This made me realize that riding the mat means I lower my standards of what having fun is, which means I have more fun as the result. For awhile there I was on a wave catching rotation barely having time to rest before picking up another wall and sliding through the inside.
The far inside section gets steep but with a very short shoulder that I was outrunning and struggling to stay in the pocket. I started playing with dragging my body off the mat as a way to slow down yet stay high on the face. It's a fun feeling and has the advantage that if you stay high on the face you can easily pull yourself back on the mat and VOOM! you're off and running at full speed.
For the most part the other surfers in the water respected me with only two borderline drop-ins. I was far enough back on the take-off that it was arguable that I was going to clear the peak. I made most of my waves and of the ones I didn't, half had someone dropping in down the line. I feel like the mat is more sensitive to the "snowball" effect where someone down the line causes the wave to break early as they paddle for it. For me this snowball coming down the face kills my speed, or makes coming around the whitewater that much harder as it adds length to the distance I must overcome.
Z isn't one for complimenting my varied wave riding choices, but he did say that many times it looked like I wasn't going to make a section but I routinely did. In my book barely making a section is doing it right. It means I'm staying in the pocket.
I had fun.