The big cultural event is coming up, and I’m going to be pimping it on the local Port Townsend radio station (KPTZ, 91.9, available for streaming on your devices, hearing if you’re anywhere east of Pillar Point and South of North Whidbey Island) next Friday.
FRIDAY NIGHT BLUES with Barney Burke Friday 8-10pm Barney’s been hosting the Friday Night Blues since the launch of KPTZ and he’s always live on the air. He’ll get your feet tappin’ with all kinds of classic blues (and plenty of live tracks) plus a half-dozen soul and R&B tunes. June 23 Longtime Quilcene painter/writer/artist/surfer Erwin Dence sits in with Barney Burke to discuss blues lyrics and local surf-inspired artists and other highlights of the upcoming Third Occasional Surf Culture on the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Salish Sea event at the Port Townsend Library on Friday, June 30 at 6pm. Having Erwin Dence live in the studio will be one of those fasten your seatbelt moments … more compelling that an NPR driveway moment, even.
Barney texted me he was going to mention me during last Friday’s show. I tuned in too late, missed it, had to go to the archives the next morning. Yeah, good intro, tough to live up to. I will try.
Now, I did go on another show, Ron McElroy’s ‘Free Spin,’ to promote the first SURF CULTURE EVENT, about ten years ago. I was supposed to be on for about seven minutes, I got Ron talking about how he was in a car that went over the cliff at Santa Cruz… and survived. I am a competitive talker. I was on the show for about forty minutes.
THIS TIME, I got the opportunity because Barney Burke and I both once wrote for the Port Townsend Leader, I did some painting for him (how I meet some great folks- and others), and because I sent him the lyrics for fifteen or so blues songs I have written. Blues. SO, YEAH, we’ll see how that goes. I am bringing my harmonica, and I’ll be ready to talk, recite some lyrics, and try hard not to swear, belch, actually attempt to sing, or melt down on air. Yeah, it’s fuckin’ hard for me to keep a civil tongue.
I do have a couple of things I wrote that I plan on reciting at the SURF CULTURE ON THE STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA AND THE SALISH SEA EVENT. They were written as songs, but, because I’m pretty good at talking, even reciting, singing… no.
THE DIFFERENCE between reciting and singing is kind of like the difference between speed-walking (possibly still an Olympic event) is with speed walking, both feet are never off the ground at the same time. I will try.
OKAY, HERE IS WHAT I wrote for this Sunday’s post:
EXCUSES
It might actually happen that no one asks you why you missed the last swell window. You, a person who monitors forecasts and buoy readings, who said last time that the next time you’d not miss the chance to maybe, just maybe… score. Even before you got the after-session (as is proper- depending on who they are shared with) reports from several sources and several spots, you knew, while you were doing whatever you were doing in the place of driving and hiking and waiting, that you were missing it. And you were. And you knew it. Confirmed.
There was no one but you to blame, no one but you to hear your explanation of exactly what was more important than loading up, driving out, catching a few waves, maybe after the tide evened out or the swell found its way to where you were waiting, watching, hoping.
Excuses. You give me your list, and I’ll give you mine.
Yeah, my surf rig is dead, and I’m trading out work to get a replacement, and the job is not quite done. No, I’m not willing to take my work rig, with its less than wonderful miles per gallon rating and the current, inexplicable (retail compared to the per barrel crude oil cost) and high price per gallon. Yes, the forecasts are almost always iffy. Winds can wreak a strong swell, tides can be too high or too low, perfect tide and wind conditions can’t beat a swell that angles somewhere else.
Excuses. Here is my quote on people’s excuses: The laziest people have the best excuses.
It’s not laziness. Though I’ve said for as long as I’ve known Trish (55 years) that surfing is the other woman, and that there have been ‘surf or me’ moments, I must add that WORK is the cruel mistress that has most often kept me painting, sometimes on the bluff, with perfect and glassy waves being enjoyed and missed and misridden well within my view.
Oh, and if I’m being this honest, I must add that poor life planning is part of the reason that an old fart still is working. Oh, and laziness-wise, though I’ve done it throughout my work life, I seem to be increasingly unwilling to even talk myself into racing out for a quick session, and back for work. No, I want the all day option.
Or, if I just happen to be working close to some wave possibilities… sure; amazing how one can shake off the tiredness with cold water and a some tantalizing wave possibilities.
Next time, next time, next time…
I’m a couple of days short of getting my new-to-me surf rig.
Yes, it will double as a work rig on those days I don’t need a big boy van full of tools and dropcloths and ladders. WORK RIG. Surf rig. YES! And I’ll go stealth for as long as I can.
As with the anticipation for the next swell window, I can hardly wait.
Thanks to Barney Burke for the opportunity. I’m positive it won’t be as I imagine it, but I’m sure it will be… interesting. REMEMBER to check out realsurfers.net for the remainder of Chapter One of “SWAMIS” on Wednesday, tune into KPTZ 8pm on this coming Friday, and make plans to be at the Library, uptown Port Townsend for the Event, Friday, June 30. Oh, and please respect my copyrights.
There was something almost comforting about the darkness, about not having a horizon to worry about. An oversized flashlight in my hand, the words on the pages of the palm-sized notepad, open and pushed up against the steering wheel; this was all I could really see. Notes, in cop shorthand, detective code. Still, I could hear the steady sound of waves, the rhythm occasionally changed with what had to be an outside set. I had felt, when I pulled into the lot and got out of the car, the push of night wind hit me, pass me, and get lost, dispersed in the vastness beyond the bluff. Offshore. Perfect.
I was in the driver’s seat of my car, mine, the hand-me-down Ford Falcon station wagon, new in 1964. The Falcon was parked in the optimum location in the Swamis parking lot, dead center, front row, facing the bluff. When it got light enough, I would be able to watch the waves wrap around the point. There would be a moment where I would know I would be dropping down the stairs and paddling out. If Swamis was at all decent, it would get crowded.
It was not nearly light enough. I closed the notepad, thumb holding my place, and tried to repeat what I had transposed from a days’ worth of my father’s notes. I opened the pad, reread the third of any pages that had real action, real adventure. A break-in, chase, and arrest. Vista, October 1967. I recited the words. I checked again, for accuracy. Close. Or closer.
I shined the flashlight on the seat beside me. A black metal file box with other note pads and a spare t shirt, for later, three scuffed and dirtied, formerly dirty-orange Pee-Chee binders, three college-ruled notebooks inside each one. I put the notepad into the pocket of the top binder, middle of three. I pulled out the bottom Pee-Chee, opened it, took out the middle notebook. Wire bound, with serrations, tear out pages. Not that I would. I pulled a ballpoint pen from the wire, left a space between the previous day’s notes, wrote, “Free. These are days where freedom and peace and war and revolution are often used in the same sentence.”
I repeated my words. “’Love.’ I should add ‘love,’” I told myself. “People say it, don’t mean it.” I didn’t. I added, “School day. Work day. Not for me. Free! And… it sounds like Swamis is actually breaking. Got my spot. Optimum location. No one else here. Yet.”
Putting the pen back into the binding, adding the notebook to the stack of Pee-Chee binders and notebooks, a waxed cardboard quart of chocolate milk trapped behind them, I reached into the small wooden box of eight track tapes on the driveline hump, fingered my way to the third one down, flipped it to the proper direction, and inserted it in the dash-mounted player.
Legal. At least this one looked legal. The player would work without the car running because the guy I bought it from, Mark, friend of a friend, hooked it up the way my father’s Sheriff’s Office radio had been wired.
Mark claimed if this tape deck was stolen, he hadn’t stolen it. My surf friends Gary and Roger, and several of their friends, claimed he did, and I should have known. “Just don’t let the cops fuck with this one,” Gary said. “Get some better tapes,” Roger added.
I pushed in “Aerial Ballet.”
I was listening, and then I wasn’t. Asleep, perhaps. I didn’t hear the two vehicles pull in, one on either side, didn’t hear the doors close, wasn’t aware two people had met at the front of the Falcon.
Wham!
The flashlight was up, instantly stuck between the spokes of the steering wheel and pointed at the man leaning toward me, straight across the hood, the flat palm of his right hand raised and ready for another slap. The light hit the curve of the fogged-up windshield, bounced back. I turned the flashlight off. I still hadn’t recognized the man.
“It’s still fuckin’ dark, man,” he said. I recognized the voice. Sid. I would have, should have recognized the sound of his van, seven out of eight pistons firing. I must have been asleep.
“Yeah. Dark.” I didn’t recognize that voice. “Okay, Sidney; five waves and I have to go.”
“No, man, I’m doing the delivery. It’s still my job. And… I have some… green stamps I need to… redeem.”
“No. Not today. Man. Five waves and…” I waited for a completion of the sentence. “And, you know what, you aren’t going.”
“No? Just you? Fuck it, then, man; five for you means ten for me.”
Wham! Flat palm on the hood. A different hand. Passenger side. “Break of dawn, DeFreines.” There was humming. Military cadence. “Jody’s got Sid’s surfboard, got his Daddy’s Falcon, too; no sense feelin’ lonely, no sense feelin’ blue.” The cadence continued the with a lighter tapping on the hood. One finger, maybe two.
I filled in the rest in my mind. Silently. “Sound off, one, two; sound off, three four…” I stopped myself. “Jody,” I thought, “He called me Jody.”
“Jody.” A face was at my side window, close to the glass. I was startled into an uncontrollable upper body twitch. Still, I didn’t turn to look until the man was a darker shadow in the dark. “Redemption day, Jody, and… and you’re going with me.” He hit the window with a flat palm. The shadow receded.
Junipero Serra Hayes. Jumper.
I didn’t get out of the car until two metal doors slammed on the vehicle to my right, until Sid’s vague shadow passed. Other cars, headlights on, were coming into the lot from 101.
It was a pickup truck to the left of the Falcon; step-side, late fifties, brownish red and rusty red. Farm truck. I brought up a mental image of where I had seen this truck. Grandview Street, off 101, right hand side. Farmhouse, barn, greenhouses, a little shop with “Flowers by Hayes” over the sliding glass door. Jumper. Junipero Hayes.
Everyone knew Jumper was back in the North County. No one had seen him in the water.
The mid-sixties Chevy van on my right, Sid’s, was a light gray. Factory color. It was jacked-up in the back, with overwide tires, accommodated by Sid having cut the wheel wells and glassed-on the red-primed, flared fenders. No windows. Surfboards Hawaii decal on the driver’s door. Sid. Team rider. Another asshole in the water. Of course, they were friends, Sid and Jumper. Locals.
I opened both driver side doors, tossed a damp beach towel over the back door, used the cover to strip out of my Levis jeans and into my driest trunks. I stuck my towel onto the roof, pulled my wallet out of the jeans, set it on the towel. I grabbed a pack of Marlboros and a Zippo lighter off the dashboard, placed them into the inside pocket of my windbreaker. I folded my boxers in with the Levis, set them on the floor in front of the driver’s seat. I set my shoes, socks already inside them, on top of my Levis. I pulled my latest board, formerly Sid’s board, out of the back of the Falcon, set it on the roof racks. I opened, locked, and closed all the doors, circled the Falcon again, making sure all the doors were locked. I wrapped my keys and wallet into the towel, clutched it to my chest with my left hand, slid the board off the racks with my right hand, stepped away and pivoted it, wax side out, into position under my arm.
I took three breaths and walked toward the stairs.
…
It was still dark enough that the water, other than a silver-green line at the horizon, was more black-and-white than any sort of discernible color. Carrying the surfboard that had, indeed, once belonged to Sid, I took two steps at a time down the top flight of the wooden stair system at Swamis. I stopped on the platform where the stairs made a ninety degree turn and dropped, parallel to the beach, the rest of the way down.
The platform was approximately six feet by eight feet and offered a perfect view of the lineup and the point. Because it was at a particularly steep portion of the bluff, probably sixty feet or more above the beach, galvanized chain link fencing, eight feet high, the metal posts attached to the wooden posts and railings, had been added to two sides of the landing.
The ocean, forty minutes before dawn, was horizontal streaks of grays. Still, Swamis was, obviously, lined up. Someone was getting a ride. New streaks, breaking the plane. Another surfer was on the next wave. My guess was that Jumper Hayes, on a longer board, drawing traditional lines, had been on the first wave. This was Sid. I knew Sid’s style: More turns, more aggressive turns. I could hear hoots between the only two surfers in the water, locals. Not would not have been acceptable behavior for Kooks and non-locals. Rules. Code. Etiquette. Rather rigid, strict; constantly broken, only occasionally enforced; as with all codes.
…
Running my hand along the horizontal railing on the downhill side of the platform, I felt the letters carved into the wood gone smooth with time and thousands of hands. I knew the words. “Old men stop here.” It was true. Not that a seventeen-year-old paid any attention to surfers over twenty-five, and definitely not to surfers over thirty. Old men.
There was movement on the upper stairs. Vibration, just short of rocking. Two more surfers were coming down. Both were laughing, bouncing, hurrying. I pushed closer to the corner, let them pass. I didn’t look at them, they didn’t acknowledge me.
Taking two stairs at a time, I almost caught up with those two surfers at the bottom deck. They were on the beach and running for the water as I got to the lower platform, running like extras in a “Beach Blanket” movie. Kook move. The foundations for the supports of the six step stairway were showing, the winter waves and tides having pushed the sand south. Summer swells would return it. I leapt off the bottom step. Silent hoot.
I stuck my towel in the tangle of roots and dead lower branches of some scrub, six feet or so above the beach and fifteen feet beyond the lifeguard tower. I took off my windbreaker and t shirt, draping the red jacket over the rest of my stuff. There was, I still believed, a code that kept surfers from stealing from other surfers. Still, I wanted my valuables somewhere it was obvious they were there on purpose, somewhere I could possibly see them.
In what had become my pre-surf ritual, I pulled a pack of Marlboros, box, not soft pack, from the windbreaker. I took out the Zippo lighter. Chrome. Freshly filled, new flint. Big flame. I lit up, clicked the lid shut. I ran two fingers over the lighter’s raised logo. “San Diego County Sheriff’s Office.” Gold on chrome.
I inhaled, popped the lid open by hitting a corner on my other hand, and looked at the flame. Smaller. In the brightness I saw, or imagined I saw, red lights, spinning, flashing in three second intervals, coming closer. I blinked, looked to my right. I saw a painted image of Jesus, the red lights distorting his calm countenance. I followed his arm to his fingers, pointing forward, into the lights, into the sun. Blinding. I turned through the brightness and to my left, the vehicle that was the source of the lights. A reflection-distorted image of my father was in the windshield, then the open window. He was very close, passing very slowly. I couldn’t quite focus on his expression. He turned his head away. Forward.
The flashing lights moved past me leaving only the brighter light. I blinked. I popped the lid on my father’s lighter shut. “Ten seconds,” I said. “Maybe eight. Concentrate. Can’t do this.”
My stuff was re-wrapped and re-positioned, my cigarette was still in my mouth, and I was into the ragged line left by the high tide when a surfer on a long board took off from the outside peak. Jumper Hayes. A bit slow on the takeoff and popup, jerky on the bottom turn, he cruised through the first wall and into the slow section. With a series of subtle stalls, he lined up the inside section, and, rather stiffly, shuffled toward the nose. He hung five, pearling and spinning into a Hawaiian pullout. His board skittered in a ways before it was released by the soup and popped up. It must have been Jumper’s fifth wave. He flipped his board over, skeg up. Pulling his board up by a rail, he trudged alongside it through the rocks and eel grass toward the beach, stepping carefully, ready for the holes in the rock ledges.
Yeah, it was Jumper. He was fifty feet or so up the point when a spent wave hit my shins. He pulled the board up under his right arm and stared at me. “You,” I imagined, was the word he almost whispered, I almost heard.
“You.” I looked away. The next wave came in without a rider. Sid, on the wave after that one, made three upper body movements before he hit the trough, cranked a turn that brought him to the top of the wave and five feet down the line. Unweight, half-slide, hit the middle of the wave, crouch, hand in the wave face. Stall, stall, let go and get a partial coverup. A lot of work. Sid. If Sid was showing off for Jumper, it was wasted. Jumper was still staring at me, still moving forward.
Thigh deep, I looked back as Sid, thrashing forward, caught up to Jumper in six inches of water. Sid reached for Jumper’s shoulder. I looked away. For a second. Sid must have said something. Maybe it was just, “Hey!”
I turned back. Sid was in the air, feet over his head. So quick. Down. Sid was on his back. Jumper’s board beside him. Jumper was holding Sid’s board, like a spear, at his friend’s chest. They seemed to be frozen in these positions.
It was a definite “Hey!” Sid was scrambling, crablike, up the curve of the beach. “It’s me! Jumper! Me!”
I froze, my back to the ocean. Though I could still see the two surfers, I replayed what I had just seen in my mind in a sort of double exposure. Reach. Touch. Reaction.
A wave hit me, only temporarily affecting my balance, but wiping the image away. I was back to real time. Jumper raised Sid’s board, twisted away, and threw the board toward the higher beach. The full length of the board landed on a rail, flipped onto the other rail, and landed skeg up. I replayed those movements as I watched the two surfers.
Sid was sitting just above the scalloped high tide line, the fragments of driftwood and seaweed. Jumper was crouching next to him. Jumper may have been crying. I couldn’t tell. I looked away when Jumper, and then Sid, looked in my direction. If I expected anger that I had been a witness, what I saw was more like embarrassment.
Maybe that was more imagined than real. I turned away, threw board and my body into an oncoming wave, and paddled out.
…
REMEMBER, “Swamis” is copyright protected, all rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.
INCIDENTALLY, I GOT THIS very interesting comment from JAMES IREDELL MOSS: “My grandma (Ida May Noonan) lived on Noonan Point till her house burned down in 1893. They did not rebuild. Eventually SRF (Self Realization Fellowship) bought the point and established the temple. Now it is called Swamis. I went to San DIeguito with Cheer Critchlow, that is what eventually led me to your site.”
Thanks, James. In researching, and, yes, I have researched, I got Swamis Point listed as NONAME POINT. That it is actually NOONAN POINT is so fantastic. It doesn’t mean I’m changing the title to “Noonan’s,” but I love inside scoop. If you were a classmate of Cheer Critchlow, you and I are contemporaries. I think I had to cut Cheer out of the main manuscript, but I did take a night SPEECH class he was also taking at Palomar. Main memory of that, other than he was way more confident at public speaking than I was: Cheer said he had tried to be a professional surfer, there just wasn’t enough money for such a career. 1969, no; nowadays he would be, as he was in the pretty insular North County surfworld, a star.
Also, the Sid name if not the character is loosely based on a Surfboards Hawaii team surfer whose last name I once knew. He was featured, hanging ten, in a small ad. I did, indeed, look at a board he had thrashed in with the other used boards. “He doesn’t really care where he surfs” was the actual comment. I didn’t buy the board. Fictional Joey does.
SO, OKAY, now that I am burning potential content, Sundays are for content, WEDNESDAYS ARE FOR “SWAMIS.”
If I had to choose just one image from those Reggie sent me, it would probably be the tattoo on, like, a live person. I’ve known Reggie a while, worked with him a lot, surfed with him many times, and he is still kind of an enigma to me. He always has a quick answer to anything rude or sarcastic I’ve ever said to him, and his self-identifying stories (and I’m not challenging them; sure, maybe he was named after a dealer on Third and Broadway [hope I got that right]) have a sort of (effective) shock value to me, someone who considers himself worldly.
Proud enough of his Irish genes to have a big “Ireland” tattoo on his body, Reggie’s forebears must have included some Leprechauns, and (yes, I looked this up) maybe a Kelpie (known for luring others into the water and the out-surfing them) or two. Reggie has this habit of showing up at my job sites and, more worthy of not here, at surf spots when I’m there. Sometimes we both actually score. I have been trying to not greet his paddling into the lineup with a “Fuck you, Reggie!” and/or a flip-off, single or double.
FRIENDLY GESTURE, I insist. BUT, Reggie has also filmed me on his phone, then, through super clever editing, made something amusing or funny for his many instagram followers. Evidently the secrecy part is crucial. He may refer to me as “Erwhistle,” something like that, but when another surfer in a parking lot referred to me by that name, I did resist sharing the FRIENDLY GESTURE with him. “Yeah; friend of Reggie’s, huh?”
SO, without further commentary, here are some selections of REGGIE SMART ART:
OKAY, so, um, not sure who this is, or what story the images selected tells, but I am pretty sure it isn’t Reggie. One of the nicknames earned through a careful diet (ask him, I’m obviously on a different regimen- vitamins and Oreos) is Reggie Good-Abs. No offense to this guy. ALSO, remember Reggie’s original art is copyright protected.
I do plan on having new posts on Sundays. I do plan on having other artists represented. TWO WEEKS AGO I did the once-only thing of texting everyone on my smart phone’s contact list with a message about TIM NOLAN’S artwork. It worked pretty well, hit-wise. LAST WEEK I featured NAM SIU. I have received a lot of text feedback. One recent one was, “DIGGING THE NEW ART.” I texted back, “What about the old (like, mine) art?” No response. YET.
NOW, I WILL ALMOST DEFINITELY add some of my art, as well as some recent outtakes from “SWAMIS” sometime this week. OKAY, Wednesday; let’s shoot for that. I am posting this one early, and remember, you can just scroll down… down, down, old art.
OH, AND if you see Reggie and can’t help but give him a FRIENDLY GESTURE, you might expect a response like, “Oh, you saw my stuff on Erwhistle’s site, huh?”
Tim Nolan, legendary boat designer and surfer/paddler/explorer of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the world, just returned from another adventure. A naval architect by trade, dealing with exact measurements, he says, “After all these years, I gave myself permission to do something artistic.”
It seems reasonable to point out that boats, like surfboards, are not all straight lines. It takes curve to flow in the water. No matter how precise and exact the measurements are, it takes an artist to even visualize what might work in waves and wind and chop. In the end, a perfect board or a perfect boat, or a perfect painting, or a perfect ride looks… simple.
So, with permission, Tim moved his rapidograph pen (the modern version, not the clog-o-matic version used by artists such as RICK GRIFFIN, who, incidentally, went to the same high school as Tim, and, not incidentally, was a major influence on me and any other person who decided to do cartoons and cross-hatch pen-and-ink from the mid-sixties on) to water color paper. With simple-but-defining lines and washes of color, Tim found some MAGIC.
So much of what we seek as surfers is trying to recapture or recreated some perfect moment from our past. If you have, as I do, some memory of a wave so clear that it was transparent… well, Tim captured it.
It’s all about the lighting, the shimmer, the sheen.
TIM NOLAN, backlit, perfectly-positioned.
Photo taken at a Baja point break by Bryce Evans of Seaside, Oregon, This image and the images of art works by Tim Nolan are protected by copyright and used on realsurfers.net with permission.
Thanks, Tim. I can’t stop myself from mentioning that when I met Tim, years ago, when he was so much older than I was (evidently he stopped counting birthdays), he said my best surfing experiences were still to come. In our most recent conversation he said, “If anyone had told me I’d be getting the best waves of my life at my age…” Yeah, I believe you.
I FIRST HEARD about the hole in the clouds from an ex-military, ex-commercial pilot. It was a while ago and some of his details are a little lost in the clouds of time, but he flew enough over the Puget Sound/Salish Sea/Strait of Juan de Fuca area that he took note of how, in inclement/stormy/normal-for-here weather, there seems to be a hole in the clouds. Here is where I may be romanticizing the story a bit: His wife, evidently, on a recreational flight, pointed to the hole in the clouds and said, “I want to live there.”
AND SO… they bought a place on high bank overlooking Discovery Bay, with a view toward Protection Island and the waters beyond. The wife wasn’t around when I worked for the guy. I won’t go to far into making up some story as to why she wasn’t.
I thought I had saved an image from the Doppler radar that showed the blue hole fairly clearly. Please accept this substitute image
THE BLUE HOLE, SPECIFICALLY
From above, the hole in the clouds over the Salish Sea has been observed often enough to be named. The blue hole. It is not, of course, clouds being clouds, constant in size or location, but it does consistently appear, somewhere around Protection Island. The blue hole can be seen from the curving road that skirts and rises above Discovery Bay. Look to the northeast. In the distance you just might see streams of light through a tear in the patchwork quilt.
If you are in the water or on land, a ring of ominous clouds around you, open sky above, the blue hole name also makes sense. If you see it once, you will look for it again. If you believe the phenomenon to be magical, some real-world Shangri-la… sure.
It isn’t magic, it is magical.
Rain shadows and rain forests, flood and drought, weather anywhere is confusing and complicated. Simplified, the earth seeks balance. The changes in the atmospheric pressure, the relative weight of the air above the earth, are paralleled with the changes in temperature between land masses, land and ocean masses calls for rebalancing. The constant rebalancing brings the movement of air. Wind. Mountains to oceans, cold to hot, warm to warmer, oceans to mountains. Bigger differences, stronger winds.
Too complicated, too confusing, there are professionals to track the changes, to tell us what to expect in weather and wind, to explain the blue hole.
Winds. We are all victims of and beneficiaries of winds; soft or harsh, breezes or gales. Winds can dry our clothes or tear them off the line, propel a boat, or, along with wind-driven waves, sink it. It seems illogical that winds from the north, the Fraser River Valley, particularly, can bring heat, even excessive heat, in the summer, and bitter, freezing cold in the winter.
They do.
The blue hole is caused by updrafts; a collision of winds split from a single source, a storm front approaching landfall from somewhere in the vast Pacific; from the Aleutian Islands, from the waters off Japan, even from the waters off New Zealand. Jet streams and rivers of ocean current add to the chaos.
The surface level winds, butting against the land, take the easier routes, the water, the corridors between the Olympic and Cascade Mountains. Sea level.
Islands and bridges, points of land and bays and inlets formed by rain and ancient ice are mere obstructions. Waves from the wind batter them and wrap around them.
The winds on the southern route go through the Chehalis Gap, into and up the Puget Sound. Whether the winds are southwest or southeast, the net direction is north. Hitting the obstructions of Whidbey and other Islands, the winds bend to the wider and more open area to the west. The Salish Sea. East winds, net direction West.
The winds on the northern route wrap around Cape Flattery and push down the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Southwest becomes west. Again, even with winds blowing across or against the flow, the net direction is east.
Collision. Updraft. The blue hole. Specifically. Still, it is… magical.
I wrote this piece for a still in the planning phase event or series of events in conjunction with the Port Townsend Library. I decided to post it here because it seems the “INSPIRED BY THE SALISH SEA” events or events might still be a ways off. Surfer/librarian Keith Darrock is the contact point with the Library. Since there is some time, and because I have worked with and keep working with people who have some interesting relationships with the local waters (not just surfers), I am trying to contact them and invite their participation.
My goals are a bit different than Keith’s. In addition to a live event or events, I am kind of pushing for some sort of hold-in-your-hands thing, a pamphlet, perhaps, with art and essays and poetry. It is totally unclear how the thing would be funded, but it would give some folks who don’t want to chat it up live and in person a chance to say… whatever. Several artist friends (and I) are working on Salish Sea appropriate art. If you have a short piece or art to contribute, Keith would be the guy to get a hold of. Google him, or, I guess, the PORT TOWNSEND PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Thanks, as always, for checking out realsurfers.net. Please remember that I claim all rights to my writing and… not this time, but to my illustrations as well. “Swamis” update- Working on the final go-through before whatever the next step is. Shit, I better get on it. Or maybe I’ll…
OH, WAIT… here’s a thought based on several recent surf trips/adventures: You can choose to be disappointed. Or… not.
My close surf friends know I am a competitive talker. And, yes, they compete.
We have the talk-over and the wait-a-second and the let-me-get-back-to-that in pretty much any phone conversation.
Put us in a parking lot with other surfers, and it gets pretty chaotic. I almost said worse. Maybe it’s better.
All surfers are bad asses on the beach.
All surfers have stories about past glories.
No younger or newer surfer is really all that stoked to hear someone else’s glory story; particularly if it is from back in the day (as in before the listener/victim was born). All surfers may be prone to embellishment if not exaggeration. Some might actually lie. Older surfers are easy to suspect. Example: Trestles with no one else out? Dubious at best.
Almost all stories are embellished, polished, tightened enough to be told in the ever-briefer time allotted by those with ever shorter attention spans. Like, all of us.
What?
And then, of course, there is the “Oh, I think I heard that one” situation, worse if the waves were smaller in the previous telling.
Break.
NOW, I have apologized a few times for my blurting out old stories while one of my friends is trying to describe some ultra, all-time, classic session I missed. One of the more recent interruptions calling for an apology involved Adam “Wipeout” James and his family’s trip to LegoLand. Yes, he surfed Tamarack (“That’s where I learned”), Grandview (“All the older kids went there. It was, like, me and my friends had to, like, graduate to the spot. Not really invited”), Tarramar (“Longest beach break wave of my life. Still.”), Swamis (“What do you mean they call the inside peak the ‘kiddy bowl?’ That was my spot).
Adam interrupted me with the continuation of his story at this point, just before I could add, “That is, when it wasn’t lined up from the outside.” Kiddy bowl, indeed.
Back when I memorized everything in “Surfer” magazine, I was particularly impressed, even moved by a story about Stanley’s Dinners. Somehow it morphed in my memory to Stanley’s Diner, and, even though I have no idea where it was on the California beachfront, that it was torn down for, I’m imagining, view blocking mega homes just goes along with my take on the growth of the surfing and the non-surfing population, and what has been lost. “Pretty scary!”
NOW, I went surfing with Adam Wipeout. While he and I were surfing a spot I had declined to surf before (great choice on this trip), my daughter, Dru, and her friend Jordan, visiting from L.A., were down Surf Route 101, eating oysters and other assorted delicacies at the Hama Hama Seafood restaurant and, I guess, grill. Adam James is a critical part of the organization, growing, harvesting, and selling oysters here and around the world.
Dru’s text read, “Please thank Adam 100 times for me! Fabulous!” Yeah, yeah, I thanked him 101 times, one for taking the old dude surfing. And, yes, as a reference to my last posting, we did hit the Frugal Burger on the way back.
Somewhere on the trip back, Trish texted me to make sure that I don’t throw away my surf gear like I did the last time I went surfing with Adam. I didn’t. There are some other stories of course. Later.
First, I guess, excuse me for not keeping to a pattern I have only recently tried to set: Posting something new on a Sunday. Yes, it was the Super Bowl, but, no, I didn’t watch it. The Seahawks weren’t in it and I really didn’t care. Besides, I had to work.
WORK.
Work is, theoretically, what we do so we have some money and some time to go in search of surf. Oh, yeah, and it helps with the eight hundred dollar electric bill from the mid-winter water heater fiasco in which the failing heating element caused the water heater to be on, two-hundred-twenty volts, like, way too much of the time. It has been fixed. Nightmare. AND, two months before that, there was the leaking pipe situation that turned the old laundry room into a steam room. I tried to ignore, and then downplay the problem. Four hundred dollar heating bill. Fixed it. So easy, so quick. Two hundred and twenty-five dollar month. Then, the biggie. ANYWAY, paid the bill.
NOW, surf.
No. Even though the predictions and rumors and stories of waves have been going off like a, I don’t know, Super Bowl halftime show, I sort of kind of promised not to run off until the job that is helping to pay for the above mentioned… problem, so, no surf. WORK.
If I haven’t actually written about this subject, it certainly has come up several times recently. I am and have always been a sort of surf whore. There may be two sides to this:
ONE, I have historically passed on waves for the opportunity to make some money. And often, not that much money. So, admitted Paint-whore. There’s a whore’s regret with this; I never remember the project I committed to, but I always remember what I missed. Example: Side job, 1970s, on the bluff above perfect and glassy waves at Stone Steps. So beautiful. Sob.
TWO, I have, again, historically, traded the joy of my presence on a surf trip for a ride to the beach. This started with my mother. “Please, please…” and continued in high school with upper classmates; “Please, please…” And, even when I got a license and a car, the cars were always junkers and frequently broken and awaiting my mechanic father’s repair work. So, as I was telling my high school surf friend, Ray Hicks, on a call the other day (just to see if he’s doing, slash, maybe surfing), I quite frequently accepted rides to the beach with, well, pretty much anyone who was willing. Surf Whore. Of sorts. The only incentive for any of these volunteers, some of them pretty much kooks, was that, and a lot of this was because Fallbrook is not exactly a beach town, they got to surf with, possibly, arguably, the best surfer in the school. Not that I was in any other way cool.
NOW, because I do discuss whatever is going on with pretty much anyone, I have been bringing up the current situation in which my trusted 1987 Toyota died an inglorious death, and my work rig is in some state of advanced breathing problems (cough, cough, choke- runs fine on the flats and downhill- at 45 and under), and I have been put in the position of having to ask others if I can go along with them if they head out. “Please, please…”
IN MY DEFENSE, my current deal is, in addition to the snappy banter and impolite patter to and from, and getting to surf with some old guy with a big board and bad knees, I will offer to share the price of gasoline and/or treat the driver to a delicious meal at Frugal Burger. An opportunity to cruise through Costco for just a few items is, of course, optional.
THE REASON I am using this is this: Shirley MacLaine wrote that her portrayal of a Paris prostitute was one thing, but talking about it on TV was another. It was not appreciated. An interviewer rushed to a commercial when she described the character as not a high class escort, but as a sort of bargain shopper’s choice. Yeah, I get it. Surely, Shirley.
Maybe I didn’t make the benefits of having a ridealong like me clear to CHIMACUM TIM. I very recently got a text from Tim, saying, and I will quote, “Sorry man I didn’t give you a call to go surfing no friends on powder days.” I believe that’s a skiing/snowboarding thing. TIM does seem to believe that a mention in realsurfers.net is, I don’t know, worthwhile, so maybe not inviting me might further up his profile. Sure. Okay, Tim, no mushroom burger for you.
MEANWHILE, I’m hopeful as I wait for my next electric bill.
Oh, and look for another exciting posting next Sunday.
This is my first time attempting to use my (suspect, quality wise) printer/scanner with my borrowed (thanks, Dru) Mac computer. I managed to get these without calling my daughter, but with some YouTube help. Please excuse the sometimes unfortunately placed bits of crap from, I don’t know, somewhere, and the wasted white space because I haven’t mastered the sizing part of all this. I could comment, at length, on each of my latest attempts at… whatever it was I am trying for. I will try not to.
Top to bottom:
“Racing the squall line.” Because I am involved, trying to assist Port Townsend librarian and fully-frothed surfer Keith Darrock in putting together an event, tentatively titled “Inspired by the Salish Sea,” I used the view from Port Townsend. I am inspired to do at least one more with the view surfers on the always languid Strait of Juan de Fuca, desperately looking to the west for any sign of an approaching swell more frequently get, an incoming squall. Worse, another shit weather front.
“The Salish Sea.” Possible title with info for the event or events on the rest of the page.
“Quilcene.” The Quilcene Village Store, quite the hip place nowadays, has several of my drawings in the sort of sitting/coffee area. They have been having a sort of contest to come up with postcards representing the area along Surf Route 101. This is my entry. When I showed it to Trish, she said, “Uh huh… it’s… okay.” This is after she poo-pooed the earlier version with a similar background (Mount Walker), but with a person in the foreground to add more, you know, like, interest. “Creepy,” she said. “Looks like a killer.” Okay, I rubbed him out. Metaphorically.
“Untitled Woman’s Face.” Trish told me I should draw some of the characters for my still-almost-finished novel, “Swamis.” I said, something she already knows, that I have trouble drawing women’s faces. I actually kind of cheated on this one. Googled “How to draw women’s faces.”Some… tracing was involved, just for stuff like, getting the eyes kind of lined up. Guaranteed, the drawing looks very little like the one I tried to copy.
“Inspired by the Salish Sea.” Definitely redrawing this one. The blank space is to allow room for the dates and times and the various speakers. “What I was going for,” every artist or writer (or surfer who just blew ten attempts at a floater) says, was a sort of Victorian, possibly Art Nouveau look. No where close. But… next time…
“Real surfers froth.” Yeah, it’s kind of like post-psychedelic graffiti, totally unreadable. A series of mistakes began when I didn’t allow enough room for the T in FROTH. I thought I kind of fixed that with the overlap. No. Then, when I took the original to the Printery to get reduced, part of the F and part of the H were cut out. Okay. So, maybe some color would help with that. Not really. Still, someday, this will be on some highest bidder’s wall, and when visitors ask about it, he or she will say, “I believe what Original Erwin was going for here was…”
Better. Always.
SWAMIS Note. Adam Wipeout and his family are down there. It is close to Legoland. I got a nice image the other day. Almost no one out, perfect conditions, and… yeah, I’m fine with it. Totally one hundred percent… fine.
I MAY HAVE, finally, gotten enough EDDIE to fill my craving for something I have sworn, repeatedly, sometimes with actual swear words, never to really care about: SURFING BIG ASS WAVES. It may have helped that I did go surfing in the week since I sat, transfixed, kiddy cornered to our big ass flat screen (No, don’t care if your is bigger, Dick), listening to commentary by Kaipo (from the WSL- hope he still has a job there) and the two guys who did the color work for the recent DA HUI SHOOTOUT, which I also watched a shit load of, and somehow, with one participant in that event knocked unconscious and having to be resuscitated and at least two other surfers seriously injured, made riding PIPELINE seem somehow boring. Thanks, Kaipo.
THERE WAS NO WAY the Eddie could or would be boring. That a lifeguard, LUKE SHEPARDSON, getting a time deduct for his time surfing, won the event seemed almost poetically fitting.
AND/BUT I didn’t just watch the live coverage. OH, no, I checked out videos by and/or about all of my Hawaii favorites during the past week, last YouTube vicarious surf trip, last night. YEAH, like NATHAN FLORENCE, KOA ROTHMAN (one with both of them together), MASON HO, and, because YouTube obviously has me dialed in, I was offered and perfectly willingly clicked on more stuff from MARK HEALY and ELI OLSON. And maybe a few others I don’t want to check my search history to verify.
BUT WAIT… So many people I ran into over the past seven days, some with only a tangental connection to surfing, had to ask me if I watched THE EDDIE. Oh, yeah; want to discuss it? I did. Yes, since I just thought of it, I did enjoy the commercials from the TV Station in Hawaii (KHON2) that was airing the event. No, they probably do have as many ads as mainland channels for various charities, and for pills and vitamins and products to make any body part smell great, but if they took a day off from that to show some surf related products, thank you.
I SHOULD confess that it was often me who brought up the subject.
THERE WAS, as I alluded to, a day between last week’s BINGE and today’s (possible) start to the WSL’s version of a PIPELINE contest (which I will follow), a full day adventure, dark to dark, with STEPHEN R. DAVIS, seeking waves. It took two days of bleaching and pressure washing to get down from that buzz-worthy experience, my froth, no doubt, amplified by the dull hangover from the EDDIE.
SO, THIS MORNING, searching Google for an appropriate photo to purloin (doesn’t sound as nefarious as steal), I chanced upon some stuff from BEACH GRIT, almost always satirical, and always clever commentary by CHAS SMITH and DEREK RIELLY. So, I just had to get their take on (what else,) the EDDIE. And, of course, between them, they also skewered other surf related sites, QUIKSILVER (who formerly sponsored the EDDIE, missed out on this bonanza), and the easy target of the WORLD SURF LEAGUE.
GOOD STUFF, though I’m always a bit hurt that my friend and librarian/surf ripper/zealot, KEITH DARROCK, believes Chas Smith is just SOO great. So radical. I mean, yes, Chas is smoking in his online image, and I just someone, choosing breathing without coughing over coolness, who used to smoke, but… Now, it isn’t that I don’t agree with Keith, it’s just that I’m… competitive.
OKAY, I have almost worked on this long enough to find out if the PIPELINE contest is going to run today. I am also working on some drawings and very, very close to writing the final chapter, the grand conclusion of “SWAMIES.” OH, AND, YES I have watched some videos of the actual spot filmed during the recent FIFTY YEAR SWELL (fifty-three if you go back to the one in December of 1969). MY COMMENT: They always seem to focus on the outside peak. It doesn’t usually connect all the way through. Certain tides. Now, the inside peak…
This is one of the paintings realsurfer and real artist Stephen R. Davis has been producing during, and particularly since his epic battle with Lymphoma. Not that it’s over. Steve is offering limited edition prints and posters and cards of this and other paintings. I asked him to send me the image and the contact info so others can get in on purchasing some of his work. I don’t really communicate with him on ‘social,’ BUT I will get the connections sorted out.
MEANWHILE, I am perilously, dangerously close to finishing the manuscript for “SWAMIS.” I mean, like, today if I don’t get distracted by rumors of waves. THE ISSUE is, how to sell these things, also including ORIGINAL ERWIN t shirts and, yeah, I have some art works of my own (less so with my dark-of-winter obsession with finishing the novel.
BUT, and this is related, my daughter, Drucilla, also engaged in her own battle with cancer (Fuck Cancer), is getting back into the work mode, AND she has skills in setting up some platform on which Steve (and our mutual artist friend, Reggie) can market our work.
AS FAR AS the selling “SWAMIS,” I have some ideas. First among them, as I try to find an agent, is offering a limited edition version, printed on regular paper, and contained in a Pee-Chee folder, a critical item in a 1960s students’ life, and something that is a part of the “Swamis” narrative. With pockets on both sides of the folder, a reader could easily slide pages read from one to the other. AND I would include artwork I have done in connection with the manuscript. ALL NUMBERED AND SIGNED, of course.
AS WITH Stephen’s contact info: I will have to get back to you on that.
Real Surfers 