Profound Flatness 8-11-05

For what seems like the opressive majority of the summer of 2005 so far, surf has been scarce. My favorite forecaster at stormsurf.com has consistantly issued depressing forecasts. He's spoken of the southern hemisphere being "locked down in low pressure", having "no swell producing activity", and has even commented on the state of "profound flatness". Surfrider's daily report and photo taken at the San Clemente Pier have been flat and empty, with captions like "again, nobody is surfing today due to small size".

Not that this put a damper on the OC Regiseter's excited coverage of the Honda US open of Surfing, presneted by O'Niell, a small part of the Bank of the West Beach games. Look here, here, and here. You can use my login/password, communitst/charlie if you want. It quite funny, knowing that the whole time the surf at Huntington was complete and absolute shit!!

I'd gone to the beach last week and surfed in some ankle to knee high waves. the red tide was still in the water. I caught three waves in forty minutes and got out, not having gotten the fix from surfing that I'd craved.

On a rumor of possible incoming swell, Chase called me last Friday, and we met at the beach Saturday morning. We never even unpacked our wetsuits, and ended up sitting on the bench at 17th street, staring out at the water and talking about work, kids, family, and life in general. I got to see Chase's new board - dry, that is.

"It's always a shame to drive down here and leave without surfing" he said as we both got back into our cars. I tried to make use of the morning: got an oil change, took my wife's minivan to the radiator shope.

I still watch the surf forecasts daily or every other day, hoping against hope. Yesterday, I thought I saw a bump coming in for this morning. So, I paked up my truck last night and drove to the beach this morning.

There was nothing.

I ran into Dan, cruising the beach on his bike in the gray dawn.

"You know." he said. "I've been surfing for a long time, and I can't ever remember it being like this." Dan talked about surfing the day before. "I took my friend out to teach him. I caught like two waves."

"Well." I told him, heading back to my car. "In these last weeks, I've always come ready to surf. But, I've learned to also bring a book."

The beach can, after all, be quite calming in the morning, even if there are no waves. And these days, there are no waves.

There's some storm activity going on in the south, some say it's bound to break the spell. One can only hope. I need some frickin' waves, man! (Unfortunalty, when they come, I'll be so damn out of shape!)