Now, of course, it’s Spring Break, dropping Jesus out of it. I’m not arguing that, in a secular society, it is appropriate. Probably not at Church Schools. Some church schools. Anyway, it seems I had a lot of things happening on Spring/Easter vacations. Including this one; my family, plus my girlfriend, Trish, out at Borrego Springs, dirt-biking it.
me, Trish, my Dad with his usual look, two of my three brothers Jon and Philip, with theirs. Note the surfbump on my knee.
More later, maybe, on this; but, briefly, my parents had to go back to Fallbrook because one of my three sisters had some kind of (and this frequently happened on family outings- Mary Jane stepping on a stingray, for example) medical issue, chickenpox or something, and my youngest brother had some sort of issue with the rest of us, held us at bay with a 26 ounce coke bottle until Trish took it away from him. Then he sulked. Anyway, this is where I decided I was fine with dirt-biking, but after hitting a side wind at 70 miles an hour, I would take my chances with rocks and shorebreaks.
I just received this photo from my older sister, Suellen; so, I haven’t seen it for fifty-some years.
As a thank you (and hopefully she considers it as such), I sent Suellen my many-times-edited synopsis for “Swamis,” part of a submission package that is now, so very close to being ready to send off; this with me thinking of new chapters for the book. No, no. Spring break, good time to go surfing, perhaps. I have a couple of stories of surf trips to Baja. Soon.
I checked with Chimacum Timacum to see if the quote and the story behind it were correct. CONFIRMED. Yes, he had witnessed Keith’s ride from the perfect vantage point, on the shoulder, looking into the oncoming wave. Keith did, indeed, backdoor the peak, did get tube time, did come flying out with the mental wherewithal to add a few swoops into the mix.
SO, then Tim got a ride (no doubt pretty good to amazing). Because of the pervasive rip, they are both walking back up to the point. Tim catches up, possibly taps Keith on the shoulder and… here’s the QUOTE: “Wasn’t that enough for you?”
This is actually another Big Island shot from Stephen R. Davis
I won’t keep you in suspense. No; not enough. It’s not just Keith who can’t get enough waves, but, yeah, it is Keith. I get it. I understand how, while getting a few mediocre rides will cause any real surfer to keep going until he or she gets a pretty good ride on a really good wave, or a really good ride on a pretty good wave, or even a really good ride on a shitty-ish wave; getting a really good ride on a really good wave will not necessarily cause him or her to say, “Yes, Tim, that was as good as I can hope for during this particular session, and I believe I will now go home.”
NO. Especially not Keith. Even without factoring in that Tim might get an even better wave, possibly from deeper, or that Tim might… NO, enough is rarely enough.
I have noticed that supposedly surfed-out surfers can suddenly spring back to life and compete fiercely for waves when… No it isn’t just when I go out, late in the latest swell window, but, yeah then. And I have been on the other side of that; back out for just a couple more because Chris Erdley missed my best rides, and, hey, I can still make it to Costco before it closes.
ALSO in my cell phone conversation with Tim, we discussed, as surfers do, past sessions. As you, as an avid reader of realsurfers, are aware, I have been ready to break my resolution to not surf until I have my submission package for “Swamis” ready to go. NO, I actually said I would have to have the novel’s third or twentieth polish/edit done. Backtracking. WELL, now I’m almost there on the submission, and totally desperate to get in the water. I’d be stoked,, rocks and boils and chop and all, to surf something like the wave in the photo, and, after twenty or thirty rides, I would be ready to… no, I pretty much stay until the waves go away for any one of several known reasons, I break a fin, or I just have to get somewhere else (not always Costco) and I’ve run out of time.
AND, HEY, what do you do when your first ride in a session is quite possibly going to be your best?
Keep surfing!
But, if you do happen to see me paddling out, please bear in mind I’m kind of… hungry. Next time, something on ADAM WIPEOUT that isn’t actually about that one wipeout I keep promising to write about.
FIRST; this post is not about politics. Yes, I do almost regret writing anything that could be construed as complimentary of Mitch McConnell. Or misconstrued. However, I did get my comment in early, while he was still speaking, before MSNBC’s Brian Williams could say that the most successfully shifty politician of this generation, “Just threw the first fistfuls of dirt on the political grave of Donald Trump.” AND, totally out of character for me, I got excited enough to fire off an e-mail to that effect to Rachel Maddow (Haven’t heard back… yet), AND posted something similar to what I wrote her, available for your reading pleasure (scroll down). SO, with an allusion the the former president, “two scoops for me.”
“AND WITH THAT,” (an attempted allusion to the way Williams speaks), I’m through with politics, political theater, political intrigue, political… Wait, what? Antifa what? Lindsey’s… what? Really? Never mind.
SO…OOOO…OH, while bashing my head against the TV table yesterday, attempting, again, to complete a clear and effective (as in effective enough to convince a publisher to fork out their money) synopsis for my novel, “SWAMIS,” in under 1,500 words, I had, on my tablet, on a second TV table, a running live feed of the Bonzai Pipeline, courtesy of SURFLINE, by way of YouTube.
Very nice of them. SOMEHOW, watching a raggedy line of 80 or so surfers bobbing in scary -big swells, with larger swells visible on the horizon; twenty of them paddling for a wave that jacks up, will probably close out, one surfer throwing himself (not being sexist, him or herself then) into a freefall drop, catching enough fin and rail at the bottom, with the entire roof of a two story building coming down and on and over (and not just coming down, coming down with a vengeance and force beyond simple gravity), making a turn, weaving past or over several other surfers, sponge-bobbers, photographers), and getting just high enough on the face, with just enough forward momentum, to get, for a maximum of under five seconds, time in the most famous tube in the world; and, when and if you’re spit-shot out to the shoulder, you (notice I’ve switched it from third to second person) you get to claim it; two hands shaking or thrown to the heavens; and, if you’re really lucky, one of the helmeted photographers can put your image on INSTAGRAM, or SURFLINE can put your ride on its ‘CAM REWIND’ feature… and, if someone at Surfline actually knows who you are, your name might appear with the video; SOMEHOW, for someone trying not to concentrate on all that; having it going is both distracting and sort of SOOTHING.
NOT that it can be for those in the water. All realsurfers know how daunting even going out in conditions way more friendly than overcrowded Pipeline can be. I could feel that. Surfers paddling out choosing to bail their boards rather than duckdiving, even on the inshore waves; surfers hairing-out, choosing to not drop in; surfers so far out they couldn’t possibly get caught inside, though there’s little chance they would go on some mutant wave that did peak up just for them; surfers on second reef waves sort of casually cruising while the wave gets hyper critical; all this is great fun in the safety of one’s living room.
BUT, what I kind of couldn’t get past, what I want to concentrate on (concentrate, concentrate… huh?) are rides I saw in which surfers who had BARREL-DODGED (I got the term from Adam Wipeout- referencing me) a section, and dropped down under it, seemed to believe they could stay standing against ten feet of furious soup. None did. Sure, we’ve all seen videos of Waimea Bay- big drop, no shoulder, surfer caught under the soup- some make it.
Because I couldn’t concentrate, PRONING IT OUT came to mind. Actually, a specific wave. 1968, Mazatlan, Mexico; Lupe’s Left Loopers. Maxwell Harper and I had paddled over to the island across the way, surfed some tiny and beautiful righthanders with offshore wind, crystal water, crabs everywhere on the beach; and were paddling back. Max was not an experienced surfer, his brother Phillip, and the other adventurer on this trip, Ray, were back at the motel, recovering from the previous night or resting for the coming one. Or, perhaps, they just didn’t want to do our side trip.
SOMEWHERE on our return crossing, no closer than half way, big ass swells started forcing their way between the island and the hotel-lined beach. “Erwin,” Max asked, “What are these things?” “Waves.” Yeah, big ass waves. Here’s a thing (not concentrating): It is often scarier to be caught outside than to be caught inside.
ANYWAY, I take off on one, the biggest wave I would ride on this trip, or possibly ever, and, out of habit, muscle memory, I stand up. Oh. Partway down the face, I realize there is nowhere to go. Certainly not right. It’s a left. I look left. The wave is one giant closeout, pitching all the way past the last (many many more these days) hotel. Oh. Prone it out.
HERE’S how that goes: You (change of person again) drop down onto your board, back where kooks paddle from; you are in front of the oncoming break, but just for a moment; and your board slows down; still, the wave breaks right the fuck on your back; you hold on; somehow, the wave swallows you up, pulls you and your board back and up and (don’t ask me to explain the hydrodynamics of this, I can’t) suddenly, you’re being pitched forward, with and over the soup at somewhere approaching warp speed; and you’re back in front of it all again, pushed and thrashed and hanging on the rails; not just until you reach shallower water; no, you’re riding this thing until you hit the sand.
Thinking about proning it out?
To finish the story; I was pretty concerned about Maxwell; more so when his board came washing up on the next wave. We had already seen a guy caught in the rip on our first day in Mazatlan; rescued, temporarily, on another guy’s board, then back in the rip. I was running back and forth on the beach, looking for a head in the successive waves. I honestly can’t remember if I paddled out to retrieve Max or if he swam all the way to the beach. “I thought I was safer without the board,” he said.
I disagree with the premise; but I didn’t disagree with Max. Not then.
So, OKAY, I have used up my writing time for this morning. I have to go. I’m telling myself that, if I give the thinking about the synopsis a day, I can get back to it, fresh, and then… wait; what? Yeah, now I’m thinking about barrel-dodging, wondering if Rachel has gotten back to me.
…and, yes, I’m sorry this post isn’t about surfing. I’m snowed in and have just plain watched too much of the whole trial in the U.S. Senate. I have been trying to work on “Swamis,” more specifically, on preparing a submission to a publisher. This requires having 25 perfect pages, a letter on my history and aspirations as a writer, and (this is the one I am having trouble with) a synopsis in under 1,500 words.
AND, and this just happened: Mitch McConnell, after Trump was not convicted (and this is the way it was expected to end), after Speaker of the House Chuck Schumer (and, wow, such friendly names- Mitch, Chuck, Ted, Josh, Patty, Dick, other Dicks) repeated how vile and crooked and disgusting our former president is, how criminally he behaved; AND THEN the self-professed Grim Reaper slithered up to the Senate microphone, announced how guilty the rabble-arousing former huckster-in-chief is, and then…
THEN Mitchell burned our disgraced ex-pres the rest of the way to hell. Well, maybe not Hell, Hell-a-Lago.
“Hey, there; going down? No, I mean, like, all the way down?”
I am not a fan of McDonnell, and I realize the cynical truth is that he is really trying to PURGE the former president from and regain the control of his party. Not a fan, but, for some short amount of time, I have respect (R E S P E C T) for his remarkable ability to not only dance with the Devil, but to lead.
“And dip, and twirl, and… spin. I said, ‘Spin!'”
NOW, because I believe the Devil, if there is a creature that matches our created image of evil incarnate, plays all sides of every issue, hedges his bets; I also believe that, occasionally, briefly, for a moment, the Devil takes the part of an Angel and does something righteous.
Again, again, again, I realize that Mitch’s real goal is power, that tearing the former president’s throat (if not his tongue) out is not benevolent or altruistic, I understand Mitch is giving the weak politicians someone other than the former president to follow, and, and, and… AND YET, if someone kicks the shit out of someone I am happy to see shitless; I will give them props.
TEMPORARILY. And now, back to editing, editing, editing. Is there still snow? Are there wavesT?
TEMPORARILY. I have overdosed, binge-watched, and I fully expect to have regrets. For the moment, dance on, Mitch.
There have been only two times in my life that I have watched the television all day long. This shouldn’t be a tough guess: 9/11/2001 and 01/06/21. So, with the impeachment of the titular head of the Trump Insurrection continuing today in the U.S. Senate; the result has been pre-determined by minds pre-set or programed to set aside the duties assigned any and all elected representatives of us, of we the people.
Again, not a tough guess; you know the numbers necessary to convict.
So far, after blocks and votes and dodges and procedural delays, the actual event has been a trial with evidence aplenty and courage a scarcity. It is obvious courage is a scarce commodity. While donor/sponsor/tribe loyalties are commodities, bought and saved, sold or traded to a higher bidder; and while ethics and integrity are regularly exchanged for power; courage is rare; but, we know it when we see it.
We recognize courage. We value courage. We, we the people, are witnesses. Put me on that sad fucking list.
ALL RIGHT, I apologize for, again, posting something that is not about surfing.
perhaps he imagines himself a surfer. Sorry no, not a surfer, real or imagined.
I woke up one morning, October of 1962. I was eleven. My mother had, evidently, not gone to bed. Or she got up really early. TV stations, in those days, generally shut down in the middle of the night. “We might be on the brink of nuclear war, Junior,” she said, or something similar… same message. It was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Trish remembers it because her father, a materiel officer with the US Marine Corps, was whisked away in the middle of the night, and was gone for the thirteen days before Russia and Cuba backed down.
I was ten years old on February 20, 1962, when an AV (audio/visual for those who have never seen one) cart was wheeled into the classroom so we fifth graders could all watch John Glen orbit the earth three times in a space capsule. First American! Momentous! Yea, Us!
I cannot honestly say I saw Kennedy assassinated or Oswald killed, though they were both televised. My neighbor, Gary Schuyler, a kid about my age (12 in 1963) did watch the funeral train, came outside, crying, with an update. I was pulling weeds in the rose garden, required to earn a chance to go to the beach. I questioned why Gary was so concerned. “Because… it’s important.”
Television has made us all witnesses to history.
On 9/11, Dan Nieman, a local contractor in Quilcene, called me up… not all that unusual for him, at somewhere around 5:30, something about a job. He passed on the message, and I just recently found this out, an ex-military client of his, calm by Dan’s description, had already called him, frantically blurting out, “Do you see what’s happening?” I turned on the TV in time to see the plane hit the second tower. And everything that followed.
On 01/06, I returned home early from a job, though I had been listening on the radio to the events surrounding the certification of the election. Trish had just turned on the TV, asked what was going on with the people just starting to push at the barricades in front of the capitol. “Oh,” I said, “The coup is on.”
Something I noticed is that many of the folks marching down the street from the demonstration in which the (still, at that point) President promised to “be there with you” (but, of course, wasn’t), citizens who looked like your neighbors, regular folks; once they saw the thing was getting out of hand, most of those people turned away, did not participate in the murder and mayhem, were not part of that mob.
Good for them.
We have had, thanks to the strategic delays, time; not enough to put it behind us and move on as defenders and deniers would like; but enough time to get little bios on the perpetrators, more information on the tactics and the damage; enough time for evidence enough to convince anyone still unbiased of the proximity to a tipping point that our country was at on that day.
So. Courage. At first look, the Capitol cop who was chased up the stairs by the mob did not appear to be a hero. Now we know he was. I will still give points to Mike Pence for getting the Constitutionally mandated task completed. Points have to be given for Representatives and Senators who crossed lines to certify votes, or to cast votes to get beyond all the procedural blocks and dodges.
Oh; it’s 9:26, the Trump Insurrection trial is back on, live; should you chose to watch. I have to go, but I do have a radio.
I got a comment from Bob DAVIS; it showed up in my e-mail, with a request to moderate, as in Approve, Disapprove, send to junkmail, or hell, or to just send it to trash.
I hit ‘approve.’ BOB’S comment is somewhere on realsurfers.net. It may show up under comments on my “About” dealie, originally written in 2013 when I started realsurfers, MOSTLY to tell parts of the same story that I was trying to tell in a screenplay, “Afternoon Glass-Off” (probably could have dropped the ‘off’ part), aka “Inside Break.” The story is from pretty much the same time and place in which “Swamis” is set; late sixties, Southern California.
I highlighted ‘mostly,’ above, because, after 24 years in the Great Pacific Northwest, I was, at that time part way through another chapter in my surfing life, here. NOW, in the beginning, I didn’t realize the danger in romanticizing the Northwest surfing scene, and, in particular the surf on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I did name some surf locations, early on, did SUGGEST there might be waves… rarely. If surfing has blown up in Washington State, and folks continue to search out and be disappointed at known surf spots, it really can’t be blamed on my esoteric, no where near viral little blog.
BUT, if realsurfers is important enough for BOB DAVIS to write a comment, here, BOB, is your moment:
Hi, Please take down your posts about the surfing in the pacific northwest, purely out of respect for people who live here. We only get to surf good waves a few times a year, so if we have to deal with people coming up from California or elsewhere to get our waves that we only get a few times a year. first off, it makes no sense that they would want to come on a surf trip to a colder place, but also it is a fickle place and risk that chance of wasting their plane ticket doesn’t make sense to me. Why go to surf someone’s home that only breaks a few times a year when you could go to other more consistent surf breaks and not ruin someone’s life? This is just not okay from a moral standpoint. Please consider peoples’ lives and stop colonizing places.
This is not the Pacific Northwest. It is, apparently, already colonized.
HERE, BOB DAVIS is your answer: NO.
OH, and BOB, thanks for checking out realsurfers.net. If you happen to see me on one of the few times a year you get a few decent (and, wait, you did kind of admit there are rideable waves hereabouts) waves (and I am kind of recognizable- old guy, fucked up knees), say “Hi.”
…for posting anything that might be construed as negative toward any group of surfers, and in particular in outing surfers I have surfed with and might actually surf with again as East Coasters (and it isn’t like I have that many friends to begin with), I have decided, less than 14 hours after my last posting, to say something kind of negative about West Coast surfers (including those who surf the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but probably not ferry wake specialists).
Here goes: Too fucking many.
This doesn’t mean I don’t want you to scroll down and check out what I did write; mostly to make a little comment on attitude. Now I am constantly reminded of how my own attitude and self-diagnosed ‘ghetto mentality’ in the water, honed in the crowded beach breaks of San Diego (albeit 42 years ago) is not always, um, appreciated.
1960s era Birdwell Surf Team and Men’s Beach Choir ready to rumble and break into “California Girls”Rumblers from “Westside Story.” Matching deck shoes evidently part of team apparel.Chimacum Tim not wearing deck shoes, and flashing gang signs, possibly code for ‘screw you’se guy-o’s, I’m all West Coast now.’
This image is also available in the previous posting. Please scroll down. But first…
Adam “Wipeout” James, total West Coaster, other than the time he was cowboying up in Montana or somewhere, wondering, no doubt, when the hell I’m going to get around to writing about his big over-the-falls wipeout, witnessed by Big Dave, and, evidently, others.
SOON. Again, all in fun; BUT, I should add, I never saw more than a few minutes of “Westside Story,” but, just like seeing Adam go over the falls backwards did for Big Dave, it made an impression. SCROLL DOWN. Please.
I was, fairly recently, at a break even those of us accustomed to the fickleness of waves on the Strait would refer to as fickle. I had missed the short window for surfing the spot, and the water was a wind-whipped, side swell-chopped, rocks-out mess; so, you know, like pretty good. What was a bit unusual was, among those who had been tossed and pitched numerous times in order to get a couple of steep drops and short rides before the radical tide shift made even the daunting conditions ridiculous, four of the seven surfers on the beach were, originally, from the East Coast.
If I made the session seem unappealing, you’re welcome. And don’t forget the fickle part.
So, there was AARON, from New York (like the city, rode the subway to Rockaway), JOEL, also from New York (more like Long Island), CHRIS, from Massachusetts (I’m thinking somewhere expensive; he evidently goes there every year for hurricane season), and TIM, aka Chimacum Timacum, from Philadelphia, though he suggests if not outright claims that he’s from New Jersey (probably thinking Northwest folks know Philly doesn’t have waves but don’t know New Jersey is the subject of some amount of derision from other East Coasters). EAST COASTERS, I can’t help believing, are different than West Coasters.
OBVIOUSLY I have a prejudice I should get past: all these guys are proficient surfers, but, yes, they have been on the West Coast a while.
NOW, I must now say that I gathered this background information from the subjects themselves, and everyone seems to know I will talk, I will reveal pretty much anything except where, exactly, even a not-so-secret spot is located. OKAY, put an asterisk next to that.* WAIT, I think BOATYARD MIKE might have also been there. Yeah, crowded. I am not actually sure where Mike hails from, but I shouldn’t leave him out. The other surfers on the beach at that moment were KEITH, from Oregon, originally, and me, from San Diego area, but, to be honest (and it’s not a secret-secret), I was born in Surf City, North Carolina, so, not an East Coaster as much as a Southerner.
Not that that’s better, surf prejudice-wise. OH, and there’s another thing: Are surfers on the Strait really West Coasters? HEY, WHAT?
ANYWAY, what was interesting about the little encounter is that these Other Coasters weren’t aware of their connection. I, of course, was, and pointed it out; which offered them an opportunity to share stories about, you know, cheese steaks and backyard lobster/clam chowder fests and anchovies on pizzas and, of course, hurricane season.
STILL, I CAN’T shake thinking there’s a difference in attitude, and that’s not even getting into the whole Hawaiian version of interpersonal beach etiquette. Since most surfer interactions run between gracious and abrasive, I can’t help comparing a meeting of Opposite Coasters with a scene or two from “West Side Story.” Less dancing, same amount of finger snapping.
“Okay, Jets; get you’se boards; we’re takin’ ova this here bus.”
AH, CATHARSIS. Now I’m free of all prejudice except… No, but working on it. Peace, Aloha, etc.
Chimacum Tim about to snap his fingers and, possibly, bust into a song.
“When you surf the Strait, You must learn how to wait; You hear rumors of waves, but you can’t take the bait; Out on the Strait… out on the… Strait.” Hey, Tim, just joking; but, seriously, man; I don’t think renaming any of the fickle breaks after you is going to catch on. Okay, maybe Tim’s Reef; I won’t tell anyone where it is.*
I PUT OFF writing about ADAM WIPEOUT’S wipeout… again. Next time. BUT, WAIT, Trish, who once lived in the Philadelphia area (though she was born in San Diego), just hepped me that it’s really not all that far from Philly to the beach, so, I will never mention it again.
THEN, AGAIN, ADAM, I’m sending off some stuff related to my novel, “Swamis,” to a publisher, including the first 25 pages, a synopsis, and a letter explaining my writing background and expectations; the second and third of these items still being edited and polished. I might just push Adam back again. Sorry, Adam.
Real Surfers 