The most important survival tip of all —for travel, surfing, and life in general — is this: Hope for the best; prepare for the worst. The trick is maintaining the caution that will get you through the tough times without losing the optimism that allows you to enjoy life. After all, for every moment when things head south, there are plenty of others when the stars align and things work out even better than you could have imagined. For East Coast surfers, Tropical Storm Leslie was the perfect example of why it’s always worth hoping for the best.

Though this year’s hurricane season left a few early blips on the surfing world’s radar, we had yet to see a storm that produced the sort of dreamy, classic hurricane season conditions that we’ve all been waiting for since June. So, naturally, some of us prepared for the worst. In anticipation of a potentially slow season, we came up with other ways to fill our time. We planned out some yard work, we signed up for Netflix, and we got gym memberships. But in the back of our minds, we also maintained hope that the storm we’d been wishing for would come along after all. Hidden in the garage behind our summertime grovelers, our standard high-performance shortboards sported fresh wax jobs and waited patiently for their time to shine. Then, along came Leslie.

You couldn’t design a more perfect storm if you tried. Tropical Storm Leslie cruised across the Atlantic then parked it just far enough offshore that the entire East Coast was blanketed with swell while avoiding any real inclement weather. Leslie took her sweet time moseying northward, and over the course of the past week, peeling chest-high to overhead rights detonated on almost every square inch of east-facing coastline. Wherever you were when you paddled out this past week, chances are that you caught it good, and that, my friends, is a beautiful thing. So as the last of the swell continues to trickle in, we’ll keep you updated with all the best photo highlights. And, about that gym membership that you haven’t used at all this past week, don’t sweat it. Those weights aren’t going anywhere. I hear surfing is a great workout anyways…