…and “Real, Real-er, Real-ist,” and “Realistically, Really?”

It’s something about how (I am coming to believe) every surfer seems to believe he or she (to save time I’m going to say ‘you’) has an approach to our shared sport/lifestyle/addiction that is true and valid; enough so that the other kooks and posers and influencers and disciples of this or that offshoot of the one true surfer’s life are… well, they’re mostly in the way, decadently preening and cavorting and, basically, despoiling the waves and the beach and the purity of purpose, with its co-existing morals and list of sins… those folks are in your way.

WAIT, that sounds like some excerpt from a MANIFESTO written by some madman in some cabin in some woods. YEAH, well, maybe, but I’m still working on how to refine it. SO, ask yourself if it applies to you and your realistic place in an increasingly crowded lineup. Maybe not.

I HAVE DECIDED to go back to posting excerpts from “SWAMIS” (not a manifesto) on Wednesdays, mostly because of time restraints. MAYBE just this week. I woke up in the middle of the night and watched too much of the WSL contest, enough to see SALLY FITZGIBBONS win, cementing her place back on next year’s big show. I was rooting for the veteran (not too surprisingly), and have long wondered why contest commentators never seem to mention that, coming close to number one in the WSL, she is, like (like as in I don’t have time to fact check) the four time champion of the INTERNATIONAL SURF LEAGUE (ISL). Perhaps it is because the WSL is the one true contest heaven.

TRISHA’S BROTHER’S SON, DYLAN, our nephew, and his wife just moved into a house in ENCINITAS. It seems he was surprised to discover that his aunt and I once owned a house in the same neighborhood. THE DISAPPOINTMENT, for surfer Dylan, as it was for me, was that our houses, purchased decades apart for should-be shockingly different amounts of money, is EAST OF I-5, well east of SURF ROUTE 101. And, looking at an aerial view that went along with the Zillow report, with 29 photos (Dylan gave me his new address so I can send him one of my new ORIGINAL ERWIN longsleeve t-shirts), I was even more disappointed to see so many houses, so little open land.

“It’s EASTINITAS,” I Texted, “AND there’s probably a surfer in one out of four of those houses.”

IN KEEPING with my habit of overdoing, I did a couple of sketches to go with my noticing how all these kids and their grownup cronies are riding electric bikes like they’re motorcycles… because, yes, they are.

Got to go- places to be, already late to start a promised and put-off painting project. DAMN, being a “Whore for the money,” an accusation from my friend, Keith, I can’t deny, though, technically, it makes me a prostitute, does cut into my ‘me time.’ That is, what could be time to search for and ride… waves.

I DO HOPE DYLAN and, okay, you, real surfer that you are, get some really life-affirming rides. OH, and don’t steal my drawings. I probably will keep going on the first sketch. WEDNESDAY, “SWAMIS.”