Acusurf Reporting 7-5-5
"You know," Brett told me. "for someone who resisted the cell phone for so long, you sure are a cell phone maniac."
"Well. I figure if you are going to practice hypocrisy, why beat around the bush? You might as well just dive right in and be the biggest hypocrite you can be."
"You're doing very well."
"Thank you. now, I gotta go. I'm pulling into my street."
He was completely correct. for most of my adult life, I've dodged the cell phone trend. Cell phones first surfaces on a huge scale about the time I was 25 years old. For over 5 years, I swore that I would never have one. I mocked the swarming, ignorant, overly-connected masses as they sacrificed the freedom to sing loudly in their cars for the so-called freedom to be called by somebody and told something that just as easily could have waited. I tormented my wife for her unceasing use of the accursed thing, as she strode from room to room wearing an earpiece and speaking to the walls.
Then, one fateful day, she called. She had gotten me a phone. It was "free", she'd said. I accepted it with reservation, knowing to my core that this was a wife leash tied to my ankle. For the first few weeks, I left the phone off much of the time. I left it in my car while I was at work, and turned it on only while driving home.
Then I discovered that surfers, like the remainder of our conditioned consumer society, carry cell phones. I figured out that I could call people and wake them up at 5:30 in the morning, to get them to go surfing. I exchanged cell phone numbers with a couple of surfers that I had only ever met at the beach, and found I could call them up in the afternoons to get surf reports, or in the moorings to give surf reports.
Brett and I had always suspected that this phenominon existed. When perfect conditions show up on a Tuesday morning, and you paddel out alone, only to have a crowd of twenty surfer come running down to the water at 6:30 in the morning, you begin to suspect that there is a network of communications working somewhere.
My friend, Chris, gave me the phrase that I now use to describe this practice. On my way home one Saturday morning, I called his cell phone and gave him a less than optimistic report of how the waves had been at Newport Beach at dawn. based on my reporting, he decided to wait a few hours for the tide to come in, and maybe head north.
"Alright, bro" he said. "Thanks for the Acu-surf."
"Well. I figure if you are going to practice hypocrisy, why beat around the bush? You might as well just dive right in and be the biggest hypocrite you can be."
"You're doing very well."
"Thank you. now, I gotta go. I'm pulling into my street."
He was completely correct. for most of my adult life, I've dodged the cell phone trend. Cell phones first surfaces on a huge scale about the time I was 25 years old. For over 5 years, I swore that I would never have one. I mocked the swarming, ignorant, overly-connected masses as they sacrificed the freedom to sing loudly in their cars for the so-called freedom to be called by somebody and told something that just as easily could have waited. I tormented my wife for her unceasing use of the accursed thing, as she strode from room to room wearing an earpiece and speaking to the walls.
Then, one fateful day, she called. She had gotten me a phone. It was "free", she'd said. I accepted it with reservation, knowing to my core that this was a wife leash tied to my ankle. For the first few weeks, I left the phone off much of the time. I left it in my car while I was at work, and turned it on only while driving home.
Then I discovered that surfers, like the remainder of our conditioned consumer society, carry cell phones. I figured out that I could call people and wake them up at 5:30 in the morning, to get them to go surfing. I exchanged cell phone numbers with a couple of surfers that I had only ever met at the beach, and found I could call them up in the afternoons to get surf reports, or in the moorings to give surf reports.
Brett and I had always suspected that this phenominon existed. When perfect conditions show up on a Tuesday morning, and you paddel out alone, only to have a crowd of twenty surfer come running down to the water at 6:30 in the morning, you begin to suspect that there is a network of communications working somewhere.
My friend, Chris, gave me the phrase that I now use to describe this practice. On my way home one Saturday morning, I called his cell phone and gave him a less than optimistic report of how the waves had been at Newport Beach at dawn. based on my reporting, he decided to wait a few hours for the tide to come in, and maybe head north.
"Alright, bro" he said. "Thanks for the Acu-surf."
posted by travinator @ 11:49 AM
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