12-23-05 The Prison Tower

Thursday was our office's last day of work. We traditionally close between Christmas and New Year's every year. And since Christmas Eve was on a Saturday, they gave us Friday off.

I woke up early and looked at the reports. The swell was still very much active at the beaches. But, it had died down substantially from the mess of Wednesday, and looked like there might be waves I could surf. The buoy charts showed six to eight foot seas coming in to Huntington and Bolsa Chica. I waited for the tide to rise, and went at noon.

My wife was at home, and decided to come to the beach with me, a rare treat. We tried to get the video camera working, but neither of the batteries had any juice. We loaded up the mini van with Gwen's beach toys, and drove off.

Of course, being the holidays, we were rushed for time. Jenn's mother was en route from Vegas, so Jenn was on the cell phone most of the way too the beach. My wife is no fun when she is late for anything. She panics into a very high stress mode which I've never understood. So, the trip had to be time conscious.

We arrived at Bolsa Chica and pulled in south of the prison tower. I stood up on the lip of a fire ring, with my daughter on my hip, and looked out at the breakers. They were still head and a half high, and there was a lot of white foam to swim through. Still, there looked to be sections where I could make it.
My wife showed her inexperience. "This looks good". She said immediately. "Those don't look too big. Just go here."

I raised my eyebrows, and told her to look closer. "Look at the wave relative to the size of that guy that's out there."

There was a surfer dropping into a big section. He didn't make it, but it was clearly head and a half high.

"Oh," she said. "Wow. Those are big."

I watched it for a few minutes more, and got the fears.

"Let's go to Seal Beach." I told Jenn. "It will be a bit smaller." Of course, I've never actually surfed Seal Beach, but I've heard that it does pretty well on these winter storms.

She agreed, complaining about the time, but acquiescing. I lead footed the minivan over to the pier at Seal Beach an pulled into the parking lot. Jenn got out and paid $3 to the parking machine. I walked to shore to look at the waves.

Crap. Total crap. Waist high close outs with about sixty surfers paddleling for each.

I was a little bummed, but knew we were pressed for time. I could probably handle the crowd, having learned crowd skills in Huntington in the summer. I started to suit up behind the van. Jenn had walked to the beach and came back over.

"This looks lame" she said.
"Yea. I should have stayed at Bolsa."
She thought about it. "I think we have time."
"Are you sure."
"Yes." She said. "I'm sure. We have time."

Half dressed in a wetsuit up to the waist, I pushed my board into the van and jumped back in the driver's seat. We high-tailed it back to the prison tower, where I quickly got Jenn and Gwen's toys and chairs out onto the sand. I walked the shore for a short stretch, sensing a southbound current, and jumped out.

The paddle out was not too bad, tiring for me, but I made it pretty quickly. While the big sets churned on the outside, I had to simply wait and take the abuse. But, there were lulls enough to make the paddle. Once outside, I lined up with the other surfers. There were six or seven of us lined up at a fairly consistent peak north of the tower, and another ten or fifteen guys at a larger section south of the tower.

I caught my first wave early on. It was an overhead right, but it stayed open for a pretty long ride. My wife saw it from shore, she told me later. She said it was big. She said that I didn't make any turns, but just stood there. That sounded right. Hell, I wasn't looking to win any contests, I was just looking at the peak of the thing up over my head and trying to keep out of the way of it. But, for a big day at Bolsa, it was a long ride for me. I wound up having to paddle all the way back out, this time through the impact zone during a set.

Once I made it back to the outside, my shoulder gave me pain signals. I paddled through them. A set of monster waves came in that all the surfers had to paddle out to. I paddled up the face of one that was almost twice the length of my 7'-6" board and slapped burst over the top just before the break, slapping down on the back side. They next wave was even bigger, and I paddled as hard as I could to make it. Nearing the top, it became obvious that I was not going to make it so I committed my sin: I ditched my board and dove through the peak to the daylight on the other side, then took a deep breath and turned around to see if my leash was going to drag me in. Fortunately, my board popped up over the breaking curl. I grabbed it and got back on. There wasn't a third wave.

The second ride I got was also a right. It was the second wave of a good sized set. On the first set wave, another surfer failed to take it on the inside of me. He looked like he could have made it, but pulled out. In my mind I cursed him. It's funny how easy it is to mock another surfer for not going when, given the same situation, I also would have backed down nine waves out of ten. Perhaps it was this brief feeling of superiority that compelled my to commit to the next wave. Of course, once I was committed, I did the right thing. I got to my feet and dropped.

The drop was big. It gave me a second of that stomach feeling like when you're falling on a roller coaster, when you become aware of your weightlessness in the absence of force between your feet and your body. Then my feet dug in, my knees bent, and I looked up in front of me to see where I needed to turn. The options were: go straight, or get screwed. I chose to go straight. I was probably a board's length ahead of the foam when it crashed down behind me. I even managed to stay on my feet for a second or two after the impact. Then it ate me.

I paddled back out to look for a third wave. But, my wife's chair was gone from the beach. I remembered the time situation. I knew there was trouble. I looked out at the swell, seeing if there would be a good wave soon. It was a lull. To wait for a third, and select it just right, would take me another quarter hour or better. I paddled in.

We were late. Jenn's mom was waiting for us at our house when we got home. Fortunately, we'd been dumb enough to leave the front door unlocked.

12-21-05 Big Wednesday

A monster of a swell steamed into Orange County on a Wednesday. I was reminded of the movie "Big Wednesday", and the voice over: "they came in from the north".

Actually, these came in from the west. All the forecasters had seen it coming for several days. The daily surf report for Tuesday on Surfrider's web page had a caption under the day's photo reading: " Are you ready for tomorrow's big waves?"

Chase called me Tuesday night, to confirm a meeting spot for the morning. We agreed to meet a Bolsa Chica, near the "prison tower". Knowing what was coming, I told him that we may have to move up to Seal Beach if the waves were too big.

Then, I slept right through it. Being the week before our office's traditional holiday closure, I'd been working at an obscene pace, including preparations for a particularly dreadful meeting on Wednesday morning.

Instead of waking up to my alarm at 4:45 am, I woke up to my daughter tugging on my arm. "Daddy." She whined. "Gwen go pee-pee." She no longer wears diapers to sleep, but comes and wakes an adult up to go with her to the bathroom instead. I got up and followed her, realizing what time it was and that I had overslept.

While we were in the bathroom, my cell phone rang. It was Chase.

"Where are you at?"
"I never got up. I'm still at my house."
"I wouldn't come." he told me.

Chase reported the worst of what I had imagined. The waves were huge and the beach breaks at Huntington couldn't handle them. They were completely un-surf-able. Huge, 20 foot walls of water, breaking all at once in giant mounds of foam, one right after the other.

On my way to work, I got two other calls from people asking me if I had gone surfing. Both were from people driving by the beach, and seeing this outrageous spectacle, they felt that I was the one to call. I reported to both that I didn't go, and that I would probably wait for the swell to die down a bit before I attempted to surf in it.

On my lunch break, I drove to the beach. I simply had to see it.

It looked like hell. Gigantic breakers pushing foam up into the bottom of the Huntington Beach pier. As a spectacle of nature, it was awesome to see. Spectators lined the pier just watching the water explode all around them.

As a surfer, an old one, and not a very good one, it looked like death. I parked at tenth street and watched for a half hour or so. There were two or three brave souls in the water trying to paddle out, but nobody made it past the inside break, let alone out to where the monsters were. I didn't see a single surfer from the river to the pier and beyond who had been able to swim out through that mess.

Rumor had it that a few spots had produced waves worth riding. Seal beach, Blackies, San Onofre, a few spots north of Palos Verdes, and the reefs in north and south San Diego. My brother, in for the holidays, had paddled out in Pacific Beach in San Diego and caught a few big ones. Of course, he's been surfing north shore this year, so he's far more capable of swimming around in big surf then most of the surfing population here. Even he reported that the Sunset Cliffs were outrageous, and he decided not to risk it.

12-6-05 Some Surfbiz Commentary

Clark Foam is goin' down. One of the surf industry's most recognizable names has announced that, effective immidatly, they are no longer manufacturing surfboard blanks.

Very interesting. Buy up your boards now, boys and girls. The market for surfboards is about to get interesting.

But, before we get too excited, let's still one suspicion right away. Surftec had nothing to do with it. Surftec's market share is just not that big. Nobody is. All non Clark Foam manufacturing combined only holds a 20% market share. Clark makes 80% of the world's surfboard blanks.

Nope. It's not forign competition and glabalization. It's environmentalism. Clark Foam is loosing to the EPA. Here's a line from that other article:

"He said the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Orange County Fire Authority were concerned with Clark Foam's use of a toxic chemical, toluene di-isocynate, commonly called TDI. Clark said other concerns included the use of polyester resin, dust, trash and equipment that was built to Clark's specifications."

Not too surprising, really. Surfboards have always enjoyed an odd irony - designed to enjoy the beautiful, natural, pristine environment, but made from chemical stuffs and processes that are not kind to that same environment.

In predictable businessman speak, Mr. Clark belts out the line "They [Orange County and the EPA] have made it very clear they no longer want manufacturers like Clark Foam in their area."

This is true, of course, but not in the demonizing way that he probably said it. Laguna Niguel is a nice town in a beautiful coastal area. The people there value the quality of their environment, and not just because it reflects well on the value of their houses, but they actually like it. They want business. They want economic activity. They want jobs. they want commerce. But they are completely unwilling to accept any compromise in the quality of their environment. Why should they. If clean, progressive, environmentally sensitive manufacturers and businesses are an available substitute (which they very much are), why should they want dirty ones?

Now, I'm sure that Clark Foam has spent the last 30 year comply, comply, complying to environmental regulations. But, imagine this: What if Clark Foam had, 30 years ago, decided to make environmental progress one of their top priority business goals. What if they had consistently devoted resources to creating a zero-environmental impact blank manufacturing process, investigated alternative materials, targeted phase outs of the most dangerous and hazardous parts of the procedure, worked to eliminate all waste and effluent from their processes so leaving water and air from their plant is cleaner than when it comes in.

What if they'd made that commitment even twenty years, or ten years ago? What if they made that commitment five years ago? What if they make that commitment right now?

To many businessmen, the Double Bottom Line (environmental + financial) or Triple Bottom Line (environmental + social + financial) concepts haven't sunk in. But, California is starting to be the proving ground. In Laguna, and Newport, and Huntington, more businessmen would be wise to jump full throttle into sustainable and environmental business practices, because if you only pay attention to the one bottom line, that second one will creep up and get you.

Sorry about that, Clark Foam. I hope your replacement gets on board with the new program. Personally, I'm excited. I can wait to ride a board that didn't pollute very ocean and air I use it in.