Dear Friends and Family,
I am taking a break from writing about politics. I think this is easy until I read the news and get all pissed off again but for now I have other things to focus on. One of these things is surfing. It has been a while since I have sent stories of my time on the ocean. This last winter was the best season of surf that I can remember, especially for those of us who like big (double to triple overhead) waves at Ocean Beach. For months we had solid ground swells coming out of the north Pacific one after another. These swells would hit Ocean Beach head on where they were greeted by off shore breezes that lasted for weeks. The sand bars were perfect as well making for perfectly shaped, super clean, big waves on a consistent basis.
Of course my schedule is such now that Instead of the 4 or 5 hour sessions of years past I was limited mostly to 1 1/2 hour sessions two or three times a week. Luckily it was consistently good so by the end of the winter I felt like I had had my fair share.
It is now spring time so the big ground swells and off shore conditions of this past winter exist only in the minds of the surfers who were there. When the junky windswells of spring first arrived with the freezing cold water and strong on shore winds I couldn't help being a bit depressed. Until I went surfing. Once I had ridden a few of the junky little waves I remembered that surfing is fun no matter what the waves are like and the new conditions give me a chance to ride some different boards which always makes things more interesting.
Big perfect waves are nice of course but so much of surfing actually has nothing to do with the waves themselves and it has taken the crummy spring time surf to remind me of this.
A good illustration of this was last weekend when I drove down the coast towards Santa Cruz where I had a first aid class.
After eating a nopales burrito at my favorite burrito joint on the coast (La Cabana in Davenport) I proceeded south to check the spot known as four mile. Just as I got out of the burning van to go down and check the surf a ranger pulled up, followed by a super agro highway patrol officer. To make a long story short they said my van was reported in a hit and run in Davenport and by the way they treated me they obviously assumed I was guilty until I proved my innocence. The fact that there wasn't a scratch on my car didn't mean anything to them . The whole thing was actually quite a joke since my van is so identifiable and I was finally let go because the accuser couldn't tell for sure if my van was the one who hit his car.
Needless to say after an hour of dealing with the unfriendly cops I was a bit stressed out. The waves didn't look good but I decided that I needed a surf and boy was I right. I suited up, grabbed my 1977 Windandsea fun shape single fin that I found in the trash at Manresa last summer, and headed down the path. The path to four mile drops down into a little valley above a little wetlands area which is full of cat tails and willows. The swallows were surfing the wind above the path and the blackbirds were playing their harmonics in amongst the cat tails. AS I dropped down towards the ocean I could feel the stress leaving my body and I knew that going surfing was what I needed to do. As I walked I had a view of the meager surf through the white cliffs at the bottom of the canyon. Just past the surf a California grey whale breached three times as if to say hi as it passed on its long journey north.
A few friendly people in the water, someone apologized for the cops, and OK little waves. I had lots of fun riding my board and I reflected upon how lucky I am to be alive and how being in nature and surfing no matter what the waves are like are truly food for the soul.
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