Ventukong Island

SURF REPORT


20 September 2009

Surfing is a refreshing reward for six hours of carney-barker retail action on hot asphalt. $740 dollars in ones later at the end of another farmers market, most of the melons and tomatoes are gone. We sold 100 ears of corn. This market will never absorb more than one third of what I could bring to it. Maybe even one tenth if I bothered to saddle up. Olivia and I are happy to do it though and lucky because we know a lot of people do not have even this to fall back on. Phaneuf heads off early to climb in Tuolomne and forgets his last watermelon. Pisser is raring to go douse off in whatever ankleslapper reverie avails. The DIP sort of sucks, being a 1.4 from the 165 at 11, the pulse from Tropical Storm Marty, now spent, lightly twirling 540 miles west of lower Baja California. There is also a 3.8 from the 305 at 14. Some North/Northwest Alaskan action. We blow up the DIP on the iphone. We could see how that 305 is feebly wrapping into Rincon, indicating some energy is in the channel from the west. Rincon has an undersea canyon in front of it that will focus swell that will show on the DIP. The camera on C Street shows a lot of small lines in the cove, mostly from TS Marty, the usual crowd, modest wind, and a lowering tide. We’re going.

After we unload the truck. Pisser is already down at the store gathering kitchen refuse for his chickens. The store is in the middle of the afternoon change. K-Li and Kwinn are prepping for the dinner. I sit in the kitchen and tease them as I eat a leftover sandwich from the day before that is not the best thing to eat but its noble. Kwinn is bright and tan from his farm adventures at Mano. K-Li’s boyfriend went ex on her, but she doesn’t have to care that much. Greg and I escape with a modicum of management intercession in his Golf.

We detour to the Shell Shop on Santa Clara. I didn’t buy enough vacation gifts for my employees. When I came back into the store on Friday, Kenny the Guatemalan cook looked fondly at the shell lei I was wearing-the one I got from the Time Share presentation in Wailua, Kauai. I gave it to her on the spot and claimed to the other girls that I had more necklaces but they were buried in my suitcase. In Ventura, I buy 16 two dollar shell necklaces from the Philippines to engender the Aloha. The ones in Hawaii are all from the Philippines too, so what the hell. What counts is the aloha, not the provenance of the necklace.

Five people are out in the cove, where it’s a lot less windy. The tide is so low we walk way out on the eel grass and sand. There is enough wind for 8 kites to be skimming around on the Point. Stables is foaming along but cut up by the westerly. The crowd grows. It is the common mix of hot kids taking off fin-first, including the next Larry Bertleman, motley geezers, blonde honeys, a tubby guy in dreads, two stocky Asian girls, a Latin teenager, some struggling short boarders and anyone else who can’t care less about the NFL. Sets are waist high. The best waves are from TS Marty, which can get lined up for quite a ways down in front of the stairs at the condos. The 305 is bigger on the takeoff but grinds into mush rather shortly, but it does provide two peaks.

Eventually a mob starts beating on congas in the park near shore, and the drumming carries out onto the water. I am a bit giddy from some rides, so I begin a monologue out in the water about “ the primordial drums of Ventukong Island.” I don’t know where the King Kong reference came from. Maybe it is the blonde wahine with golden legs stylishly walking around on her orange cruiser as the congas pound. Maybe its because I recently saw the canyon where the latest Kong was shot on Kauai-with Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrian Brody and far too many horrible beasts. The many drums are loudly pounded competently ashore. Beat change! The blonde fox is too young to remind one of Naomi Watts, or Jessica Lange, but no matter, “all of us will protect the golden beauty from the vile islanders or the vicious Kong, should he appear,” I say to the bewildered Pisser. But then we are surprised to discover that we are not brave crewman of the Venture, searching for Kong Island but instead stealthy islanders who paddle together way outside to steal by far the wave of the day. A head high rogue! The next Larry Bertleman, maybe fourteen years old, surfing in his trunks, is riding far behind us as the wave folds over, but Greg and I are so far in front he is probably not even aware of us.