SURF REPORT
16 August 2009
Sunday: Don’t see how it could be flatter. A 3.3 out of the 315 at nine seconds unimportantly rolls down towards Colnett. And a point nine creeps out of the feeble south. Models promise waves next weekend. Some swell is already in the water, near Johnston Island. But I think the best way to look at it is that its fine to have a forecast and know all you can know, but to not pin your hope to the model.
Was going to go down on Friday with Otter and Prince but even Surfline said it wasn’t rideable, and they’re in the business of making sure people keep surfing so their advertisers can sell leashes and wax and wetsuits, so it had to be miserable. Otter looked at four other sites, like Wetsand, hoping one of the Cassandras will tell him what he wants to read. Saturday was not worth looking at. I picked the hell out of the farm instead. Needed two trucks to transport it all to the farmers market. Watermelon be bulky.
B
Surf’s been miserable for three-four days. The south died off on Tuesday, unridden. Pha-lat. Pancake lumberyard flat. Don’t make much difference how much hoo-haw the prognosticators make about the Mendocino Gradient or some big blow off the Ross Ice Shelf generally, we wait around until its here and then we jump it and then it wanes and we go back to breaking down boxes and watering our abandoned landscaping.
Ordered:
2x banana
Romaine
3x Spring mix
peeled garlic
yam
2x avocado
I wonder if I would go to The Farmer and The Cook regularly if I did not own it. I like the food, but would it be the same without me or my wife? I probably would have gone there all the time until they 86ed me for always trying to pick up on the hot teenagers I hire. I don’t hire them because they are hot. My wife and I share the responsibility, but I do tend to hire hot over plain. Some of my fellow leches give me the thumbs up when we have brought aboard an exceptionally nubile co-ed, and then it gets embarrassing because I have to explain the truth, but it sounds like one of the all-time lamest lies or just crazy.
Something like “ Well, she said she wanted her own business someday.”
Went down on Tuesday in the dusk with Phaneuf and Seed and it was El Punko. John pitched the ball for his dog until Seed would run no more. Piss wind on chilled fog and no swell. Felt like November. Watched from the kelpy sand at Mondos as three guys cruised the ankle-high ripples from some dead storm to the south.
Next day, John worked with Francis O’Neil and I tried to fix the tomato drier. Ran to Ventura Electric and bought the world’s most expensive fuses, then up to Nuckleheads for a check. I figured if I had to whiz soon I may as well avail of the Nuckle Porta-John. It was pure crumb-bumb. I wrote Phaneuf, telling him he “wouldn’t surf it with Rob Lowe’s stick.” Congratulated myself for hours on how clever that was. On my way back from a fruitless search for plexiglass at Huge Hardware, he writes back:
“ Last night just made me need to stay away.”
Monday, August 17, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
SURF REPORT ( The DIP)
SURF REPORT
8 AUGUST 2009
We have credible data resources that assist in obtaining waves. Take “the dip”. We look at CDIP - AKA “the dip”- continually, for knowledge, to be reassured, and for a surprise. CDIP started on the computers and now its an icon on the Iphones. Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego operates the dip, which takes wave measurements at the buoy off Point Conception, then paints a revealing picture of what’s striking the Southern California bight.
Scripps is running a survey currently plumbing user comments. One of the questions I would pose is: “ Do you have CDIP as the start page on your browser?”
Or: “Do you have a special folder for all the CDIPs you have saved from specific swell events you have surfed?”
You’re basically hoping for yellow on CDIP, just a little yellow, though green is always good and because bronze would be too much to ask for, and red just might be more than you can handle. More on these colors, later, perhaps even in this report.
At a recent dinner party, Phaneuf sneaks a peek at the DIP between bites of sweet corn, then shows a seething 4.1 from the 175 to all interested attendees. Whoa ! The lemon fingers of Hurricane Felicia are reaching out between Anacapa and Point Mugu so seductively. We know better than to move forward into full prattle. One picture is indeed worth a thousand words.
The pros said she would not send it, but I knew she would when she stalled at 144 west and then did a little northerly wobble. It must be Felicia. there is only a ten second period between waves.
I should point out now that we A: speak in a number-infused jargon. And B: We have already written a comic piece based on the jargon, including tides, wetsuit thicknesses and water temps and all the rest. The 175 is a compass reading, in that if you go 360 you will hit the North Pole, a 180, the South Pole. A 175 is coming straight up into the south-facing Pacific shores of North America, and there are not many of them.
We know from Friday that small swells from the south are striking and forecast to peak over the weekend. The dip is going 3.1 from the 185. We know we have to pick for the farmers market early, but can finish up the onions and sort the potatoes after we surf. I get the basil out of the way, and acquiesce to parsley. Its been awhile since we took parsley, and we know we should haul a bit more variety to the market. We look so boring behind our commonplace mounds of potatoes, onions and squash. I have three hundred pounds of vine ripe tomatoes, but they’re so so what? We are not known as tomato people, and Cadwell has been selling the best heirlooms in the world since April. My little gestural tomato pile will add a bit of flash next to the cippolinis.
Phaneuf is already down by ten thirty watching that 185 strike the high tide Nucklehead bar and he wants to know what the hell is taking us. He textplains that the beach is packed with Winnebagos and Renegades sporting Jolly Rogers, so he actually is more towards Trader Joes than the Nuckle, but as Otterbein heaves to at the dusty riprap, we can see that we better grab what we can park in and that the whole beach has shoulder high peaks peeling sweetly left and right. There’s folks, but probably more waves than riders.
Water warm, waves frequent, tide perfect, glad I cut that old 3/2 off at the knee.
8 AUGUST 2009
We have credible data resources that assist in obtaining waves. Take “the dip”. We look at CDIP - AKA “the dip”- continually, for knowledge, to be reassured, and for a surprise. CDIP started on the computers and now its an icon on the Iphones. Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego operates the dip, which takes wave measurements at the buoy off Point Conception, then paints a revealing picture of what’s striking the Southern California bight.
Scripps is running a survey currently plumbing user comments. One of the questions I would pose is: “ Do you have CDIP as the start page on your browser?”
Or: “Do you have a special folder for all the CDIPs you have saved from specific swell events you have surfed?”
You’re basically hoping for yellow on CDIP, just a little yellow, though green is always good and because bronze would be too much to ask for, and red just might be more than you can handle. More on these colors, later, perhaps even in this report.
At a recent dinner party, Phaneuf sneaks a peek at the DIP between bites of sweet corn, then shows a seething 4.1 from the 175 to all interested attendees. Whoa ! The lemon fingers of Hurricane Felicia are reaching out between Anacapa and Point Mugu so seductively. We know better than to move forward into full prattle. One picture is indeed worth a thousand words.
The pros said she would not send it, but I knew she would when she stalled at 144 west and then did a little northerly wobble. It must be Felicia. there is only a ten second period between waves.
I should point out now that we A: speak in a number-infused jargon. And B: We have already written a comic piece based on the jargon, including tides, wetsuit thicknesses and water temps and all the rest. The 175 is a compass reading, in that if you go 360 you will hit the North Pole, a 180, the South Pole. A 175 is coming straight up into the south-facing Pacific shores of North America, and there are not many of them.
We know from Friday that small swells from the south are striking and forecast to peak over the weekend. The dip is going 3.1 from the 185. We know we have to pick for the farmers market early, but can finish up the onions and sort the potatoes after we surf. I get the basil out of the way, and acquiesce to parsley. Its been awhile since we took parsley, and we know we should haul a bit more variety to the market. We look so boring behind our commonplace mounds of potatoes, onions and squash. I have three hundred pounds of vine ripe tomatoes, but they’re so so what? We are not known as tomato people, and Cadwell has been selling the best heirlooms in the world since April. My little gestural tomato pile will add a bit of flash next to the cippolinis.
Phaneuf is already down by ten thirty watching that 185 strike the high tide Nucklehead bar and he wants to know what the hell is taking us. He textplains that the beach is packed with Winnebagos and Renegades sporting Jolly Rogers, so he actually is more towards Trader Joes than the Nuckle, but as Otterbein heaves to at the dusty riprap, we can see that we better grab what we can park in and that the whole beach has shoulder high peaks peeling sweetly left and right. There’s folks, but probably more waves than riders.
Water warm, waves frequent, tide perfect, glad I cut that old 3/2 off at the knee.
SURF REPORT (Bone Detail)
SURF REPORT
( 7 AUGUST 2009)
Bone Detail. That’s what the Iwo Jima Marine said they called interment ceremonies back then. Its not in the literature, and I am not sure I want it to be. Bone Detail. Cold, perfunctory task. Dig a hole, say some words, put the Marine in the hole. Shoot seven guns three times. The bugle plays taps. You go back to the barracks or to the club just down from the south gate and kill a pitcher with your buddies.
Prince and I got our ties on and chugged down to Oxnard to Richard Phaneuf’s funeral. Pisser’s got on a weird wool pork pie hat that only The P can pull off. He doesn’t need a jacket as long as he has that hat on. The conditions were pristine, by the way, especially for 1245 PM. The wee peek at Cobblestones was delicious. White water caressed the shore as we banged down 101 in The Beast. South showing. We had our boards in back because we were driving all the way to the coast. It’s a major rule. John Phaneuf thought he might even be able to go, even though it was his father’s funeral and huge family considerations weighed in. But he deserved to go, and it might be well to recharge and step back. The actual paddling out may be inappropriate, but there is no harm in thinking you might have a chance.
We were not too late for the ceremony at Santa Clara Cemetery. Began to cut across a lawn full of gravemarkers and wondered if certain manners where being ignored. There were 70 people graveside. Phaneuf was so sharp in his black suit he could have been an undertaker. Or a corpse. Borrowed a fancy Hugo Boss from a hereby anonymous friend. Monika was a beautiful mourner. She put herself down nicely by falsely bragging about her New York shoes being worth a month’s rent.
The service was too long to be considered perfunctory, but it was nonetheless rote. Prince and I wondered why the priest began to stroll around the crowd, still spouting, shouting to God with our backs to him. What went wrong when the lady Navy bugler fiddled with her electronic taps horn, which began to play the tinny recording before she could put the bugle to her lips? Bummer, honey. But the riflemen made up for it. Why did the ceremony suddenly turn makeshift, with tractors suddenly roaring up, hardhats doing things perhaps better suited to the suddenly disappeared clutch of fat officials? The confusion on handling Lt. Colonel Phaneuf’s ashes and sudden evaporation of protocol made the penultimate moment clumsy. Memo: devise something more subtle than a Case 2750 backhoe dumping dirt into the grave. And while were on it, the cemetery folks might fix up the east end of the grounds. It would be nice for those visiting the most recently deceased if they did not have to stare at an unkempt construction zone. The piles of dead branches are not symbolic. The good thing is there is obviously a lot of room left at Santa Clara for the rest of us.
Prince and I hit it to the yacht club for the reception. We both served long terms in Texas, and we can’t escape the lure of barbeque. Chased a seagull off the grill. I never had a Coors Light before. Had two. They are pretty good. Prince had seconds on the barbeque and explained that the French meaning for the word, which describes a steel spit entering a pigs mouth at the beard or barb end, and running straight through the animal to the que, or anus. I held off on the seconds.
We chatted and observed some USMC memorabilia. Lt. Col Phaneuf was a credit to his generation. Common people do not rise from enlistment private to battalion commander. I felt like I got enough from the event and feared becoming involved in too many vapid interchanges, and Pisser was ready to go so we flew to our errands, scored the shade cloth from American Horticultural and were two minutes late getting to Cal Pine for the boxes.
We drove back to Nuckleheads and watched the rollers crumble over on the broad sand at low tide. That south was definitely showing. I texted Phaneuf, telling him it would be good better-like in two hours, just in case everybody at the wake went their separate ways before the sun went down.
( 7 AUGUST 2009)
Bone Detail. That’s what the Iwo Jima Marine said they called interment ceremonies back then. Its not in the literature, and I am not sure I want it to be. Bone Detail. Cold, perfunctory task. Dig a hole, say some words, put the Marine in the hole. Shoot seven guns three times. The bugle plays taps. You go back to the barracks or to the club just down from the south gate and kill a pitcher with your buddies.
Prince and I got our ties on and chugged down to Oxnard to Richard Phaneuf’s funeral. Pisser’s got on a weird wool pork pie hat that only The P can pull off. He doesn’t need a jacket as long as he has that hat on. The conditions were pristine, by the way, especially for 1245 PM. The wee peek at Cobblestones was delicious. White water caressed the shore as we banged down 101 in The Beast. South showing. We had our boards in back because we were driving all the way to the coast. It’s a major rule. John Phaneuf thought he might even be able to go, even though it was his father’s funeral and huge family considerations weighed in. But he deserved to go, and it might be well to recharge and step back. The actual paddling out may be inappropriate, but there is no harm in thinking you might have a chance.
We were not too late for the ceremony at Santa Clara Cemetery. Began to cut across a lawn full of gravemarkers and wondered if certain manners where being ignored. There were 70 people graveside. Phaneuf was so sharp in his black suit he could have been an undertaker. Or a corpse. Borrowed a fancy Hugo Boss from a hereby anonymous friend. Monika was a beautiful mourner. She put herself down nicely by falsely bragging about her New York shoes being worth a month’s rent.
The service was too long to be considered perfunctory, but it was nonetheless rote. Prince and I wondered why the priest began to stroll around the crowd, still spouting, shouting to God with our backs to him. What went wrong when the lady Navy bugler fiddled with her electronic taps horn, which began to play the tinny recording before she could put the bugle to her lips? Bummer, honey. But the riflemen made up for it. Why did the ceremony suddenly turn makeshift, with tractors suddenly roaring up, hardhats doing things perhaps better suited to the suddenly disappeared clutch of fat officials? The confusion on handling Lt. Colonel Phaneuf’s ashes and sudden evaporation of protocol made the penultimate moment clumsy. Memo: devise something more subtle than a Case 2750 backhoe dumping dirt into the grave. And while were on it, the cemetery folks might fix up the east end of the grounds. It would be nice for those visiting the most recently deceased if they did not have to stare at an unkempt construction zone. The piles of dead branches are not symbolic. The good thing is there is obviously a lot of room left at Santa Clara for the rest of us.
Prince and I hit it to the yacht club for the reception. We both served long terms in Texas, and we can’t escape the lure of barbeque. Chased a seagull off the grill. I never had a Coors Light before. Had two. They are pretty good. Prince had seconds on the barbeque and explained that the French meaning for the word, which describes a steel spit entering a pigs mouth at the beard or barb end, and running straight through the animal to the que, or anus. I held off on the seconds.
We chatted and observed some USMC memorabilia. Lt. Col Phaneuf was a credit to his generation. Common people do not rise from enlistment private to battalion commander. I felt like I got enough from the event and feared becoming involved in too many vapid interchanges, and Pisser was ready to go so we flew to our errands, scored the shade cloth from American Horticultural and were two minutes late getting to Cal Pine for the boxes.
We drove back to Nuckleheads and watched the rollers crumble over on the broad sand at low tide. That south was definitely showing. I texted Phaneuf, telling him it would be good better-like in two hours, just in case everybody at the wake went their separate ways before the sun went down.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
SURF REPORT #7
SURF REPORT
SURF REPORT #7 ( 6 AUGUST 2009)
Burning hot since midday and been dry for eight days. A little wobbly from one too many McKiernan’s yesterday with Glazetron. If there is wet then I am for it. Cool water remedy. JPhan is working in Camarillo, no swell of note, good timing, but GPrince is ready and at four we begin our sojourn. We toy with the gore-point at the junction of 101 and the 33, deciding at last to go to Nucklehead because the wind is up, of course. Surfkites are out at lower Emma. The channel is whitecapping moderately under 15 knot breezes. Things don’t seem impossible. Drained at low tide, the Nuckle is chopped but rideable. We sit on the dirt shoulder watching the tiny turmoil, talking about the Pisser’s new greenhouse plans. The farther north we go, the better the conditions and the smaller the ‘swell’. We agree that planting basil and tomatoes will be adventurously experimental and sound fiduciary practice. We run to Javon, then all the way to Shores, sit on the sand in some wooden chairs there, reminiscing, then make a move to the Mitt, which is scudding on a low tide. Back to Nuckle. We text Phaneuf as usual along the way to keep him and his broad subscriber base fully informed on our surf-pathos. A select few may be able to glean vital data from our nuanced reports.
By now the tide has come up and there are windswell sets falling on the sandbars from Nuckles to Trader Joes. A few sloppy lefts evidence the 205-215 out there somewhere, gravely refracted as it slips through the channels. We have committed to a Three Wave Minimum. The sea is sloppy but not without form. When we get out, it’s suddenly shoulder high, but a five to six second period between waves means flat troughs and hard-to-catch mush, then a sudden dump. But there are no waves for miles to either side of us.
I’m a bit leery of committing to surf the dumpy mayhem on the heels of my last injury on the dreaded Nuckles bar, but I choose safely. Pisser nabs some decent waves. After a medium washer, I try to paddle back out only to be trashed by an eight wave onslaught that drives me nearly down to Emma. Where did this windswell come from? The current is rolling south. I paddle through and trek north, chasing GPrinze. Wanting to wring joy from a waist-high feebler, I ride to shore then splash for too long through another parade of dumpers marking out the zone. But we are giddy with the silliness and fortune. Nobody is surfing in Oxnard. Its good to be tired, to have dunked, to have been caught inside!. Justin pulls up while we are pulling off our wetsuits.
SURF REPORT #7 ( 6 AUGUST 2009)
Burning hot since midday and been dry for eight days. A little wobbly from one too many McKiernan’s yesterday with Glazetron. If there is wet then I am for it. Cool water remedy. JPhan is working in Camarillo, no swell of note, good timing, but GPrince is ready and at four we begin our sojourn. We toy with the gore-point at the junction of 101 and the 33, deciding at last to go to Nucklehead because the wind is up, of course. Surfkites are out at lower Emma. The channel is whitecapping moderately under 15 knot breezes. Things don’t seem impossible. Drained at low tide, the Nuckle is chopped but rideable. We sit on the dirt shoulder watching the tiny turmoil, talking about the Pisser’s new greenhouse plans. The farther north we go, the better the conditions and the smaller the ‘swell’. We agree that planting basil and tomatoes will be adventurously experimental and sound fiduciary practice. We run to Javon, then all the way to Shores, sit on the sand in some wooden chairs there, reminiscing, then make a move to the Mitt, which is scudding on a low tide. Back to Nuckle. We text Phaneuf as usual along the way to keep him and his broad subscriber base fully informed on our surf-pathos. A select few may be able to glean vital data from our nuanced reports.
By now the tide has come up and there are windswell sets falling on the sandbars from Nuckles to Trader Joes. A few sloppy lefts evidence the 205-215 out there somewhere, gravely refracted as it slips through the channels. We have committed to a Three Wave Minimum. The sea is sloppy but not without form. When we get out, it’s suddenly shoulder high, but a five to six second period between waves means flat troughs and hard-to-catch mush, then a sudden dump. But there are no waves for miles to either side of us.
I’m a bit leery of committing to surf the dumpy mayhem on the heels of my last injury on the dreaded Nuckles bar, but I choose safely. Pisser nabs some decent waves. After a medium washer, I try to paddle back out only to be trashed by an eight wave onslaught that drives me nearly down to Emma. Where did this windswell come from? The current is rolling south. I paddle through and trek north, chasing GPrinze. Wanting to wring joy from a waist-high feebler, I ride to shore then splash for too long through another parade of dumpers marking out the zone. But we are giddy with the silliness and fortune. Nobody is surfing in Oxnard. Its good to be tired, to have dunked, to have been caught inside!. Justin pulls up while we are pulling off our wetsuits.
Monday, August 3, 2009
SURF REPORT
S U R F R E P O R T
By STEVE SPRINKEL
SURF REPORT # 1 (26 July09)
Surfed out, and backbad, courtesy of extreme headfirst bailout on a Nucklehead wall on Sunday. The Swell of the Summer’s swan song, but it was still energetic. On the bail, just after plunging into the sucking trough, the wave folded over and whipped my hips around in a quick el-snappo. Over the falls went I for further humiliation. I knew the gravity of my error shortly thereafter. Memo: If you want to surf some more of the easier combers when you are 61, lay off the suicide beachbreak drops on your 9’6” when its dredging. Just because the young (45s) crowd wants to charge it on their skateboards, tis no challenge for the formerly crippled to take up at such a late date.
Planted 2200 corn plants with Francisco. Forgot to bring long pants. 11 rows 200 feet long. After knee-crawling like a Virgin of Guacamole penitent on the clods, knees could bleed. Remembering the ancient turquoise longjohn Chris Engle gave me, I cut it up with a dull knife and made some swift neoprene kneepads. I pigsweat in the pads, which filled with mud, but my ego was nearly as pleased as my knees with the invention. We laid the drip in short order and were mighty gratified.
SURF REPORT # 2 ( 28July09):
No surf. Actually little to no surfing. We are on the road to San Francisco. Flat from San Diego to Santa Cruz, modest sneaker south on the western exposure, hitting creekmouths and sandbars above Davenport to Half Moon Bay. Remember Waddel. We’d ride it. An itty crew out near Montara.
SURF REPORT #3 ( 29JULY09)
Common data reveals little to no surf available. In San Francisco, doing lip glances off the hills from Cole Valley to Hays Valley, paddling back out through thick latte. Though they got some peaks here, these valleys should be called coves because of their modest dimensions. But calling a place Noe Valley is sort of smart and romantic, as if this place needs any more of both. Back at the shack in Ashbery Heights. I can see the straights through the fog from the Purcell’s west window. No whitewater gargling on the far rocks of Marin.
SURF REPORT #4 (1 August 09)
A man on SF Craigslist in Pacifica has a balsa longboard he is selling for $500. We trade info. It’s a hollow-type Balsa Flite from Skip Kozminski in Ecuador. I decide its not going to be my new board because my surf budget is dedicated to a new 4/3 for the winter. I call as a courtesy. He is not there, hopefully out surfing. The Georgia O’Keefe exhibit at the museum downtown rewrites her stature in the pantheon. She is showing with some Ansel Adams photos and a bit of same-period referential work by others. Afterward we cruise the Richard Avedon show ( Rogues Gallery of an evil time) and the permanent collection. Memo: Stop buying the Rauchenbergs and the Warhols. Those ideas are not worth the paint.
SURF REPORT#5 ( 2 August 09)
Driving down from SF, from Ocean Beach to Santa Cruz. We were looking for Auntie Trish’s rental deep in the Avenues and ran buy Mollusc, the fabled surfshop where Jeff and Tyler Manson once slept in the tower. O ran into inquire about Jeff. I drove around the neighborhood looking for parking. After ten minutes I came back to get her and hear her report. No Jeff, just some kids folding new Ts for sale. She told me breathlessly about the book she was reading in there about Bunker Spreckles. I knew Bunky when he was a mere grem, which usage should date that acquaintance properly. Bunker was my roommate at Webb Camp School in the San Juan Islands until he got kicked out for smoking cigarettes and mysteriously coming up with wine in his possession. The nearest store was half an hour away by car. We were fifteen. Bill Webb tried to deport Bunky, but his mom, Kay, was incognito in the South of France. Could not be reached. Traveling. So Buffalo Bill pitched a large Army tent out in a far field in order to sequester the miscreant millionaire. Bunky had figured that such brazen action would land him on a jet to Maui or La Jolla, but he had not figured his mom, who was as famous as most celebrities, could ditch him and go missing.
Just after Bunker started living in his tent I got caught up in a free-for-all and got one of my testicals smashed. The thing got as big as a grapefruit and eventually I moved out to the infirmary so the nurse could monitor my swelling and give me painkillers, which were adamantly required. The infirmary was the last building onsite, and just across the meadow from Camp Spreckles. In the evening, I remember reading The Old Man and The Sea and watching the shadows of various visitors painted on the walls of Bunker’s tent from across the meadow. Buffalo Bill’s punishment had backfired on him and he done built Bunky a den of iniquity.
Bunker had heard I was laid up and he snuck over one afternoon and talked with me through the screen. He was raring to be set free. Bunker made me show him my swollen ball, and he was really impressed. On my last day in the infirmary I hobbled bowlegged out to the tent to check on him. I felt sorry for him, marooned out there in the field. He was smoking a cigarette with another camper, who clumsily tried to hide his smoke. Bunker told him not to worry. I was cool.
I don’t believe I had ever been cool before. I had wanted to be cool, as most people yearn to be. But now that I had been defined by Bunky, who was entertaining and bore coolness in his sunburnt peeled nose, sunbleached hair, effecting beachy lingo, effortless cigarette huffing, I found my coolness repulsive. Bunky was already a sad case, a loser, adrift on a sea of money without the security of real affection.
I had some other coincidental moments with Bunker. I saw him on Ehukai Beach around the time he died. He overdosed, of course. He looked like a bloated barfly and was ranting like a stevedore, tossing his blonde mane around for full cinematic effect. His voice was unrecognizable from the 25 years that had intervened since our youth. I stepped up the beach as if to greet him, then turned and walked toward the parking lot. I had nothing to say. I had just gotten out of the water and did not want to dirty any part of me up.
Sometimes I say Sprinkel and people think they hear Spreckles. Sometimes I tell a story, sometimes I just say I am glad I am not.
Stunning conditions all the way down to Cruz. Not much swell, but a few sets especially at Montara and San Gregorio. Sunlit Tunitas is so charming but its normally blowing like hell, raining, or foggy with a sideshore piss wind. Waddel had some people out. Beaches curiously empty for such a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
SURF REPORT (3 August2009)
Barely breaking at Asilomar. The calm clarity of the day is revealed on satellite by the dry cut-off low spinning a few hundred miles to the west, keeping the fogbank in check.
Dallied at the Deer Haven Inn on Sinex, reading, writing. Wanted a Peete’s real bad, then ducked that chain-store for the East Village Café (498 Washington) which produces a fine cup o’chino. Tired pastry, but we are spoiled. Got another chino to go!
Up the 68 toward Salinas.Worked the Spreckles cutoff to 101, past the best farmland in the region. Yo, Bunky, you might have commanded all this farm instead of pissing it away with Dora at Impossibles. Its all the same, though, bro, I guess its all the same.
Spreckles, CA, 93962. California and Hawaii sugar ( C and H on the bag and box). Pioneered with sugar beets, now producing Tanimura’s lettuce and broccoli. We ran down through the Salinas Valley in full production. Huge teams of people harvesting into automated packing systems, probably twelve to fifteen people on a line. Promised ourselves to take the Jolon Road to Big Sur. Last Accomplished in 1971.
Pulled in at the Cal Poly SLO Organic Farm as they were just putting together their CSA. Chatted with Anastasia while she dandled her infant. They have done well and expanded.
Eating well in San Luis Obispo though is still untenable. We rummage our histories of medoicrity in the place and seize on a trip to provision at New Frontier aiming to picnic with Cesar in Pismo. We snare two heads of Romaine, a lemon, garlic, Parmesan, and some artisan organic bread named Provincio from Minneapolis. We were about to bag the old conventional standby from La Brea when O found the Provincio. $7.59 is an above average cost for superior value.
We are going with the price upgrades, and done with the fearful attitudes and cranky tone. Raise all the boats, and ignore the beurgeoise insistence to be cheap, aka affordable. Cheap benefits the mass producer. And this cheapness is draining the middle class down, as if they drink their own blood.
Rolling south past Avila, we spied a little beach access north of Pismo, in Shell beach and made our salad with anchovies from Boulets Larder with the impeccable Spanish Merola olive oil using the All Star organic smoked salt, all from the SaturdayFerry Farmers Market. We lazed on a comforter under the cypress and drank cold Per Bacco Pinot Grigio from De Palo’s store, ate the last of Golam’s dried persimmons from last fall and watched a southwest swell hit the little reef below while a personal water craft marred the silence with its querulous whine.
Everything south of there was flat until we got to Solimar. Justin and his friend were suiting up at Nuckles as we drove past.
We arrive at the Farmer and The Cook to discover further evidence of our drear un-professionalism. Its really too much to expect something like this to function because it is all done without design. Its like perpindicular sets of wheels on the same vehicle. One end thinks it making a turn, the other is still in the parking lot.
By STEVE SPRINKEL
SURF REPORT # 1 (26 July09)
Surfed out, and backbad, courtesy of extreme headfirst bailout on a Nucklehead wall on Sunday. The Swell of the Summer’s swan song, but it was still energetic. On the bail, just after plunging into the sucking trough, the wave folded over and whipped my hips around in a quick el-snappo. Over the falls went I for further humiliation. I knew the gravity of my error shortly thereafter. Memo: If you want to surf some more of the easier combers when you are 61, lay off the suicide beachbreak drops on your 9’6” when its dredging. Just because the young (45s) crowd wants to charge it on their skateboards, tis no challenge for the formerly crippled to take up at such a late date.
Planted 2200 corn plants with Francisco. Forgot to bring long pants. 11 rows 200 feet long. After knee-crawling like a Virgin of Guacamole penitent on the clods, knees could bleed. Remembering the ancient turquoise longjohn Chris Engle gave me, I cut it up with a dull knife and made some swift neoprene kneepads. I pigsweat in the pads, which filled with mud, but my ego was nearly as pleased as my knees with the invention. We laid the drip in short order and were mighty gratified.
SURF REPORT # 2 ( 28July09):
No surf. Actually little to no surfing. We are on the road to San Francisco. Flat from San Diego to Santa Cruz, modest sneaker south on the western exposure, hitting creekmouths and sandbars above Davenport to Half Moon Bay. Remember Waddel. We’d ride it. An itty crew out near Montara.
SURF REPORT #3 ( 29JULY09)
Common data reveals little to no surf available. In San Francisco, doing lip glances off the hills from Cole Valley to Hays Valley, paddling back out through thick latte. Though they got some peaks here, these valleys should be called coves because of their modest dimensions. But calling a place Noe Valley is sort of smart and romantic, as if this place needs any more of both. Back at the shack in Ashbery Heights. I can see the straights through the fog from the Purcell’s west window. No whitewater gargling on the far rocks of Marin.
SURF REPORT #4 (1 August 09)
A man on SF Craigslist in Pacifica has a balsa longboard he is selling for $500. We trade info. It’s a hollow-type Balsa Flite from Skip Kozminski in Ecuador. I decide its not going to be my new board because my surf budget is dedicated to a new 4/3 for the winter. I call as a courtesy. He is not there, hopefully out surfing. The Georgia O’Keefe exhibit at the museum downtown rewrites her stature in the pantheon. She is showing with some Ansel Adams photos and a bit of same-period referential work by others. Afterward we cruise the Richard Avedon show ( Rogues Gallery of an evil time) and the permanent collection. Memo: Stop buying the Rauchenbergs and the Warhols. Those ideas are not worth the paint.
SURF REPORT#5 ( 2 August 09)
Driving down from SF, from Ocean Beach to Santa Cruz. We were looking for Auntie Trish’s rental deep in the Avenues and ran buy Mollusc, the fabled surfshop where Jeff and Tyler Manson once slept in the tower. O ran into inquire about Jeff. I drove around the neighborhood looking for parking. After ten minutes I came back to get her and hear her report. No Jeff, just some kids folding new Ts for sale. She told me breathlessly about the book she was reading in there about Bunker Spreckles. I knew Bunky when he was a mere grem, which usage should date that acquaintance properly. Bunker was my roommate at Webb Camp School in the San Juan Islands until he got kicked out for smoking cigarettes and mysteriously coming up with wine in his possession. The nearest store was half an hour away by car. We were fifteen. Bill Webb tried to deport Bunky, but his mom, Kay, was incognito in the South of France. Could not be reached. Traveling. So Buffalo Bill pitched a large Army tent out in a far field in order to sequester the miscreant millionaire. Bunky had figured that such brazen action would land him on a jet to Maui or La Jolla, but he had not figured his mom, who was as famous as most celebrities, could ditch him and go missing.
Just after Bunker started living in his tent I got caught up in a free-for-all and got one of my testicals smashed. The thing got as big as a grapefruit and eventually I moved out to the infirmary so the nurse could monitor my swelling and give me painkillers, which were adamantly required. The infirmary was the last building onsite, and just across the meadow from Camp Spreckles. In the evening, I remember reading The Old Man and The Sea and watching the shadows of various visitors painted on the walls of Bunker’s tent from across the meadow. Buffalo Bill’s punishment had backfired on him and he done built Bunky a den of iniquity.
Bunker had heard I was laid up and he snuck over one afternoon and talked with me through the screen. He was raring to be set free. Bunker made me show him my swollen ball, and he was really impressed. On my last day in the infirmary I hobbled bowlegged out to the tent to check on him. I felt sorry for him, marooned out there in the field. He was smoking a cigarette with another camper, who clumsily tried to hide his smoke. Bunker told him not to worry. I was cool.
I don’t believe I had ever been cool before. I had wanted to be cool, as most people yearn to be. But now that I had been defined by Bunky, who was entertaining and bore coolness in his sunburnt peeled nose, sunbleached hair, effecting beachy lingo, effortless cigarette huffing, I found my coolness repulsive. Bunky was already a sad case, a loser, adrift on a sea of money without the security of real affection.
I had some other coincidental moments with Bunker. I saw him on Ehukai Beach around the time he died. He overdosed, of course. He looked like a bloated barfly and was ranting like a stevedore, tossing his blonde mane around for full cinematic effect. His voice was unrecognizable from the 25 years that had intervened since our youth. I stepped up the beach as if to greet him, then turned and walked toward the parking lot. I had nothing to say. I had just gotten out of the water and did not want to dirty any part of me up.
Sometimes I say Sprinkel and people think they hear Spreckles. Sometimes I tell a story, sometimes I just say I am glad I am not.
Stunning conditions all the way down to Cruz. Not much swell, but a few sets especially at Montara and San Gregorio. Sunlit Tunitas is so charming but its normally blowing like hell, raining, or foggy with a sideshore piss wind. Waddel had some people out. Beaches curiously empty for such a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
SURF REPORT (3 August2009)
Barely breaking at Asilomar. The calm clarity of the day is revealed on satellite by the dry cut-off low spinning a few hundred miles to the west, keeping the fogbank in check.
Dallied at the Deer Haven Inn on Sinex, reading, writing. Wanted a Peete’s real bad, then ducked that chain-store for the East Village Café (498 Washington) which produces a fine cup o’chino. Tired pastry, but we are spoiled. Got another chino to go!
Up the 68 toward Salinas.Worked the Spreckles cutoff to 101, past the best farmland in the region. Yo, Bunky, you might have commanded all this farm instead of pissing it away with Dora at Impossibles. Its all the same, though, bro, I guess its all the same.
Spreckles, CA, 93962. California and Hawaii sugar ( C and H on the bag and box). Pioneered with sugar beets, now producing Tanimura’s lettuce and broccoli. We ran down through the Salinas Valley in full production. Huge teams of people harvesting into automated packing systems, probably twelve to fifteen people on a line. Promised ourselves to take the Jolon Road to Big Sur. Last Accomplished in 1971.
Pulled in at the Cal Poly SLO Organic Farm as they were just putting together their CSA. Chatted with Anastasia while she dandled her infant. They have done well and expanded.
Eating well in San Luis Obispo though is still untenable. We rummage our histories of medoicrity in the place and seize on a trip to provision at New Frontier aiming to picnic with Cesar in Pismo. We snare two heads of Romaine, a lemon, garlic, Parmesan, and some artisan organic bread named Provincio from Minneapolis. We were about to bag the old conventional standby from La Brea when O found the Provincio. $7.59 is an above average cost for superior value.
We are going with the price upgrades, and done with the fearful attitudes and cranky tone. Raise all the boats, and ignore the beurgeoise insistence to be cheap, aka affordable. Cheap benefits the mass producer. And this cheapness is draining the middle class down, as if they drink their own blood.
Rolling south past Avila, we spied a little beach access north of Pismo, in Shell beach and made our salad with anchovies from Boulets Larder with the impeccable Spanish Merola olive oil using the All Star organic smoked salt, all from the SaturdayFerry Farmers Market. We lazed on a comforter under the cypress and drank cold Per Bacco Pinot Grigio from De Palo’s store, ate the last of Golam’s dried persimmons from last fall and watched a southwest swell hit the little reef below while a personal water craft marred the silence with its querulous whine.
Everything south of there was flat until we got to Solimar. Justin and his friend were suiting up at Nuckles as we drove past.
We arrive at the Farmer and The Cook to discover further evidence of our drear un-professionalism. Its really too much to expect something like this to function because it is all done without design. Its like perpindicular sets of wheels on the same vehicle. One end thinks it making a turn, the other is still in the parking lot.
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