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.