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."