This is a photo of a parking lot far, far away. I couldn’t quite figure out how to… no, really; like Australia or somewhere… get the photo from the computer I am borrowing from my daughter, Dru, to, like, here. And now I have. So, yeah, check out that guy. WAIT! What about the guy eating shit behind the guy in the slot? Was there a burn? A vicious shoulder hop? What about the guys paddling out? Are they going to ruin the barrel for the obvious wave hog? Four chances. Oh, and now I see a head in the soup. If the guy who was dropped-in on loses his board, even with a leash… dangerous. It is no wonder the arms of two of the six silhouettes on the beach are up. Yeah, the sun. That, too. OH, the drama that is surfing. Love it!

So, picture this: It is 2:30 am on a Monday night/Tuesday morning, and a surfer is waking up from another dream in which the closer he gets to the water, to the perfect waves, the farther they are from him. “Oh,” he is thinking, “I should wash out my wetsuit.” This is followed by (most of this is not out loud) “Where is my wetsuit? I remember…”

“Shittttttttttttttt!” That is out loud.

Now the unnamed surfer goes to visualization, along with the self-narration. He pictures his surfboard, set, on its side, along the driveway behind his work van. “So, okay, on Monday, I moved the surfboard over against the fence. Upright.” Okay, visual of this. “Now, on Sunday…” The visual is of the surfer and another surfer we will call Adam Wipeout (though he is known by other names depending on which tide flat he is working, or surfing beach he is accepted at, or restaurant he is selling shellfish to, or seminar he is speaking at) is unloading boards from his vehicle. The surfer in question sets his board down, side of the driveway as previously mentioned, then takes his bag of dry stuff and his thermos, opens the back of the work van and sets them inside. Safely. He then takes the dark trash bag he used for his wetsuit, his rash guard with hood, and his lime green leash, just to contain any dampness in Adam’s vehicle and…

Now, the reason the surfer with his wetsuit in the bag was riding with Adam Wipeout is that the surfer’s surf rig is elsewhere, with a broken water pump. The 1987 Toyota will either be fixed or not. It has survived a lot. Begging was involved. Adam was supposed to be hunting elk, but was kind enough to pick up the surfer, in the dark. There is more to this story, but I am trying to keep it short.

Now, early on a Tuesday morning, the surfer replays in his mind what he did on Monday. He loaded the bags of trash from the eight or so trash cans in the enclosure (because Quilcene charges by the bag and Port Townsend by weight- cheaper, and he is working in Port Townsend) and then starts tossing in the bags of masking and such things from previous paint jobs and…

No, he wasn’t going to go outside and check.

Like the beautiful wave he didn’t catch (and, perhaps, some other surfer did), the wetsuit and the rash guard with hood and the glow in the dark lime green leash are… yes, he did do the visualization of him, so efficiently, tossing out the bags at the transfer station, even commenting to the guy next to him how it isn’t a competition, it just seems like one. A good motto to lessen stress is, “That wave’s gone, man.”

Hey, I gotta go. If I finish this job I can, maybe… meanwhile, I’ll do some more patching on my old wetsuit, see if those booties I bought a couple of sizes too big a couple of years ago are… see if I haven’t thrown them away.