The Swell Conspiracy of mid January

I had four people come up to me yesterday and tell me how they heard about the "big surf " on the morning news. They told telling me how there were "ten feet waves" out there. The owner of the company where I work even made a comment.

"I hear the waves are pretty big out there." he said, his eyes wide.

"Yea. They're pretty good." I agreed.

My wife called me mid way through the morning.

"I just wanted to see how you were doing" she said. "How was surfing?"

"OK."

"The news said that the waves are really big." she said, concerned.

"So I've heard."

Here's my (conspiracy) theory:

Southern California waters are as polluted as they have ever been. We've been drowning in rain for nearly a month. The sea water is disgusting. Even this morning, eight days after the last raindrop, the water is murky and brown, it smells like shit, and the beaches are covered with at least ten forests worth of driftwood that has washed up, not to mention all the plastic, Styrofoam, giant metal pipe cylinders (no, I'm not kidding) and general trash.

Now, in the midst of that, we have a morning news headline (apparently repeated around the radio and TV resources) about "surf's up!" which somehow fails to mention the condition of the water, or the fact that anyone who swims in it for more than an hour and a half is almost guaranteed to start spouting green fungus from his nose and mouth the next day.

oh... and now a word from our sponsors.... Hilton hotels by the sea.... enjoy the lovely scenery of southern California. no pollution here. no worries. no problem. Surf's up, bro!

I asked one of the people who had reported the great surf conditions to me (just an hour after I surfed in mediocre conditions) where he had heard the news. He told me he saw it on the Fox morning news on television.

This isn't the first time that I've suspected a media outlet of publishing misleading information about beach conditions for a specific purpose.

"Should be nice for the US open this weekend." a co-worker had told me, as we stood by the coffee pot on the Friday before the annual summer event. "The Register says 3-5."

For most of the week leading up to the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, the Orange County Register published surf reports of "3-5" feet with "good" shape. The reality in the water was more like 0-2 feet with fair conditions. Amazingly enough, the paper was alone in it's erroneous reporting. Online reports and marine information told the truth.

I was suspicious. Spectator turnout for the contest was good. But, I went surfing the Saturday morning of the contest, and the waves were flat.

Venice

"Did you press the button?" Brett asked, pointing a wet finger to a crosswalk button on the light pole as we stepped to the edge of the crosswalk at Seventeenth Street and pacific coast highway.

I crooked my head to the left, opening a passage for salt water to drain from my ear.

"No."

"You gotta press the button." He reprimanded me in a fatherly tone. "Or the light won't change."

"Really?"

"Yes. Really. That's why they have the button."

I pressed the button. A group of cars passed in front of us.

"I heard that if you press it one hundred times real fast, the light changes."

"That's right." He confirmed. "Press it again."

There was a break in the traffic, large enough to permit jaywalking the four lanes. I stepped from the curb, ran to the island in the center of the road, checked the traffic on the other side of the road, and crossed to the sidewalk. Brett was behind me.

We walked towards our cars, leaving wet, sand lined footprints on the white concrete path between grass patches. In the middle of the block, we passed a white sport utility vehicle parked at the curb. A lady stood at the open rear hatch, her hands occupied with some organizational task within. As we passed, she looked up and smiled. She was thin, of moderate stature, with shoulder length light hair, and a triangular face framing an open mouthed smile.

"How is it?" she asked.

"Ah." Brett sighed. "It was alright."

"There’s a few fun ones out there." I added.

This was the surfer whom Brett and I had nicknamed "Venice"

When I took on surfing as an every day activity, I had expected to discover a core group of surfers that came to the same beach at the same time every day. I had hoped that by the second or third week, I would come to recognize a number of these regulars.

In reality, there were very few daily surfers for the sunrise surfing at Seventeenth Street. By surfing there every day, Brett and I became the most regular dawn patrol surfers at the spot. Venice took second place.

Throughout the summer and fall, she was the most consistent surfer at Huntington Beach.

Venice arrived at the beach at 7:15 a.m. daily, just as I was leaving the water. I normally saw her suiting up in her wetsuit at the same time I changed into work clothes. We crossed paths more days than not, as our favorite parking spots were less than a half block apart.

I first met Venice in the beginning of the summer. She had moved to Huntington Beach from Venice, and was surfing one of her first days at Seventeenth Street on a Saturday in May. Venice is very social in the water, and had struck up a conversation thread with another surfer named Jason.

"What do I need to do to get a right around here?" She asked.

"Yea." Jason laughed. "There's a lot of lefts."

I was paddling between the two of them, and interjected my unsolicited opinion. "Wait 'till winter."

Huntington beach faces south and west. Southern California summer time corresponds to stormy winter in the south pacific. Storms in the southern hemisphere produce swells that arrive at the beach from the south, often at an angle to the beach. While the shifting sand at the bottom produces an infinite variety of wave shapes, in general the waves break in crumbling foam blotches that move from south to north along the beach. From the surfer's perspective, these are lefts. In contrast, the swells that create the winter surf at Huntington Beach come from the north pacific, wrapping around point conception to push into the coast from the opposite angle. Waves breaking to the surfer's right are more common in winter.

Venice stated her preference for rights. "I'm better at my pull out on rights. I'm used to the point at Venice." She told us. "It's a right."

Over the course of the summer, I saw Venice more than any other surfer. On weekends, when time permitted me to stay in the water past 7:30 a.m., I often spotted her amidst the crowds. Sometimes, I could hear her laugh from yards away. Venice was by far the most social surfer at the spot, often chatting with whomever she happened to be sitting next to in the line up.

I spent several Saturday mornings paddling around the surf with Venice, listening to her stories of surfing at Venice beach. "The guys there are jerks." she told me. "They’re like a bunch of immature kids. Only, they're grown men. They’re fifty-year-old men acting like idiots. They push and shove and yell at each other. It’s stupid." "The wave breaks in one spot, and it's really good. But, when it's crowded, it gets crazy. I learned how to stay inside and pick up the sloppy seconds."

Changing in the street one morning, Brett and I tried to guess Venice's age.

"It's impossible to tell." Brett said. "She could be anywhere past the late 30's."

"She couldn't be over 45." I pleaded.

"I don't know." Brett said. "Maybe 45. She's in good shape, that's given. I think she might be over 45."

Later in the summer Venice spilled the info. She had brought a group of friends to go surfing in some moderate south swell. As she paddled, she looked to shore, to see her friends sitting on the sidelines.

"Those wimps." She laughed. "They're complaining about too much paddling. Hey. Don't tell me about paddling. All I've done since I move here is paddling. Besides, I've got twenty years on any of 'em. They can't keep up with a fifty year old woman?"

Imagine what the surf magazines would say. I had been surfing in Huntington Beach, one of the most popular surfing capitals in the world, every day for a solid month in the peak of the summer surfing season. Instead of finding that the sunrise hour was dominated by a daily dedicated group of hardcore dawn patrol surfers, I had found that the most frequent surfers at the break were me, Brett, and Venice - were two married, working fathers and a fifty year old woman.