SURF REPORT
10 February 2010
The jerk working the line at the Arlington looked around in mock-frustration at the masses in front of the theater and said loudly: “ Why are the crowds so hard to manage when we have a surf flick?”
Phaneuf and I hear this like the starter’s pistol for the 100 word dash.
“ Uh, maybe because it’s best to ignore each other when we’re in large crowds.”
“ He should know by now that most surfers have an aversion to authority.”
“ Is this the line for a movie? We just want a burrito.”
“ The lineup is always like this when the surf is small.”
Dada-adada-ya-da.
Judging by the age and demeanor of the crowd, few expected the usual surf-flick skatepark-at-sea entertainment, full of snaps, punting aerials and busy daring-do. When confusing a pack of model citizens, however sun-burnished, for rowdies, the jerk was accidentally complimentary, and having some fun at his own expense.
Surfers waiting in line could empathize with the guy’s surprise. The world premier for Chris Malloy’s beautiful 180 South brought in a huge SRO audience, the largest by far to attend a 2010 Santa Barbara Film Festival event.
The film is an elegy to place, capturing feelings like reverence and joy in its visual selectivity, teaching without preaching, and mediated by a nicely unintrusive sound track.
180 South follows a hallowed forty-year template cut by passionate wilderness existentialists Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins when they traveled south overland from California to southern Chile in 1968. Footage from the documentary of the original 1968 trip, Mountain of Storms, is occasionally cut into 180 South. The first film seems worth being revived, according to people who have seen it. Surfing and mountaineering their way south, the trip and the spirit that brought it off blueprints the irresistible lifestyle now followed by legions, including the voyagers of 180 South. Relating to that inspiration is easy: a long trip down Baja California I made in the same year began my own forty-year enchantment with nature.
The 1968 journey made by Chouinard and Tompkins assured the social path the 180 South participants would choose later, championing the environment, being faithful to the spirit of discovery, unwilling to yield to the status quo. In 180 South, Chris Malloy elected to have chief protagonist Jeff Johnson travel by boat, perhaps knowing that retracing a 5,000 mile land trek would lead to 10 movies, not just one. Johnson personifies the kind of unrepentant thrillseeker that the charismatic Chouinard and Tompkins were and still are. At the age of seventy, Chouinard impulsively joins the climbing team headed upriver. Johnson, an environmentalist documentarian, is only just one part-time job away from another life-affirming adventure.
According to many of the people who created the film, 180 was hard to get done because it seemed to keep on creating itself: what happens inadvertently on the journey, like the breaking of the boat’s mast en route to Chile, ushers sudden content into the mix that could not be ignored. The dismasting creates an unforeseen opportunity to introduce important philosophical structure for the key theme in the film and leads to the addition of an important character in the story. The delay for repairs on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), causes the climbers to fail in reaching their ultimate goal, the peak of Corcovado in Patagonia, because the snow has melted on the now-crumbling crag when they finally arrive.
What began as a documentary becomes more of a personal drama that gradually becomes a warning against continuing the rapacious resource destruction wrought by cancerous cities against the surrounding wilderness. Rapa Nui’s Makohe, the impulsive athlete who joins the crew of the Sea Bear, exemplifies the apogee of a natural human, whose life within the wild is seamless, uncomplicated by Western culture. The story of her island’s antecedents serves as a perfect allegory for the world-wide despoilation of the environment. The tragedy of Rapa Nui which was mindlessly destroyed by its inhabitants long before Western discovery, underscores the seriousness of global circumstances once only perceived by a handful of iconoclasts. To give formal emphasis to the relevance of the island disaster, Malloy effectively references the Rapa Nui chapter in Jared Diamond’s 2005 book Collapse.
Chouinard and Tompkins’ 1968 trip was both motivation for the new film and prism for the present: 180 South is an eloquent call for all of us to work to save wild places. The principals are drawn down a southern line to less complicated and cluttered places, both then and now. They independently discover the clean clarity of wild seas and pristine Andean peaks never visited but by guanacos and condors. Doug Tompkins, founder of both North Face and Esprit, is so devoted to this part of the world he is spending his fortune on its preservation. Chouinard lends his estimable credentials to the project. Over two million acres have been acquired, which Tompkins intends to turn over to the governments of Argentina and Chile if they can guarantee the land will not be violated. Yet Conservacion Patagonica is assailed on all sides by pulp mills and hydroelectric dam projects which bring broad havoc to an unspoiled ecosystem.
Malloy’s film gets its title from a recent comment by Tompkins, who suggested that when facing unredeemable change to the environment, only one choice remains: “ When you get to the edge of the precipice, you can still move forward by doing a 180. Turn around and take the next step forward.”
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
A New 7'7"
SURF REPORT
16 JANUARY 2010
For my sixtieth birthday all my friends ponied up the cash to buy me a brand new 7’7” Towers performance board from Anacapa Surf. I am sure Ryan cut Phaneuf a good deal on it because it was listed at $500 in the shop. John had observed me admiring it in the fall.\
We held the party down at low tide Knucklehead. Quite a rock climb for some of the folks who are not used to that dangerous clamber.
I was supremely moved by the gift. It was a talisman bespeaking a more active, a more optimistic effort in the water. As if I did in deed have some good days ahead, and I do. They are not to be doubted.
16 JANUARY 2010
For my sixtieth birthday all my friends ponied up the cash to buy me a brand new 7’7” Towers performance board from Anacapa Surf. I am sure Ryan cut Phaneuf a good deal on it because it was listed at $500 in the shop. John had observed me admiring it in the fall.\
We held the party down at low tide Knucklehead. Quite a rock climb for some of the folks who are not used to that dangerous clamber.
I was supremely moved by the gift. It was a talisman bespeaking a more active, a more optimistic effort in the water. As if I did in deed have some good days ahead, and I do. They are not to be doubted.
The Real Rubicon
SURF REPORT
22 October 2009
When things go better sometimes there is a lot less to say. Different equipment lead to other results. Hung up the 4/3 until colder water calls for it and parked the Yater for when the waves are knee-high. The Rusty has enough paddle in it to float some 2XXL. The cut-down 2/3 wetsuit made for lighter action in the water, until a comber unzipped me and I sat back in the froth trying to get closed up before another wall rolled over me.
Pisser stayed down off the kiosk at C Street and I roamed around middle stables. Every now and then I would meet up with him and ask him what kind of bait he was using. He was sitting way out waiting on the Big Uns. The swell was forcusing more on Surfers Point than at Pipe or Stables, but there was a very good peak going off at Stables at one to two feet overhead. Then it would close before rolling into the zone where Greg had staked his claim. Three or four waves came to a set, and the crowd looked a lot worse from the parking lot than it acted in the water.
Compared to the previous day, I couldn’t recognize myself. I had two waves that were walkbacks from the shower pad and felt a lot more comfortable on the smaller, more maneuverable Rusty. When you start talking of deep on overhead surf on a 9’6”, getting down and going can be doubtful and can always be concerned about what will happen if the log gets loose.
Like my nighttime visitor said: get in shape. I need to surf a lot more if I am going to surf at the advanced age of 60. It’s the real cut off. Fifty is take it or leave it. You don’t have a real excuse. But 60 is the real Rubicon. Can’t finesse 60. All you can do is hang on to your shit and see what happens as you head toward 70.
See, 60 is 70’s neighbor. And 70 doesn’t sound like it takes many prisoners.
22 October 2009
When things go better sometimes there is a lot less to say. Different equipment lead to other results. Hung up the 4/3 until colder water calls for it and parked the Yater for when the waves are knee-high. The Rusty has enough paddle in it to float some 2XXL. The cut-down 2/3 wetsuit made for lighter action in the water, until a comber unzipped me and I sat back in the froth trying to get closed up before another wall rolled over me.
Pisser stayed down off the kiosk at C Street and I roamed around middle stables. Every now and then I would meet up with him and ask him what kind of bait he was using. He was sitting way out waiting on the Big Uns. The swell was forcusing more on Surfers Point than at Pipe or Stables, but there was a very good peak going off at Stables at one to two feet overhead. Then it would close before rolling into the zone where Greg had staked his claim. Three or four waves came to a set, and the crowd looked a lot worse from the parking lot than it acted in the water.
Compared to the previous day, I couldn’t recognize myself. I had two waves that were walkbacks from the shower pad and felt a lot more comfortable on the smaller, more maneuverable Rusty. When you start talking of deep on overhead surf on a 9’6”, getting down and going can be doubtful and can always be concerned about what will happen if the log gets loose.
Like my nighttime visitor said: get in shape. I need to surf a lot more if I am going to surf at the advanced age of 60. It’s the real cut off. Fifty is take it or leave it. You don’t have a real excuse. But 60 is the real Rubicon. Can’t finesse 60. All you can do is hang on to your shit and see what happens as you head toward 70.
See, 60 is 70’s neighbor. And 70 doesn’t sound like it takes many prisoners.
Hurricane Rick and Typhoon Nepartak
SURF REPORT
21 October 2009
Once Hurricane Rick bloomed off southern Mexico, I nearly forgot that waves were coming from the northwest around the same time the hurricane swell might arrive. Rick was generally a fizzler, but may have been the source of some lefts breaking at Ventura Point today. Category Five Rick, with up to 185 mph winds, was the second most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the eastern Pacific and a spineless party-pooper. I had enjoyed the fantasy of Rick parked 300 miles off Baja, swigging Tequila, doing no one any harm as he stalled in our swell window for four or five days launching surf at California. But Rick forgot to take his Viagra. Wind shear from the west carved him up quickly into a tropical depression and he slunk off to the east to rain on Texas.
At 3 PM the CDIP was 6.9 at 17 from the 290, a northwest swell courtesy of recurved Typhoon Nepartak. I was startled and started to pine, inwardly of course. Something from the 175 was also registering, but I doubted if it was from Rick, who had played peek-a-boo in our window on Monday for a few hours at 155 degrees. I went late with the wrong gear to Ventura Point with the Popcorn Prince of Oaxi, Greg Prinz, AKA The Pizzer. I pushed the Yater out into the bathwater at Stables wearing a 4/3, boots and cap. The wind had blown all day at the farm, but there was glass at the beach. I could have, should have trunked it. Surf was running mostly head high to a little over. It would be an afternoon to forget, but not without sufficient adventure to report.
The Pizz was on fire but I had one of my most depressing go-outs all-time. There was a lot of deceptive windswell on top of the groundswell which I struggled mightily to ride, but was prone to misjudge too early or too late, provoking plenty of flailing in the No-Catch Zone or circus clown late take-offs into the swirling soup. Greg came steaming back out mid-session barking about the “ bottom turn of his life!” On the other hand I felt like I was surfing in oatmeal.
I got a fair left, then spent quite a while either fruitlessly paddling or taking off into closeouts. Then I took off with Greg on a frothy comber going right, and thus fastened on the idea of employing the buddy system in order to get some waves, just turn off my brain and rotely follow whatever he did-not that he was not frustrated as well, but he was catching a lot of waves and going from mid-stables to the showers frequently. That’s a twenty second ride. On one such exemplary tandem wave event, I rolled forward in slo-mo standing up for a full over-the-falls cascadia, remaining upright so I could keep up with Greg, who was flying on the face of the wave many yards from me by then. I crashed in an explosion of white water, still gamely on my feet while beneath me the turbulence roiled. There were far too many people in front of me, wide-eyed with horror, to merely jump off, so I dropped down and grabbed the tail, and proceeded to calf-wrestle the nine and half foot fiberglass beast into submission. I felt like I pulled my shoulder but it was just age-trauma no doubt. The medics remained seated ashore.
The crowning touch was a rebirthing escapade on an overhead left, which I dropped into late, of course, and just as I completed a disturbingly awkward backside bottom turn, beginning to go out of control, I found myself enveloped in what we will here identify as the tube, though within it there was little space or visibility. It was a good place to be, but all very wrong. It was like a blind date with a pretty girl who openly wishes you were not there. I rested there in the whiteout, gently skimming now on one knee, pelvis on the moon, and felt like I could cry. When I came out, I stood back up, lost my balance in full flail then fell backward. Judges on the shore held up scores of 9.9, 9.8 and 10.0. I had come so close to a full kook. But there was still plenty of daylight left. I could give it another shot-if I could catch a wave.
That night, as usual, I dreamt many things. The final dream was at one of my dreamworld surfspots. I have been there a number of times. It’s a combination of Haleiwa and Hanalei, with a really good series of breaks fronted by a carnival-like beach town. I was surfing small surf. Mostly just admiring the scene. An older surfer paddled up to me and told me I needed to get in better shape if I wanted to surf. He did not scold. He was more like a life-coach from God. Then on the beach he presented me with a large black idol with a one-eyed face on it and a thick dark headband carved on it. He said it would help. I sat on the floor of some busy camera shop and opened the idol up, discovering that there was another identical, smaller idol within. I opened that one, and inside it was also replicated in miniature. I kept opening and revealing smaller and smaller idols, until the idol was too small to open. I tried and tried to pry the tiny thing open until a loud city-slicker type came barging up and asked me why I was playing with army men on the floor like that. I found it impossible to defend myself or put back all my little idols in the next biggest one, so I just opened up a floor tile and hid them all under it and left.
21 October 2009
Once Hurricane Rick bloomed off southern Mexico, I nearly forgot that waves were coming from the northwest around the same time the hurricane swell might arrive. Rick was generally a fizzler, but may have been the source of some lefts breaking at Ventura Point today. Category Five Rick, with up to 185 mph winds, was the second most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the eastern Pacific and a spineless party-pooper. I had enjoyed the fantasy of Rick parked 300 miles off Baja, swigging Tequila, doing no one any harm as he stalled in our swell window for four or five days launching surf at California. But Rick forgot to take his Viagra. Wind shear from the west carved him up quickly into a tropical depression and he slunk off to the east to rain on Texas.
At 3 PM the CDIP was 6.9 at 17 from the 290, a northwest swell courtesy of recurved Typhoon Nepartak. I was startled and started to pine, inwardly of course. Something from the 175 was also registering, but I doubted if it was from Rick, who had played peek-a-boo in our window on Monday for a few hours at 155 degrees. I went late with the wrong gear to Ventura Point with the Popcorn Prince of Oaxi, Greg Prinz, AKA The Pizzer. I pushed the Yater out into the bathwater at Stables wearing a 4/3, boots and cap. The wind had blown all day at the farm, but there was glass at the beach. I could have, should have trunked it. Surf was running mostly head high to a little over. It would be an afternoon to forget, but not without sufficient adventure to report.
The Pizz was on fire but I had one of my most depressing go-outs all-time. There was a lot of deceptive windswell on top of the groundswell which I struggled mightily to ride, but was prone to misjudge too early or too late, provoking plenty of flailing in the No-Catch Zone or circus clown late take-offs into the swirling soup. Greg came steaming back out mid-session barking about the “ bottom turn of his life!” On the other hand I felt like I was surfing in oatmeal.
I got a fair left, then spent quite a while either fruitlessly paddling or taking off into closeouts. Then I took off with Greg on a frothy comber going right, and thus fastened on the idea of employing the buddy system in order to get some waves, just turn off my brain and rotely follow whatever he did-not that he was not frustrated as well, but he was catching a lot of waves and going from mid-stables to the showers frequently. That’s a twenty second ride. On one such exemplary tandem wave event, I rolled forward in slo-mo standing up for a full over-the-falls cascadia, remaining upright so I could keep up with Greg, who was flying on the face of the wave many yards from me by then. I crashed in an explosion of white water, still gamely on my feet while beneath me the turbulence roiled. There were far too many people in front of me, wide-eyed with horror, to merely jump off, so I dropped down and grabbed the tail, and proceeded to calf-wrestle the nine and half foot fiberglass beast into submission. I felt like I pulled my shoulder but it was just age-trauma no doubt. The medics remained seated ashore.
The crowning touch was a rebirthing escapade on an overhead left, which I dropped into late, of course, and just as I completed a disturbingly awkward backside bottom turn, beginning to go out of control, I found myself enveloped in what we will here identify as the tube, though within it there was little space or visibility. It was a good place to be, but all very wrong. It was like a blind date with a pretty girl who openly wishes you were not there. I rested there in the whiteout, gently skimming now on one knee, pelvis on the moon, and felt like I could cry. When I came out, I stood back up, lost my balance in full flail then fell backward. Judges on the shore held up scores of 9.9, 9.8 and 10.0. I had come so close to a full kook. But there was still plenty of daylight left. I could give it another shot-if I could catch a wave.
That night, as usual, I dreamt many things. The final dream was at one of my dreamworld surfspots. I have been there a number of times. It’s a combination of Haleiwa and Hanalei, with a really good series of breaks fronted by a carnival-like beach town. I was surfing small surf. Mostly just admiring the scene. An older surfer paddled up to me and told me I needed to get in better shape if I wanted to surf. He did not scold. He was more like a life-coach from God. Then on the beach he presented me with a large black idol with a one-eyed face on it and a thick dark headband carved on it. He said it would help. I sat on the floor of some busy camera shop and opened the idol up, discovering that there was another identical, smaller idol within. I opened that one, and inside it was also replicated in miniature. I kept opening and revealing smaller and smaller idols, until the idol was too small to open. I tried and tried to pry the tiny thing open until a loud city-slicker type came barging up and asked me why I was playing with army men on the floor like that. I found it impossible to defend myself or put back all my little idols in the next biggest one, so I just opened up a floor tile and hid them all under it and left.
The Wet Mandala of Melor
SURF REPORT
15 October 2009
I started watching the swell event from a week out. Surfline was calling for a 10 foot swell out of the 250 a week ago. The NEPA animation filled out the sector with storm. Then the Weather Service began to get excited about rain. Typhoon Melor, recurving out of the northwest Pacific after maiming Luzon and bashing Japan, moved east into the Gulf of Alaska as an extra-tropical low. Hurricanes in the Atlantic do that occasionally as well, circling from the Antilles to Ireland.
So, for five or six days, the grand expectation of a future event seemed to put the present into slow motion. Like when you are five and the Christmas Tree is so big it fills up half the living room and the pile of presents gets about chest high and the house is filled with the scent of Douglas fir. You sit and watch the fog linger outside the front window on the crummy ivy sprawled on the edge of the asphalt, wishing Santa would get the lead out of his britches. I had stuff to do in advance, like take five tons of butternut squash out of the field before it got soaked, and I wished some cloddy fields could have been planted beforehand. But its not like I have major slack going.
Every time I was near a computer I would sit and watch the wet mandala of Melor cranking slowly southeastward toward Point Conception on the AVN at < http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/nepac/loop-avn.html> I would pick out particularly loaded blue and gold swirls of moisture and try to time which one might strike my farm. Sometimes you know that its going to be a dry blow the minute a low does a little bump to the north and your favorite package of squalls heads into someplace like Corvallis, which does not need the rain, because over time it will usually get more than it can handle. The weather poets at NOAA kept chanting about the significant early season event, warning equally of high seas and flash flood warnings for the burn areas, so I was double jolly about the imminent chaos impending out of the west.
The fact that swell was aimed at us reinforced the likelihood of rain. The downside is that rain-runoff into the sea from populated areas usually spikes the coliform and enteroccoci values in the intertidal zone, particularly the first heavy rain of the season. You know how the weather girls warn you about how greasy the road will be during the first drizzle? When the bar breaks on the Ventura River mouth on the first event of the season, most surfers are happy to sit and watch the latte-colored walls crash shoreward, knowing that they are filled with what makes the ears ache, the skin itch and the chest fill with vile thick green emulsions.
We got the orographic drazzlers first, as forecast, on Monday afternoon, then all day Tuesday the rain fell beautifully, into the night, with no more than four tenths falling in a given hour. We picked on Wednesday in a good rain because by the time I got to the farm Francisco had already filled up a few boxes with sweet corn so we grabbed some kale and collards out of the soggy beds anyway. Four and a half inches fell on Ojai. Nine or so up in the Matilija, and the NWS hydrology map recorded seventeen inches on some mountain in Big Sur. The swell came in behind the rain. CDIP displayed some crazy images, like nine feet of swell from 250 degrees west at 11 seconds. Then it went 12 from the 295 at fourteen seconds on Thursday as things dried out.
Phaneuf got off early and started wandering the coast at low tide. He started texting around two, like a fisherman cutting up pieces of barracuda in the bow of his boat before putting hooks on the seabed for halibut. “ 6-8 foot at the pier…( later)…At Faria. Looks fun….Just saw someone get a long one…”
Pisser came in the office to sell some Meyer lemons.
I let him read Phaneuf’s memos. “ You want to go?”
He wrinkled his nose. “ Naw, I just got over being sick”
Now, a word about that nose-wrinkle, because my question begged an appropriate response and Pisser nailed it. We know too much about pollution in the Ocean for our own good. Basically, we are in denial, because we know its flat-out loaded with the nasty. Rain just exacerbates the pollution times ten or fifteen zillion. The poop of 15,000 dogs is headed your way, and countless cats. Not to forget the homeless crapping free in the riverbottom for love of God.
There is nothing more definitive than the surfer nose-wrinkle when surfing after rain is suggested. This is generally because the wrinkler’s nose has smelt some bad ocean in the past. The notion of submerging within it is more than repulsive. When Greg Prinz does the wrinkle, his version is a whole face wrinkle. His wrinkle spreads across his face like he had just been forced to eat five pounds of unripe Hachiya persimmons. Nothing could have been more emphatic unless he had given me a double no-way bullfighter push off with both wrists spinning at the same time.
“ Ok. I think I am going to Pitas.”
“ You let me know…”
The idea that Pitas was good, and fairly free of run-off, had incited a severe case of surfalgia dridokitis. Its almost as bad as being in love. You can get pretty spun. I had not been in the water since San Clemente, which was years ( two weeks) ago. There had been no surf, or there had been but the wind got it before I could pull away from my shackle. Now the storm had come, gone and, abnormally, not been followed by the big blow storm-trailer out of the west. There was some wind, but not howling Victory At Sea white-capping madness.
By the time I got to Pitas it was actually a little offshore. We walked up to the Tudor Takeoff and paddled out there because there was still some sand for Seed to hang out on while we were surfing The water seemed fine and smelled of nothing. The waves were green and backlit with gold. Three or four guys paddled in as we went out, leaving a total of seven surfers with lots of head to shoulder high waves. A flashback to 1977 in other words. We got some good ones, even though it was mostly a semi-windswell, and closing out here and there. There was one section that was tubing. Phaneuf got a real long ride staying high in the pocket on his little yellow flash. I stayed inside mostly and rode waist-high grinders on the bar on the Yater. Danny’s brother Keith was out, sweeping around on his mighty cutbacks. Another, pleasant, older guy I have seen forever on this coast paddled by and said:.
“ Great way to pass a Thursday afternoon!” he hollered to me as he went out to the main lineup.
Sure was.
This afternoon I started to crum out, but its probably this upper respiratory deal all the kids are hacking on. I sent one home yesterday and another today. Its definitely not el crudo. I am eating ginseng and drinking Echinacea so I can go out tomorrow after I pick for the farmers market. There is going to be a firm south coming up, and I can kick this shit before it kicks me. The little Ginseng Man is already dancing inside me, warding off the evil intruder.
15 October 2009
I started watching the swell event from a week out. Surfline was calling for a 10 foot swell out of the 250 a week ago. The NEPA animation filled out the sector with storm. Then the Weather Service began to get excited about rain. Typhoon Melor, recurving out of the northwest Pacific after maiming Luzon and bashing Japan, moved east into the Gulf of Alaska as an extra-tropical low. Hurricanes in the Atlantic do that occasionally as well, circling from the Antilles to Ireland.
So, for five or six days, the grand expectation of a future event seemed to put the present into slow motion. Like when you are five and the Christmas Tree is so big it fills up half the living room and the pile of presents gets about chest high and the house is filled with the scent of Douglas fir. You sit and watch the fog linger outside the front window on the crummy ivy sprawled on the edge of the asphalt, wishing Santa would get the lead out of his britches. I had stuff to do in advance, like take five tons of butternut squash out of the field before it got soaked, and I wished some cloddy fields could have been planted beforehand. But its not like I have major slack going.
Every time I was near a computer I would sit and watch the wet mandala of Melor cranking slowly southeastward toward Point Conception on the AVN at < http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/nepac/loop-avn.html> I would pick out particularly loaded blue and gold swirls of moisture and try to time which one might strike my farm. Sometimes you know that its going to be a dry blow the minute a low does a little bump to the north and your favorite package of squalls heads into someplace like Corvallis, which does not need the rain, because over time it will usually get more than it can handle. The weather poets at NOAA kept chanting about the significant early season event, warning equally of high seas and flash flood warnings for the burn areas, so I was double jolly about the imminent chaos impending out of the west.
The fact that swell was aimed at us reinforced the likelihood of rain. The downside is that rain-runoff into the sea from populated areas usually spikes the coliform and enteroccoci values in the intertidal zone, particularly the first heavy rain of the season. You know how the weather girls warn you about how greasy the road will be during the first drizzle? When the bar breaks on the Ventura River mouth on the first event of the season, most surfers are happy to sit and watch the latte-colored walls crash shoreward, knowing that they are filled with what makes the ears ache, the skin itch and the chest fill with vile thick green emulsions.
We got the orographic drazzlers first, as forecast, on Monday afternoon, then all day Tuesday the rain fell beautifully, into the night, with no more than four tenths falling in a given hour. We picked on Wednesday in a good rain because by the time I got to the farm Francisco had already filled up a few boxes with sweet corn so we grabbed some kale and collards out of the soggy beds anyway. Four and a half inches fell on Ojai. Nine or so up in the Matilija, and the NWS hydrology map recorded seventeen inches on some mountain in Big Sur. The swell came in behind the rain. CDIP displayed some crazy images, like nine feet of swell from 250 degrees west at 11 seconds. Then it went 12 from the 295 at fourteen seconds on Thursday as things dried out.
Phaneuf got off early and started wandering the coast at low tide. He started texting around two, like a fisherman cutting up pieces of barracuda in the bow of his boat before putting hooks on the seabed for halibut. “ 6-8 foot at the pier…( later)…At Faria. Looks fun….Just saw someone get a long one…”
Pisser came in the office to sell some Meyer lemons.
I let him read Phaneuf’s memos. “ You want to go?”
He wrinkled his nose. “ Naw, I just got over being sick”
Now, a word about that nose-wrinkle, because my question begged an appropriate response and Pisser nailed it. We know too much about pollution in the Ocean for our own good. Basically, we are in denial, because we know its flat-out loaded with the nasty. Rain just exacerbates the pollution times ten or fifteen zillion. The poop of 15,000 dogs is headed your way, and countless cats. Not to forget the homeless crapping free in the riverbottom for love of God.
There is nothing more definitive than the surfer nose-wrinkle when surfing after rain is suggested. This is generally because the wrinkler’s nose has smelt some bad ocean in the past. The notion of submerging within it is more than repulsive. When Greg Prinz does the wrinkle, his version is a whole face wrinkle. His wrinkle spreads across his face like he had just been forced to eat five pounds of unripe Hachiya persimmons. Nothing could have been more emphatic unless he had given me a double no-way bullfighter push off with both wrists spinning at the same time.
“ Ok. I think I am going to Pitas.”
“ You let me know…”
The idea that Pitas was good, and fairly free of run-off, had incited a severe case of surfalgia dridokitis. Its almost as bad as being in love. You can get pretty spun. I had not been in the water since San Clemente, which was years ( two weeks) ago. There had been no surf, or there had been but the wind got it before I could pull away from my shackle. Now the storm had come, gone and, abnormally, not been followed by the big blow storm-trailer out of the west. There was some wind, but not howling Victory At Sea white-capping madness.
By the time I got to Pitas it was actually a little offshore. We walked up to the Tudor Takeoff and paddled out there because there was still some sand for Seed to hang out on while we were surfing The water seemed fine and smelled of nothing. The waves were green and backlit with gold. Three or four guys paddled in as we went out, leaving a total of seven surfers with lots of head to shoulder high waves. A flashback to 1977 in other words. We got some good ones, even though it was mostly a semi-windswell, and closing out here and there. There was one section that was tubing. Phaneuf got a real long ride staying high in the pocket on his little yellow flash. I stayed inside mostly and rode waist-high grinders on the bar on the Yater. Danny’s brother Keith was out, sweeping around on his mighty cutbacks. Another, pleasant, older guy I have seen forever on this coast paddled by and said:.
“ Great way to pass a Thursday afternoon!” he hollered to me as he went out to the main lineup.
Sure was.
This afternoon I started to crum out, but its probably this upper respiratory deal all the kids are hacking on. I sent one home yesterday and another today. Its definitely not el crudo. I am eating ginseng and drinking Echinacea so I can go out tomorrow after I pick for the farmers market. There is going to be a firm south coming up, and I can kick this shit before it kicks me. The little Ginseng Man is already dancing inside me, warding off the evil intruder.
Reunion at Poche
SURF REPORT
28 September 2009
Three days in San Clemente. A modest south swell was allegedly going to arrive on Saturday and show through Sunday. A long period 6 foot groundswell from the NW was also due to arrive Sunday evening, but it’s a quick hitter and blocked ( originating from 295 degrees) in San Clemente by Santa Catalina Island’s long north-south shadow. That 295 swell is best for Ventura. I nearly traveled without a board, but Olivia and Phaneuf asked if I would take one, and since it is The Primary Rule I slid the Rusty aboard. When heading to the beach, go prepared to surf.
I was in southern Orange County for the 40th reunion of my Webb School class. Webb is an elite school in Claremont that graduated 43 boys in 1969. At least four have died, including two of my best friends from that time. The survivors all look to be near sixty, but beneath the layers of age and experience the shadow of youth persists. Some have become predictably portly, and many act their age. I certainly don’t, and I wonder if I ever will. Many were very happy that I brought some nice buds for them to enjoy. I also brought sweet corn, 20 pounds of kabocha squash and oranges for the official class cocktail: Mount Gay Rum with OJ in a tall glass filled with ice.
Lud Shonnard still has an engaging smile and absurdist sense of humor. Randall Lewis remains mild and selfless despite the fact he and his brothers have built most of the houses in western San Bernardino County. Richard Hastings wanted to be a musician and every day he plays for pay. That may be one of the most significant achievements of any classmate. Greg Stragnell was a gentleman before he moved to Britain, which invented the trait. His kindness is a contrast to how unkind some of us once were. Petty might be a better word, but in any case, now these once rowdy guys are kind and genuine. Mature might be a better word. Even at this late hour, wild man Mike Wray shows glimmers of reflection and introspection. Jordy Ryan was always careful, engaging and mysterious at the same time, which built him well for diplomacy (UNDP). We are at Miles Rosedale’s beach house at the far end of the Capistrano strand, a few yards north of a reefbreak called Poche. I have been down here a number of times and Poche has only been truly rideable once. The reef needs a lot of swell to break. Miles has always been effortlessly generous. He’s decided to have the weekend catered and the food is good. More than anyone, he has tried to find ways to keep us in touch with each other.
Strange nuances surface over the reunion period, and curious coincidences. If we had enjoyed the internet forty years earlier, Bill Kempner and I might have known that one another had lived at the same time on Oahu for four years, Texas ( Houston for Bill, Austin for me) for four years and attended UCSB at the same time as well. In all that time our paths never crossed. I delivered papayas and cucumbers a few blocks from where he lived in Manoa. We obviously paid scant attention to the Alumni Bulletin during those years, which might have reported on our whereabouts. We have both taken up making ceramics again, in preparation against boring retirements no doubt.
John Dey has become a commercial grower of high quality garlic in Klamath Falls. After these many years of preaching to him about organic farming ( his family controls a lot of good ground in the Klamath Basin) he has bought in to organic, but probably not as a result of anything I may have said. There was much more logic to his decision than I would have imparted. Last year John suggested I grow shallots from seed and I brought him a sample of the results. He says the market for them requires a smaller product because people want to buy them in April and May to plant. I think that may be a project for someone else.
Tom Sherrard caught too many little sand rays for my taste. In the summer I am always wary of the bastards. He kept hauling them up on the beach, then we had to release them. I hate them. I have never been wanged by one, but they have sent my friends to the emergency room with their sting.
Richard Hastings and I surfed a little on that south, but it was too punk to break on Poche. The water was warm and a shade of milky turquoise. We ditched our wetsuits and paddled out on Stand Up Paddle boards Richard brought. It was my first time and I fell off frequently. Richard said: “ Keep paddling and don’t look down.” I did as he said, and finally at one point I decided to let my hips do the thinking. This sport, at least at the beginning, depends on balance only obtained from the knees to the midsection. I did not catch any waves, but I think I can get the hang of it. A local guy was out on his SUP too, cruising around on the tentative walls crawling over the Poche Reef and breaking finally on top of the gravelly shore. Late, we all went out to body surf the shorepound-four foot faces now on a rising tide-and caught some good south crashers. I caught some waves and did not make any, so went away with good feelings.
28 September 2009
Three days in San Clemente. A modest south swell was allegedly going to arrive on Saturday and show through Sunday. A long period 6 foot groundswell from the NW was also due to arrive Sunday evening, but it’s a quick hitter and blocked ( originating from 295 degrees) in San Clemente by Santa Catalina Island’s long north-south shadow. That 295 swell is best for Ventura. I nearly traveled without a board, but Olivia and Phaneuf asked if I would take one, and since it is The Primary Rule I slid the Rusty aboard. When heading to the beach, go prepared to surf.
I was in southern Orange County for the 40th reunion of my Webb School class. Webb is an elite school in Claremont that graduated 43 boys in 1969. At least four have died, including two of my best friends from that time. The survivors all look to be near sixty, but beneath the layers of age and experience the shadow of youth persists. Some have become predictably portly, and many act their age. I certainly don’t, and I wonder if I ever will. Many were very happy that I brought some nice buds for them to enjoy. I also brought sweet corn, 20 pounds of kabocha squash and oranges for the official class cocktail: Mount Gay Rum with OJ in a tall glass filled with ice.
Lud Shonnard still has an engaging smile and absurdist sense of humor. Randall Lewis remains mild and selfless despite the fact he and his brothers have built most of the houses in western San Bernardino County. Richard Hastings wanted to be a musician and every day he plays for pay. That may be one of the most significant achievements of any classmate. Greg Stragnell was a gentleman before he moved to Britain, which invented the trait. His kindness is a contrast to how unkind some of us once were. Petty might be a better word, but in any case, now these once rowdy guys are kind and genuine. Mature might be a better word. Even at this late hour, wild man Mike Wray shows glimmers of reflection and introspection. Jordy Ryan was always careful, engaging and mysterious at the same time, which built him well for diplomacy (UNDP). We are at Miles Rosedale’s beach house at the far end of the Capistrano strand, a few yards north of a reefbreak called Poche. I have been down here a number of times and Poche has only been truly rideable once. The reef needs a lot of swell to break. Miles has always been effortlessly generous. He’s decided to have the weekend catered and the food is good. More than anyone, he has tried to find ways to keep us in touch with each other.
Strange nuances surface over the reunion period, and curious coincidences. If we had enjoyed the internet forty years earlier, Bill Kempner and I might have known that one another had lived at the same time on Oahu for four years, Texas ( Houston for Bill, Austin for me) for four years and attended UCSB at the same time as well. In all that time our paths never crossed. I delivered papayas and cucumbers a few blocks from where he lived in Manoa. We obviously paid scant attention to the Alumni Bulletin during those years, which might have reported on our whereabouts. We have both taken up making ceramics again, in preparation against boring retirements no doubt.
John Dey has become a commercial grower of high quality garlic in Klamath Falls. After these many years of preaching to him about organic farming ( his family controls a lot of good ground in the Klamath Basin) he has bought in to organic, but probably not as a result of anything I may have said. There was much more logic to his decision than I would have imparted. Last year John suggested I grow shallots from seed and I brought him a sample of the results. He says the market for them requires a smaller product because people want to buy them in April and May to plant. I think that may be a project for someone else.
Tom Sherrard caught too many little sand rays for my taste. In the summer I am always wary of the bastards. He kept hauling them up on the beach, then we had to release them. I hate them. I have never been wanged by one, but they have sent my friends to the emergency room with their sting.
Richard Hastings and I surfed a little on that south, but it was too punk to break on Poche. The water was warm and a shade of milky turquoise. We ditched our wetsuits and paddled out on Stand Up Paddle boards Richard brought. It was my first time and I fell off frequently. Richard said: “ Keep paddling and don’t look down.” I did as he said, and finally at one point I decided to let my hips do the thinking. This sport, at least at the beginning, depends on balance only obtained from the knees to the midsection. I did not catch any waves, but I think I can get the hang of it. A local guy was out on his SUP too, cruising around on the tentative walls crawling over the Poche Reef and breaking finally on top of the gravelly shore. Late, we all went out to body surf the shorepound-four foot faces now on a rising tide-and caught some good south crashers. I caught some waves and did not make any, so went away with good feelings.
SURF REPORT
24 September 2009
In the former pagan days of surfing during the 1950s and 60s, surfers would get wild during prolonged periods of flatness and burn surfboards as a sacrifice to the surf gods. If we’re blessed, some twisted sense of karma or need has been fulfilled by having all of Francis Oneill’s boards burn in the blaze at Katy’s house in Ojai in the early morning of the 24th.
The good in the disaster is that nearly everything but the boards had been removed because Katy had rented the house and the tenant-who is moving because his last house also burned-had not moved in yet.
The Jack London Desk had been safely moved to my house. The book collection and all the Katy personals had been trucked to storage in Northern California weeks ago. On the morning the house caught fire Katy attended her first classes in graduate school at UC Santa Cruz, wandering around campus entirely distracted by terrible events three hundred miles away, hanging on her cell phone all day, with Francis or her parents or me and Olivia or the insurance people on the other end, calming.
I have wanted to go surfing with Francis and his brother Devin, but the boys are always way too busy and have young children to care for. I would say: “ Hey we’re going to the beach. Let’s hit it!” But they are too responsible. Their work scene requires a lot of inflexibility. Now its not maybe but a must. This business calls for a Pacific Purge. We have to get Francis a new board. Girl gone, board’s burned and the house too. His car mostly melted. Guy has to catch some love with the rising tide.
The Oneills grew up in San Diego County and surfed places like Oceanside and Encinitas when they were young. Their dad is my age and still religiously surfs a board shorter than seven feet. He’s a wiry drywaller down in Escondido. I lived in Escondido forty years ago, and he was there then, when the place was renegades, incipient food freaks and avocado orchards. I hung drywall for a season there with a heroin addict named John. Oneill doesn’t remember him exactly.
One day I went down from Escondido with my guys Ronnie and Fred to surf Oceanside one September day and it was giant. 1972. The sandbars were nothing but turmoil, but a blue-green wall was available outside often enough. Nothing was getting in the way of those big sets though. They came in like a white-out, and there was nothing to do but steam west to get out of the way. I didn’t ride but maybe three or four waves in between and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to survive the thick freight trains closing out at the end of the pier.
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