Newport with Travis 6-26-05

When I got up in the early morning, my back ached. I'd spent nine hours walking at SeaWorld with my wife and kid the day before. We got home late in the evening and hitting the pillow at 10:30. my alarm went off at 4:45 a.m. I ate a bowl of cereal while looking at the Internet reports, and left the house at 5:00 sharp with my short board and cell phone.

Driving in the twilight before the sun rose remided me of winter. I drove with a blank mind, in that early awake state where there is no need for thoughts. by luck, I'd found some salsa jazz fusion on the public radio station.

Chase called at 5:30 a.m. he was at 17th street, looking at the waves.

"It looks a little walled" he said. I told him I was blocks away, and would be there in five minutes.

The low tide had been a problem for the dawn patrol for the last week. Morning low tides at 6 to 7 a.m. had been as low as -1.7 ft. At Huntington Beach, Brett and I surfed Saturday during a very low tide, where the entire near shore community of shells and sea life, whom we'd never seen before, was exposed to the air. Apparently, it had been for several hours, as it was generating a rather unpleasant smell.

I pulled up to Chase 10 min later. He was sitting on a concrete city bench near the grass and the walking path looking out over ocean at 17th street. We watched a set of waves come in, a nearly unsurfable wall of brown water. In addition to exposed sea floor, the very low tide condition causes waves to break on sand that isn't normally exposed to such impacts. This stirs up loose dirt, and the water at the shoreline takes on a brown color.

"We gotta go to Newport" I said confidently.

"Yea?"

"Absolutely. The jetties will break up these walls. It'll be good there."

"You know," Chase said "I'd never surfed there before. But, I went a couple weeks ago. It was pretty good. But, the parking is a bitch, isn't it?"

"It's early still. We can find parking if we go there right now."

Chase seemed to agree with the advise. He nodded.

"Well. Let's do it, then. I'll follow you."

It was a quick drive down PCH and to the crowded housing and narrow streets surrounding the Newport Jetties. We found street parking spots in the 52st street block. My parking spot was big, and easy to park in. I got out and gave eyes for guiding Chase into a much tighter parking spot.

"You got plenty of room" I told him.

"Easy for you to say. It's not your insurance that goes up."

We walked to the sand and looked at the waves. They were breaking with Newport power. They looked
bigger, and faster. Some pitched into barrels, even though there was no offshore wind. Some waves were walls, but there were clearly a few shoulders mixed in. We could see a few places where catching the waves looked plausible. The jetties were breaking up the long walls of water, just enough to make it look like we could surf it.

Even from the shore, Chase was impressed by the wave. Compared to Huntington, the wave is much faster. The waves were picking up and pitching over very quickly. We saw one surfer paddle into a wave. It looked like he was paddling after a two foot mound of water. But, the wave too shape in a fraction of a second, and pitched up to form a five foot face.

We went back to the cars and suited up in superhero outfits. The water temperate had dropped from a cozy warm 67 the week before to a winter-esq 57. My feet felt the chill as we waded into the brown water. The waves were breaking in knee to waist deep standing water.

It took some time to figure out our positioning. Commitment and timing were the necessary components. One had to time the wave right, paddle after it, and then keep the nerve steady and keep paddling as the bottom dropped out in front of them like an elevator falling. I took off into one, but missed a good footing, being my first wave back on a short board. I was able to balance enough to ride a short line to the left before getting crushed by the brown foam. I found myself churning in a washing machine which was surprisingly powerful for the size of the wave. My body banged against the soft shallow sand.

Chase and I volleyed for waves for the next forty minutes, catching one or two here and there, but missing just as many, and taking some heavy beatings in the aftermath.

I took one too late, and had to dive off my board mid-face only to be walloped by the break of the wave. Chase caught a good shoulder, for what would be the best ride either of us got. I got an odd drop, missing my good footing again, but clearing the face before falling into the foam bath. Chase got a late drop of sheer straight falling, but maintained his footing and made it.

What must be remembered about Newport is that some of people who surf there are really great surfers. Any time I surf there, I see great surfing. Brett hates the place, because there are inevitably a handful of 10 year old kids who surf better than us old farts ever will, and have no shame in telling us so. So, the whole time Chase and I were out there, we saw barrel riders pulling into the most impossibly tight curls. Very few made it out, of course, but many tried. They whole beach looked like an ugly brown version of a magazine wave.

I looked towards shore and saw rocks. The current had dragged me northward to the next jettie. I was in a spot where, had I taken a wave, I would be thrashed into the rocks for sure. I started paddling down shore to a group of surfers gathered at a constant section. Chase figured out the same thing a minute or two later, and paddled up.

A nice set of waves came in, and I saw one kid catch a five second barrel ride. It was beautiful.
I lined up for the next wave, on the left shoulder of a good sized peak. To my right, a surfer on a white short board was paddling, and called me off. I backed off. As I did, I thought he was crazy. He was setting up on the wrong side of the peak, and was sure to get crushed by it.

Apparently, he made it. I heard Chase holler from inside. In cutting across the peak, the guy had pulled through a barrel. By Chase's reporting, it was a fairly incredible feat. I believe it, too.
On the next wave, a surfer on a red funboard was to my right, so i backed off again. The funboard got a good drop, taking advantage of the extra time to set up a good line into the wave. Unfortunately, the good line passed right through were the white shortboard rider was paddling. I heard a second barrage of hollers, and looked to see the two boards on top of each other in the backwash of the wave. The two heads surfaced shortly thereafter. There were apologies and condolences. Nobody was hurt.

The bulk of the set had passed. A mid-sized after shock wave came through. Chase, who was waiting a bit inside, paddled after it. "You know" he told me later. "it looked like I was a little bit late, but that guy yelled to 'go', you know. so I committed to it." He was, in fact, way too late. Chase never reached his feet, and realized it soon enough. He pulled his arms over his head in fetal position and prepared for impact. The wave violently pitched out and forward. In the crashing, Chase's right knee landed in the center of his surfboard, immediately snapping the board in half.

"I could feel it snap" he told me.

I hadn't seen the action at all. One of the surfers in the water next to me was looking back and watching, and made a sour face. "Ooh, damn..." when I turned around, I saw Chase with a face of pain, holding the back half of a surfboard.

"Oh, shit." I said. "that's my bro." I tuned to shore, and started paddling in towards him.

"Yup." the other surfer said, shaking his head. "that'll do it."

Chase's knee was hurt, but not to disability. He paddled in by himself and could walk on it. He later told me that it swelled up a good bit, and that he had recently had surgery on it.
"See if you can find the other half of my board." he said.

I paddled in and spotted where the front half of the board had washed up on shore. I picked it up and carried it to him.

"You can keep surfing if you want." Chase told me, nodding towards the waves. He looked down at his foot, which was bleeding.

I chuckled. "What, are you kidding? Now i got the fear of Jesus in me. No, I'm already beaten this morning. I've taken enough. And, look what this place did to you!"

"No kidding! What kind of beach did you take me to, man?"

Once we were back at the cars and changed, traffic demanded that we leave in an expedient manner. There was a truck waiting for Chase's parking spot. So, we didn't talk too much. We did, however, make plans to surf on the upcoming Wednesday - at a different beach, of course.

Chase called me later in the morning. He had stopped in Huntington to wash off his bloody foot and look at surfboards.

"Hey, so what happened?" He hollered "I thought we were friends, here. I'm just getting to know you, we hook up to go surfing together, and you take me to some crazy pipeline beach that breaks my board, and now my knee's all swollen up! damn!" Chase laughed.
"No." he said, in a more serious tone. "You know what? I was lucky. That wave was going over, and for some reason I put my hands over my head and rolled back a little bit. If I hadn't, I could have taken that hit to the head and the teeth and been really hurt. I'll take a swollen knee over that any day. And, now, I'll always remember: The first time I broke a board was surfing Newport with Travis."

Sunrise Hadj 06-10-05

Leaving my house in the dark felt like winter, but the temperature of the air was warm. I packed my mid-size funboard into the back of my truck and quietly drove past the sleeping houses of my apartment complex. It was 4:30 in the morning.

I had quit caffeine some two weeks earlier, the resolution based on my tendency to tiredness in the early afternoon. I had developed a habit of walking in zombie fashion to the coffee pot at two in the afternoon, and had finally decided to separate myself from caffeine once and for all.

So, for my morning drive at 4:30 in the darkness, I would have but water to help keep my eyelids sharp.

I was amazed how quickly I could drive across LA before the sun rose. Freeway after freeway, each that I'd never seen moving over snail speeds, passed by like quiet open country roads.

The idea for this trip had not even been mine. My boss deserved the credit.
"So, where are you at tomorrow?" he had asked me the afternoon prior.

"I have a 9:30 in Woodland Hills." I told him. "Which pretty much kills the whole day."
Our office only works until noon on Fridays, and the drive to Woodland Hills, to the north of LA, could take me well over two hours in morning traffic, and probably over an hour getting back.
"Are you even coming back here, then?" he asked.
"No. I'm leaving for Mexico at noon."
"What are you doing in Mexico?" he queried.
"Just a quick surfing trip. We're doing one night in a little campsite we know, and surfing there on Saturday morning."
He nodded.
"You know- " he offered "You should make it a whole surfing adventure day. You could go up early and surf at Zuma beach or somewhere up there, and then drive straight to Mexico afterwards..."
"Hmmm...."

The nearest beach to my meeting, on a map, was Topanga State Beach, at the bottom of Topanga Canyon Road, the easternmost edge of the city of Malibu. To get there would be an hour's drive or more. To get from the beach to my meeting would be thirty to forty minutes, via Topanga Canyon Road. I checked out my plan with a co-worker who had lived in the area.

"Be careful of that road." He warned me. "If there's fog, it's really dangerous."

But dangerous curved roads wouldn't stop this plan, nor would the time planning stage, when I realized just how early I would be getting up to start this adventure.

Malibu. Just saying the name was exciting and frightening. It brought up images of Gidget, Malibu Barbie, Big Wednesday, the Surf Naztis, nasty locals, huge crowds, the Beach Boys, the coffee cup throwing cop from "The Big Lebowski" ("aw, you fuckin; fascist!"), and long, endless point right point breaks where beuatiful longboards showed classic style. This south facing streatch of coastline was something of a Mecca of California surfing. And, I was making my first trip to pilgramage.

I arrived at Topanga State Beach at 5:30 in the morning. A dim twilight showered the green Malibu hills. I parked in the "pay" parking lot, showing the attendant my State Park Pass. I would later confirm that Topanga State beach is not a part of the Spate Park system. But, neither of us knew that my pass was no good, so I showed it, and he let me use it. He also asked if I knew where he could get some pot. I didn't, but felt sure that he was in the right place.

Topanga is a right breaking point break. From the parking lot, there is a concrete stairway down to a small sand plateau, primarily occupied by a white restroom and lifeguard building with green wooden trim and a red tile roof. The sand ended before the shoreline, giving way to smooth moss covered rocks, exposed by the low tide. The floor of the spot is all rock, with some fairly healthy kelp stalks grown sporadically throughout.

I watched the wave for a while from my truck. The sets were inconsistent, but the biggest waves were shoulder high or slightly better. It was low tide. It was defiantly a point break. The wave pitched up in a defined spot every time, and peeled off in one direction ad infinitum. The swell wasn't big enough to produce really long rides, but it was clear that on a better day one could catch a wave and ride off for a good distance.

There was a crowd of eight or ten people in the water, huddled around the peak. I would later be told by one of the locals that this was a very light crowd, even for dawn patrol on a small weekday.

"Dawn patrol is usually civilized" he told me. "But, you come here on any weekend, and it's a zoo. Wall to wall boards, and lots of attitude."

I walked over the rocks to the water and paddled into the line up. I let a few waves go by and took a waist high breaker, just to prove to the watching eyes that I could surf in turn, and then eased into the morning.

At the peak, there were about sixteen people in the water, shortboards and longboards. The difference between shortboard and longboard take off position was not too much, so the waves were rationed out pretty well amongst the crowd. I dropped in on one guy, but had plenty of time to get out of his way before I did any harm to his ride. As karmic payback, one of the shortboarders jumped into my way on a set wave later in the morning.

The locals were amenable. Once a few of them figured out that I had a watch on, they asked me the time every third set. The one girl in the water was apparently in a time crunch, with a final exam happening later in the morning. She got driving route advise from one of the older locals, after which I asked him to estimate how long my drive would be.

"Over the hill?" he asked. "I'd allow 45 minutes, plus time for getting out of the water and changing and stuff."

The road advisor and the girl were the two best surfers in the water. Both rode high performance shortboards, and knew the power spots of the wave very well. Watching either get a ride was a pleasure, as they found their way into some really fast sections.

I tried to learn from their rides, modeling my take off after them, and finding that the key to the first section was to turn fast and sharp and stay high on the face like a tube rider before dropping down to do anything else.
There was also a guy on a huge green fish board. He was an older fellow, looked Latino, slightly balding and moved in quick, chunky, graceless motions. He caught lots of waves, though, and some good ones, too.

The surf was good up until the tide hit the low at 6:50 am. Within twenty minutes of the low, the waves had lost most of their power. The crowd had also thinned to about six people. I still had time to spare, so I paddled down the point to a second take off spot where two longboarders were riding an inside section of wave. I caught two waves there, and got out.

Fun morning, all told. The drive through the canyon was interesting. It was the kind of road that you'd expect to find on the way to a campsite, not in a heavily populated urban area.

Now, the really fun part of the story is that I did make it to Mex that evening, and surfed a small weak windswell at Salsipuedes as the sun went down.

Malibu in the morning, Salsipuedes at night. Not bad for a day's work. When the sun went Brett and I sat in camp chars at a small fire listening to the sound of small waves on the Mexican cliffs.

But, salsipuedes, as reliable as it's reputation is, let Brett and I down on Saturday morning, unable to break on the extreme low tide.

We searched the coast and finally paid $11 US to surf at Alistos, or La Fonda, or K58, or whatever you want to call that damn place with the hellish paddle that takes twenty minutes of every thing your arms have and then - well, that's another story entirely.

And, I do have another meeting in Woodland Hills this week - right around the time that south swell should be winding down.