Stephen Davis is, evidently, headed back home from several months working in the Midwest. His son, Emmett, with him, they apparently took the train from the Chicago area, down to Ohio, picked up a car from an Aunt, kind of a replacement for the car Steve gave to his Psychic in an earlier chapter of his life.
I’m guessing it was valuable father/son bonding time, but it doesn’t look like he scored epic San Onofre. That would be using the surfer logic, “It can’t be good; no one’s out.” I’m looking forward to Stephen’s return. We have a plan to    hit an elusive spot on Cape Flattery.                                                                                                                                                   Wait, maybe there’s one person out, and, way over to the left, that might be just the edge of someone. This is a different angle of the whole San Onofre/Church/Trestles area than I saw, back when we’d trek there from Fallbrook. This is quite a ways south of the power plant in the area where, back in the pre-I-5, Slaughter Alley days, cops and/or Marines would often be seen escorting surfers off this same beach; possibly, if the surfers were lucky, just back to their vehicles parked off Surf Route 101- possibly minus surfboards. If they were even luckier, the surfers may have scored some epic Camp Pendleton waves.