At the insistances of my Wife

My wife called me in the office on a Tuesday afternoon.

"So." she asked. "Are you going surfing tomorrow?"

"I don't know. The rain was on Saturday. It might still be kind of smelly."

"You should go.” she said.

".and I’ve got the frickin' head cold."

"You should go."

"I can't even breathe through my nose right now, I’m so congested."

"You'll be ok. You should go."

At that point, I knew that something had to be wrong. I’d never been urged to go surfing before by my wife. She’s urged me NOT to go surfing. She's begged me to stay home on weekend mornings. She's manipulatively pleaded how my daughter never gets to see her daddy in the morning, and would love to see me upon awakening. (This is actually true; the kid has an excited reaction to seeing me walk into her room in the morning that is priceless.) But, urging me to go surfing, while sick, after the rains.... this was a first.

"What's with you?" I asked suspiciously.

"Rebecca and I were talking." She admitted. "We've decided that you and Brett need to go surfing. You're both much happier when you surf."

I opened my mouth to speak, then stopped. My mind slowed down. Hey... it told me. Don't argue. Don't screw this up. No need to be defensive... just go along with it.

"OK." I told her. "He sent me an email earlier. I'll call back him right now. Bye."

I opened up my web browser and looked at the reports while Brett and I briefly spoke. The outlook was not only slightly promising. There was some legitimate southwest swell in the water, mixed with a lot of short period wind chop from the recent local storm systems. However, morning and evening conditions were reported as windless and glass. I put together a modicum of hope, and agreed to meet at Seventeenth Street for dawn patrol at 6:00 a.m.

The morning was gray with twilight when I arrived. I dressed in my truck, leaving the heater on until the last possible minute. My sinuses were stuffed with cotton. My ears throbbed. The morning air was a baptism of cool reality, welcoming me back from my life in heated cars and buildings. In the sky, a giant arc of clear atmosphere opened between two curved cloud edges. To the east the storm clouds that had rained on San Diego marched slowly inland.

I cringed only slightly entering the cold water. I welcomed the cold. A wave crashed on my back, and my head ducked under the water, wetting my hair and face. When it surfaced, my sinus cavity burned sharply like the pain of eating too much ice cream too fast.

The waves were better than I had expected. The two swells, the still air and the dropping tide conspired to create a random pattern of peaking waves. I paddled out and caught two waves on consecutive sets before pausing to chat with Brett.

"You catching any over there?" I asked.

"Yea. They’re slow on the take off. You defiantly need that extra paddle."

"And, hey -" I added. "It’s just the two of us."

There were no other surfers as far as the eye could see to the north, and only a few dots to the south towards the pier. For all practical purposes, we had the whole stretch of beach to ourselves.

Brett nodded. "What’s not to like about that?" he asked.

I laughed. "Well. You just keep going left over there." We had positioned ourselves on either side of a consistent peak in the wave pattern. Brett was positioned to go left, and I to go right. Either way, we’d have the best waves to ourselves.

Brett caught the wave of the day two sets later. I was paddling out and saw him lining up for take off. The wave behind him was bigger than most of the waves our there, and a large peak had shaped to his other side. I hollered "Go Right! Go Right!" at him, but my directions were unnecessary. Brett could see the line to the right and dropped down into it perfectly, gleaning a mounting speed from the push of the liquid wall. The wave passed me and I duct through the crest.

At a certian termainal velocity, the adrenolin must have kicked in. As I emerged on the back side, I heard Brett hollering like a kid in a candy shop.

"Wheeeeeeehooooooooo - " he said.

Or something similar.

Wake up in February

Winter has been dismal. After my brother and I went surfing a day after Christmas, the rains started. A lot of people are overjoyed that southern California has had the wettest winter in recent memory. But, for us surfers, it's been a shame. The water has been polluted and brown since Christmas. I stayed out of the water for nearly the entire month of January.

I surfed for three days in a row at the end of January, having waited a week since the last raindrop, only to be rewarded by a signs posted at the beach. Warning: Unsafe levels of Bacteria. Unfortunate, I saw the signs as I was leaving the water, having already drank that wonderful bacteria.

"Great." I thought. "Thanks for telling me. Or, better yet. Thanks for not telling me yesterday."

I stopped another surfer on his way down the sand, and pointed to the signs. He turned around and left.

"This sucks." he said.

Brett started writing me emails, complaining about the water. "I got in the car and drove to work listening to the radio describe how the rain tonight was going to further damage our road system. No one on the radio seemed at all sympathetic to the plight of the rational surfer who simply wants to surf and not get some life threatening bacterial infection."

The news has carried an surprising array of stories related to the rain causing potholes in roads. The local newspaper had a graphic explaining how rain absorption created potholes. Tire sales are up this year. Get your new tires now. Potholes can cause blow outs. If you are driving around on old tires, shame on you. You're going to have a blow out, crash, die, and probably kill a mini van full of innocent children. You bastard. Just spend the money. Buy tires.

When the rains died, we got two swells in two weeks. The first swell was from the west, and big. Too big, actually. Huntington Beach didn't take it well.

I went out at high tide before work on a Friday, only to be met by big walls of water with nowhere to turn. There were less than a handful of surfers in the water. After getting beat over the head by a few waves and swallowing a few mouthfuls of brown water, I got out.

The next days as the swell waned were better. I found myself out of surf shape, and needed some practice to get back into waves or get good bottom turns. I varied boards on the days that I surfed.

I had bought a 9'2" longboard in the week after Christmas. It sat in the garage unwaxed for almost a month. When I took it out, I was horribly inept. I had to try a few times to find a spot to lay where I didn't pearl the nose. One on my feet, I couldn't turn, let alone carve. I've never had a board that big before. It's going to take some getting used to. Best that I learn it now, though. I'd like to be reasonably competent on the thing by summer, when I'll be using it to steal knee high waves away from the endless minions of summer shortboard weekend surfers.

Slowly, familiar faces came out from their caves and could be seen at the beach. I saw Venice after the morning I got clobbered. I told her I would surf late on the upcoming Sunday, hoping to bump into her and Dan in the water. But, the rains came on Saturday. Brett and I saw Dan drive by on a mediocre morning. We chatted for the span of a traffic light. As February dawned, Chase re-appeared one morning. He pulled his car up to me as I was putting on my work clothes, and asked about the streak. I was sad to report that the streak was long since over, but glad to see his familiar face. The two friends who surfed seventeenth street nearly every day in late September also returned to the beach in February. I spoke to one of them in the water.

"We haven't surfed in like a month." he told me.

The first Wednesday in February was great. Tuesday had seen the arrival of a northwest swell, just a tad too big for Huntington Beach. Brett and I surfed a few closed out walls. I made quota and left. Wednesday, the size went down but the conditions improved.

The waves were head high to 1 foot overhead. The wind was 10 knots offshore. The water was a crisp 57 degrees. The air was 63 degrees, warm and dry. The tide at 3 feet and dropping to a low later in the morning. It was 6:30 a.m., twilight was blue and pink, with a few scattered purple amoeba clouds in the high ceiling.

The swell energy was clean. Waves came in well formed sets with long lulls between them. The peak set waves broke fast, pitching and spraying under the force of the wind. I took off on one wave to the left and got a short ride before the wave closed in front of me.

I missed two sets, struggling with position and take off speed. The dropping tide and the wind made the waves break later and with more power, an adjustment for me. As my watch alarm sounded the last wave call, I paddled into a wave, hopped to my feet and carved off to the right. The wave was fast, and foam lapped my back, attempting to swallow me in it's stampede. I corrected, and shifted through a few quick turns to get out in front of the break and into the pocket of the curl. I pushed up the face, towards the spraying tip of the wave. The wave pushed back. I pushed again. I rode it all the way to the inside break at the sand bar.

There was no use paddling back out. It was time to go to work. And, I wasn't likely to find a better wave than that. Besides, after a prolonged dormancy, the surfing bug was awake in February. I knew as a left the water that I would be back tomorrow.







I didn't make quota. number 1 was a bog left closeout.
but, number 2 was a right that stayed open for like a mile and a half... well, maybe a little less.
but it certainly wasn't worth paddling back out after that.