I bicycled against the wind, pedaling slowly to the end of a pier of flagstone.
I passed a small boy on roller blades, maybe ten years old, he was wispy as a stalk with a thatch of yellow hair shading a serious face. With a hand against a rock wall he shoved off, skating straight and steady. All was fine until one wheel snagged and he lurched and came apart. His legs whirled, boots jackknifing, desperately he had his arms spinning. I held my breath. It was going to hurt to land on that unforgiving flagstone. All of the little boy juddered and it looked like for sure he was going down when a whisker away from impact he softened into a noodle, righting himself back and up, balancing himself. I never saw him blink.
Sun dappled behind fast moving clouds while all along the beach people had stopped in knots to watch a determined beginner on a kite-board. Frequently there are kite-boarders flipping on the waves and bounding in the air, spraying water like diamond beads against azure skies, but I have never seen a novice, never witnessed the humbling struggle. He appeared young but his body was soft, with meringue-white skin and narrow arms suggesting a life spent thus far mostly indoors, today he was standing in the ocean up to his pasty waist. He was focused on a flap of fabric in the sky, and wrangling with the cords connecting him to the kite jerking in and out of currents. He stood wrestling with his rigging with his instructor nearby, dressed in half a wetsuit, relaxed against the heaving waves and calling out encouraging plays.
Seagulls and pelicans swooned around the kite-boarder and his bobbing instructor, occasionally hurtling fast like arrows, spearing the surface, plucking at the silver fish that move around in balloons of metallic shimmer, sometimes leaping as one out of the water, through the air, creating ridiculously pretty tiny blizzards.
Someone was grilling and the tantalizing smell of roasting meat traveled like a salesman in the breeze.
Suddenly the sky darkened with whipped up clouds and noisy winds scattering dry leaves, and I was surrounded by skateboarders and bicyclists and mopeds. Wind spun sand squalls. Groggy-eyed sunbathers made for their cars, laden and shuffling on slippery flip-flops. A man was running in a strange scuttling way, with his back hunched. Then I saw in his arms lay a sleeping child and he carried her with one hand holding her head.
And the rain came down, gigantic drops crash landed noisily. The raindrops were warm like bath water and they felt wonderful.