Surfing

I recently tried surfing for the first time since my surgery. I was pretty anxious because I didn't know how the bag would cope with all the pressing against the board and whether there would be toilets etc. Turns out surfing is a lot of fun, but I found that it's not exactly easy to do with a stoma. The warm up exercises were the first difficulty; many of the stretches were bending over so, like yoga, this often causes leaks for me. It seemed to be ok until we got in the water and it was less than half an hour in when I could feel the Brava seal that I use was coming lose and there would be a leak onto my skin. The actual bag held up though so there was no 'proper' leaking. During the lunch break I found that there were no toilets on the beach so I took a napkin and headed behind the dunes to find somewhere private-ish. It wasn't as bad as I feared.
Then in the afternoon session I could feel my bag getting full again so headed out of the water and took my wetsuit off and thankfully it was mainly air, so I burped on the beach and went back in. Had to change as soon as I got home.
All in all it wasn't easy but a lot of fun and definitely worth giving it a try. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to become a pro surfer though :(

It's me being a surfer!

Update

Since the naked bike ride I feel like a new man. Just a few months ago I felt so insecure and uncomfortable telling people about my bag but now I feel comfortable getting it out at the lido, the beach, skinny dipping, wandering around a shared room. I can talk about it without embarrassment and sometimes I initiate conversation about it. On a personal note, I've started to feel like I'm educating the female half of the world about ostomies one at a time ;)
If any of you out there are struggling with your body image and insecurity like I was, I recommend talking about it to safe people and then getting it out as much as possible,  a little at a time.
Regarding the travels, I've been hanging out in Europe, not really travelling around that much but hitting up a few places in between being in the UK. So far I ticked off Estonia, Latvia, Istanbul and Portugal, heading to Spain next then I've booked a flight to India in September. The plan is to 'find myself' there. Updates on that to come!
In the UK I've done a few cool things, went to the purple wings ball and met lots of fellow ostomates, including Stephie who asked me to write for her blog here.
I also did some hypnotherapy, meditation, yoga, an NLP workshop and and a social freedom day to help me be more confident.