Tag Archives: “Swamis” novel by Erwin Dence

“SWAMIS” Chapter One, Part One

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, surf novels

CHAPTER ONE- FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 1969

            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.”

“Swamis,” Not Processed, Processing

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel

MY NOVEL. Erwin’s Opus. It seems like I’ve been working on it forever. Writing, writing, editing, cutting, reworking. With tens of thousands of words sliced and phrasing polished, side stories removed, characters dropped, the timeline shortened, the storyline tightened, a hundred little inconsistencies fixed, I am almost, for at least the fourth time, approaching the end.

DO I have some faith that this version of the manuscript is reader friendly, like, commercial, like, perhaps, some novel you might consider for a casual read?

NO. Put it down to stubbornness, perhaps. My acceptance that I had to make changes to make “Swamis” readable is in a battle with my desire to make the fictional real.

I HAVE DECIDED TO start publishing “Swamis” in serial form on this site. BECAUSE I have committed to doing content on Sundays, I will start with the INTRODUCTION and post pages on WEDNESDAYS.

                                    “SWAMIS” INTRODUCTION

It was a conceit, I now can see, my belief that I had a gift. I could visualize, actually see, in my mind, what I had just witnessed. I could store this visualization, file it with others, bring it back into my mental vision at will. Memories. Not all memories. Important ones. Images of things I’ve seen, audio of words heard. Or overheard.

Ridiculous. We all seem to have this ability. If developed, it becomes a skill. My not realizing my own ridiculousness when I was seventeen may have been to my advantage.

Or maybe that’s just how I remember it.

My father was a detective. “What do you see?” That was always the question. Little things: A bent spoon, spilled milk, eyes that evade, words that contradict. Clues. Evidence. “What does it all mean?” The tougher question. “The greatest theory,” my father would say, “is nothing compared to the tiniest truth.”

Still, I noticed as many of the little things as I could. I tried to notice everything. Partially because I trusted my selected groups of clues, my biased interpretations, even less than I trusted the words and motives of others, I kept notes. Years and years of notes.

If I can’t seem to pull some vague memory out of my files… notes. 

 Memories, I have come to believe, have lives; a pulse of their own that we, as hosts, can push aside or ignore, try to forget, or try to pretend some memories were not real; we can place a memory in with enough other memories and dreams and fictions and secrets and lies that we can, briefly, convince ourselves that, at some time, in some situation, under some condition, the truth of that repressed memory will not come back to hit us, full force. If the truth of that secret, that lie, is revealed, we fear, our lives will be changed. Full force.

We cannot, continuing my overthinking, completely delete or erase even a pleasant memory, a mundane memory. All memories are somewhere.

I had an image, in some place between dream and awake-ness, of little containers, something to hold a bar of soap on a quick trip. Plastic, lid fitting over a tray. There were many of these containers, some larger than others, moving up and down vertical lines, something more like ropes, three strands, weaved. The containers were white because, supposedly, men lack enough imagination to dream in color. The ropes, I would swear, were greens and reds. The background was definitely black. 

It was a dream. I knew that. i did have enough imagination to convince myself that these containers held memories. Why not? There was movement, forces from the side, a wind, possibly, bumping one line into another, that one into the next one. Not chaotic but almost controlled movement. Almost a dance. And there was a beat. Background. The pulse thing. Almost music.

Trying to stay in the dream; trying to hold the moment; I theorized that memories are as much in our blood streams as in our brains; definitely not as cataloged and compartmentalized as we tell ourselves, and definitely not as controlled.

Perhaps, if I opened this one container…

I couldn’t. Or I woke up before I could open it. I was aware of my surroundings. Saturday, December third, two thousand and twenty-two. Briefly aware. I slipped from dream to memory.

I was paddling as hard as I could. A wave, already breaking to my left, was bearing down on me. I felt the wind push the top off the foam on the already lifting surface of the water, the remnants of the larger wave before this one coming up the face. I was aware of the heaviness and the speed of my breathing. I felt the lift and the drop and the weightlessness and the catching of my weight on my board. Instant rebalancing, pressure with my right foot on the inside rail. Swing. I turned. I had to rise, had to go faster. I did. Again, weightless, the low sun flashed off the wave face. Gold, white, too bright. The curve of the wave, yards ahead of me, was impossibly steep, the lip feathering, throwing itself forward, lace and diamonds and rainbows. I had to keep my eyes open. Had to. I was in the tube. I was elated. The very few seconds were magical and terrifying.

The knock down was not as violent as I would have thought. Had I thought. The lip hit me. There was no recovery. My board slipped and skittered and went sideways. It was six feet down to the trough, sideways to upside down to down, six feet of wave pushing me. My body was curling and straightening under the power and the weight, pushed six feet under water, to the bottom, tumbling, caught in the surge, and struggling. Uselessly. I came up fifteen feet over and twenty feet closer to shore. Another broken wave hit me before I could cough out and take in another breath.

Three rides on a day that would become legendary was enough. I stood up in the shallows, the sea grass covered rock ledges that were like ever extending fingers from the cove to the point. I would pick my way to shore, collect my board, and head for the stairs. Three rides. Two on waves other surfers had fallen on, one magic tube ride on a wave that was just mine. Magic. No shame.

No board. I looked around. There were other surfers on the beach, those who had failed and those waiting to build enough nerve to go out. The steep cliff was still in a shadow that extended halfway out to the inside peak. I looked up. There were silhouettes, trees and a line of people, spectators at the stadium. All of them seemed to be pointing out and yelling in unison. I couldn’t quite hear them. Three surfers on the beach joined in. “It’s in the rip! It’s in the rip!”

I had to swim back out. Had to.

The same rip current that had taken my board, down the beach and around the biggest of the waves, created enough of a channel that surfers whose skills did not match the conditions could get to the lineup. Fools and heroes. Just witnessing great surfers on great waves was enough for some of them. Five surfers would back off as another, thirty yards deeper, would scream toward and then under and then past them, Santana winds blowing back fifteen feet from each breaking wave. Occasionally a fool would take off in front of someone who just might make the wave. Fools and heroes and witnesses, spectators with cameras on the bluff.

 I had just reached my board. It was floating, right side up, just beyond the regular takeoff spot for the inside peak. Someone yelled, “Outside!” Everyone started paddling, desperately, toward deeper water. A young woman dropped in, two stroke takeoff, on the first wave, fifty yards out and forty yards up the point from me. She seemed to be standing, effortlessly, she and her board separately freefalling to the bottom third of the wave. She landed, toes first, and rebalanced, moving her right foot back. She cleanly and gracefully leaned into the wave, her body stretched, her left arm pointing down the line. Despite the strength of her turn, she seemed to glide up to the top third of the hollow pit. She crouched, tight, disappeared even from my view, in the glare and the gold and the diamonds and lace. She reappeared, sideslipped, put her right hand into the face of the wave, reconnected, and, with the lip of the wave throwing itself out and over her head, and with the biggest smile possible on her face, she looked directly at me and screamed, “Joe-y!”

I screamed, “Ju-lie!” Julia Truelove Cole. Swamis. Tuesday, December second, nineteen-sixty-nine. Fifty-four years ago, as I write this, and…  And Julie made the wave.

I am fully awake now. I can visualize all of this in living, vibrant, real-to-life color. It is real to me.

“Swamis” is a memoir, of sorts, memories of Joseph Atsushi DeFreines. “Swamis” is not a surf novel but a surfer’s story. “Swamis” does not fit comfortably in the detective/mystery genre. Writing and rewriting “Swamis” would have been so much easier if the narrator hadn’t been caught up in the back stories and the side stories, the tangents and the overlapping circles. After countless hours remembering and thinking and writing, editing and deleting, of trying to fit what I want to say in some format a reader would recognize, I might have to say “Swamis” is mostly a coming-of-age/romance novel set in a very specific, magical and terrifying time and place.

I apologize in advance for telling too much about minor characters, for side trips into the periphery. I refuse to apologize for the enjoyment I have had, so many years on, opening and reopening those containers. Of those I stories I have deleted: They’re somewhere, some backup file, some thumb drive. Of those I so feared opening: I have opened them now. I had to.

“Swamis” is copyrighted. All rights reserved by Erwin Dence.

Art, WSL, Cuts, and… POWER OUtAGE!

Posted on by under Uncategorized

I tried really hard to have today’s post UP AND ONLINE by ten am. SORRY. 9:45, big power outage. I’m dealing with it. I got the boondocks-necessary generator going. Great! Hooked up the router and a few other items, went back to working on this. OOPS. Out of gas. Luckily, I didn’t put it all in my van. Back up and going. NOW, of course, the power came back on and I’m afraid to switch back over and lose whatever I haven’t already lost.

I did go on a little too much on the WSL stuff. I intended to just post some of my new illustrations.

OKAY, that:

JUST A BIT of explanation- The top part of this image is all I felt I could save from a larger drawing. The lower part was intended to be a WOLF. Maybe it’s the ears, but even I think BEAR. Oh, and maybe it’s the computer, but the colors seem to have come out way better than usual. WOLF/BEAR.

NOW, what I overwrote about the WSL:

It has become quite popular to criticize the shit out of the WORLD SURF LEAGUE, so… why shouldn’t I?

OKAY, I will.

Though I do appreciate that I can watch surf contests from all over the world on my big screen TV, and after I repeat an assertion I frequently make to doubters and haters that the difference in the wave riding skills of top-level competitive surfers and even above average non-competitors is proportionately greater than the difference between your local rippers and those who can objectively be labeled as kooks. HAVING SAID THAT, I leave a lot of room for those free surfers who are as good, and often better, as the men and women who seek fame, fortune, whatever, by subjecting themselves to the boredom and tension and the whims of judges.

OH, yeah, judging is SUBJECTIVE, subject to some person’s opinion on whether this air is more difficult than that carve, whether a floater is more functional than a kick-stall, whether making fifteen jitterbug moves is cooler than just being in the optimum position. People, even judges and even commentators and company executives could, maybe, even possibly, evenly reasonably influenced by companies that sponsor surfers as well as surf contests.

NOT THAT this happens, or that the WSL would bend a bit to keep or to even get popular surfers on the tour, or… or, or…

BUT a little behind the scenes stuff from the two seasons of that series about, you know, winning and whining and (I couldn’t remember the title and didn’t want to take the time to search further- but I did watch every episode), showed that in judging, there is a head judge who makes sure the other judges are on the same page. SO, yeah, totally subjective, semi regulated and controlled.

MAYBE.

SHIT! I didn’t want to get this involved. THE MID-SEASON CUT was completed. Twenty-two men, ten women. Elation and tears. I stayed up a little later than I would have to watch some critical rounds of the WSL contest at MARGARET RIVER, WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

YES, it was the last heat of the day, but as soon as it became apparent that SALLY FITZGIBBONS was going to lose, I turned it all off.

NOW, I do find it easier to follow women’s surfing. Not all of my surfing friends even give a shit about contests. Some do. Some have favorites. My daughter, DRU, thinks Tyler is a bad ass. She is. TRISH, based on watching, kind of over my shoulder, a contest from Huntington Beach a few years ago, became a COURTNEY CONLOGUE fan. I wasn’t, so much, but Trish keeps asking me, “How’d my girl do?”

Oh, she was underscored, just as she was in the BELL’S BEACH contest. A fierce competitor, Courtney didn’t make the cut. Sorry.

AND NOW, Sally Fitz, Sal, she’s out. Didn’t make the cut. Because Sally lost in the quarterfinals to Caroline Marks, this other woman, who, I believe, Sally defeated earlier, is in the top ten, and is still on the tour, and Sally… well, I don’t know. I turned the TV off and went to bed.

HERE is how to defeat a contestant as experienced, as capable, as skilled in SURFING TO THE CRITERIA as anyone- Sally: Give her a 3-plus on a well-surfed wave. Give Caroline a 7-plus for a similarly surfed wave (but backside). This difference in scoring puts Sally at a disadvantage. SURFING well is all about confidence. Surfing scared or angry or tentatively is not a losing strategy. Sally fell or took off on the wrong wave. Caroline got a well-deserved score. She won the heat. And she would have without any scoring help. Sally didn’t get a last second gift/miracle buzzer beater wave like CARISSA MOORE did in the heat before hers.

Sally’s out. She had a long career. She’s popular. She may or may not go on to the CHALLENGER SERIES.

I DON’T KNOW.

There is a WINNING FORMULA. With so much study done on how to win a heat (priority and time management, having that Kelly Slater turn on lock, knowing which claim to throw when), watching eight heats in a row has become… kind of… less thrilling. IF A SURFER can’t figure it out, hire a coach, do the work (always gets me, surfing as work), perfect that tail slide and that fin drift, remember to cut your competitor off from a last wave even if he or she can’t possibly get enough points to beat you (these are not your friends in the water), be ruthless… and always appear humble in the post-heat interview, always wear the hat and the sunglasses.

I watched a child/teen contest recently, from Trestles. The formula worked. Turn, turn, off the top, fin slide. If the kids didn’t have the moves down, they will. Coaches, sponsors, judges. 

ALL THIS SAID, I don’t exactly know how the WSL could do a better job. AND I do enjoy the big screen coverage. WAIT, how’s about they mix up the time-filler ad between heats? How about… I’m thinking. If I can’t sit through a bunch of heats next time, maybe I’ll just watch the shorter versions on YouTube.

Wednesday at Swamis

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, surf art, surf fiction, surf novels, surf posters

Check out Reggie Smart Art by scrolling down. I do plan on posting new stuff on SUNDAYS, but I might just have more stuff to say than one-a-week can handle.

I continue to tighten and refine my manuscript for “SWAMIS.” Every time I am happy with one chapter, I think about how I can cut some fat from another chapter. When I say ‘think,’ I mean obsess. Most of this chopping and hacking involves covering what characters do without going too far into some background on the character.

But first, without too explanation- A few new illustrations:

WAIT! I screwed up and didn’t switch the view on several other drawings. Not being skilled enough to save this and add the corrected images. I guess I’ll have to save them for SUNDAY. SUNDAY!

MEANWHILE, here is a section that comes early in the novel, and is sort of retold a bit later. I already cut a character who was in this chapter. Sorry, man. I did a bit of a combo, taking what I thought was the best of each and making a version that is BETTER.

SO…

I tried to concentrate on the water, listening, studying where the waves peaked, where the best takeoff point might be. Instead, I visualized Sid in the water at Swamis on a sunny, glassy morning. Sitting with four other surfers, Sid was the farthest surfer over, farthest out. The apex of a loose triangle. He watched me push through a wave, kept his eyes on me as I paddled over far enough over to not be in the way if someone caught a right hander, close enough to pick up a wave someone missed or fell early on. Scraps.

Sid motioned to the surfer on his immediate right as a wave approached. The surfer paddled for and caught it. Three-wave set. Sid motioned to another surfer to go on the second, then took the third, and largest wave. I was on the shoulder, forty-five degrees to the waves, sitting back on my board, ready to go. Sid kept his eyes on me, shaking his head. He rode as close to me as he could, cranked his board around in a cutback, spraying me as he passed. I paddled on, out, toward the peak.

Another set came quickly enough that the surfer who missed the previous waves took the first one. I took the second one. Smooth takeoff, I thought, decent bottom turn. I lined up the section, pulled up high on the wave face. I did see Sid down the line. I didn’t expect him to turn, last second, and drop in. I had two choices: Run Sid over or bail.

No choice, really.

“That’s for paddling past me,” Sid said, paddling back out as I stood in chest deep water, my board, broach to the wave, popping up halfway to shore.

“I didn’t break any rules,” I said.

Sid stopped, got off his board. It was floating between us. “Yeah, Kook, you broke the locals rule.” He took in a mouth full of water, spit it across the board at me. He smiled. “Locals rule.” He nodded toward the lefts. “Okay… cowboy?”

“Okay” I said, out loud. I opened my eyes. I was still on the platform. “Ten seconds,” I whispered. “Maybe twelve.”

…

OH, yeah, remember that all rights to this stuff are claimed by the artist and/or artist and are protected by copyright.

See you SUNDAY!

Reggie Smart Art

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, northwest surfing, surf art

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?”

Nam Siu for You… and more

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, surf art, surf culture, surf fiction

It’s EASTER SUNDAY and I did not get up before dawn.

Maybe my one-time-only self-promoting text attack last Sunday worked a bit better than I thought. I sent word to every person on my smart phone about some artworks by TIM NOLAN, and, I think, I might have made reference to planning on posting content on Sundays. I DIDN’T MEAN, like, early.

OR maybe the unusually high number of looks is because I’m posting some art work by Olympic Peninsula STYLIST (I considered some other apt descriptors- ripper, reef diver, skatepark regular…still thinking…) NAM SIU.

SO, OKAY, I’ll just…

NAM SIU did send me three photos of him surfing. I selected this one because of the lighting. Mainly. Or the styling.

IN OTHER NEWS:

JAMES ARSULISH, a friend of mine of many years, died on GOOD FRIDAY. I feel compelled to write something about friends we see, occasionally, over many years, like surf friends. Occasionally, with large gaps in between. AND there are friends who move, or pass on. We get the news… eventually. James’ passing was closer than that. I will write about James. For now, I share grief with his family and his extended group of friends. RIP.

BECAUSE I am going to stick to the SUNDAY POSTS with an emphasis on ART and ARTISTS, my plan is to post occasional stories, essays, whatever, about other things on a random Thursday, Friday, whenever, IT’S all on one page… scroll down.

IN “SWAMIS” NEWS: I have been going through the latest edit for a while. I focused heavily on it recently, got to the end, again, and got a copy printed up on, yes, GOOD FRIDAY. 221 pages, somewhere under 97,000 words (not epic length, and down from the 120,000 plus earlier versions), double sided. It cost me (I have the receipt right here) $26.29. MY PLAN WAS, put it in a PEE-CHEE folder (sort of featured in the novel), sell some numbered (max 100), signed, limited editions for… more. A profit.

YES, I do know it’s cheesy and unprofessional and, no, but… do consider the value increase when/if the novel hits it big. MEANWHILE, I have had several people offer to buy a copy, AND I ran into a client at the grocery store whose granddaughter has written many books and might just… help. BUT TRISH is telling me to calm down, not go any crazier.

WHAT MAKES anyone crazy enough to do anything that might be considered art or literature or surfing, anything that can be judged subjectively by judges and judgers, crazier, is self doubt. I have already sort of pushed some folks into reading parts or the first two unexpurgated versions of “SWAMIS.” I won’t get a second chance at a first impression.

I am aware of some of my mistakes. MY HOPE IS that I have now cut out enough of the peripherals, focused enough on the plot. Meanwhile meanwhile, I am going through the paper version, marking things, cutting, changing. I am trying to write a reasonable synopsis, looking up agents I might contact… shit like that. I am not a salesman. This part sucks. TRIPLE MEANWHILE- I somehow can’t help wondering/dreaming/fantasizing what my $26.29 copy, with notes and changes, might be worth.

THANK YOU for checking out realsurfers. REMEMBER all rights to original materials are owned by the person who produced them and are protected by copyright.

OH, AND how about Sunday by… 9:45AM?

Original Erwin, Surf, Swamis, Squalls, Fantasy Surf Spot Illustrations, slightly off kilter (scanner, not the artist)

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, Erwin Dence illustrations, Erwin Dence surf illustrations, surf art

We have to, occasionally, scroll. My fault. I haven’t figured out how to tighten the borders on Drucilla’s Mac.

BY WAY OF EXPLANATION:

The ORIGINAL ERWIN LOGO thing came from trying to simplify my drawing style, such as, I’m often afraid, it is. Yes, I am planning on doing some more t-shirts as soon as I pay my taxes. I tried to make both sides of the wave match, then went to THE PRINTERY in Port Townsend, had Steven do the reversal/blue thing. I was so excited that I didn’t really perfectly align the reflection part. Close.

BECAUSE the SAILBOAT RACING THE SQUALL drawing was already being copied, a version came out blue (and reversed).

THE SALISH C tugboat illustration is the subtle color version, the colors all the more subtle(ized) by the vagaries of multiple copiers and printers and computer screens. Subtle and Simple are so fucking hard (I can say fucking because, so far, no one has told me not to. Still, I’m fucking cutting back… damn it).

THE YOUNG WOMAN illustration is another attempt to draw women without overdrawing. It is another possible cover or title page for “SWAMIS.” I have Dru working on adding some perfect non-hand-drawn lettering. She has, but, because I don’t know how to sign in to her acrobat account, it is unopen-able on her computer. It would be able to be opened on the laptop Trish is hanging on to, but then I would probably have to fucking (sorry) find it. AND YES, I’m so so close to finishing the final go through on the manuscript, trying so hard to keep it around 95,000 words.

FANTASY POINT. Here’s the point: Two local artists, JESSE JOSHUA WATSON (I insist on calling him Jesse Merle Watson- easier for me to remember) and STEPHEN R. DAVIS have done paintings of fantasy point breaks. I’m competitive.

I would put Jesse’s version up, but I would have to contact him and… and, anyway, no one wants anyone to believe any rendering or abstraction of lineups that don’t actually exist (yeah, maybe Indonesia or Surfer’s Journal) might be real. BUT, both Stephen and Jesse surf, so we do share similar inspirations. Maybe… okay, I’ll call someone who might have Jesse’s number. Meanwhile, google him. I DIDN”T SAY my interpretation is better. To quote another surfer/writer: “I wouldn’t say ‘better,’ I would say ‘different.’ ” I will gladly accept DIFFERENT.

PLEASE REMEMBER, all the rights to all original works on realsurfers.net are owned by someone.

The Blue Hole Above the Salish Sea

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, northwest surfing, old surfers, surf adventures, surf culture, surf-related short storties

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.

Surf’s Up! Who Ya Gonna Call?

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, northwest surfing, old surfers, real surfers

CAUTION: This post contains references to people and practices from the last century.

I have a home/office landline and two cell phones. One, the smart phone, cracked glass and blown out speakers, is for business, mostly, texts and notes and contacts; oh, and it does have internet, so, if I want to look at a camera or at selected buoys, maybe check out the doppler, I can kind of do it. The other phone is my (and Trish hates the greeting that goes with it in the odd instance that I don’t answer, either because it set itself to mute- not my choice, ever, or I am actually on the device, chatting) Super Secret Stealth Surf Phone. It’s a dumb flip phone, the kind they market to old people.

There is one contact on this device, Miller Paint, that isn’t a family member or a surfer. And there aren’t, like, that many surfers.

And, of the surfers on the contact list, there are probably only three that I would call if I want to team up (as in they drive) to go in search of some rideable waves, and/or to report on conditions, bad or ridiculously bad, should I be as some spot that actually has cell service.

YET, I DO WANT TO KNOW.

And so do you.

“Waist to chest, groomed, lined-up? And, you say, you’re waxed up and, oh, you’re totally dressed in tight, form-fitting rubber and ready to slip into a few, didn’t catch that… A frame peaks and curvasious barrels? One moment please, while I connect you.”

THERE HAS BEEN, lately, and as always, some discussion as to who is telling what to whom. Sharing images is also a topic in conversations that take place during the long lulls between short windows of possible wave action. If your cousin’s surfer buddy from work in East Seattle gets a photo of someone ripping up a side-chopped two footer at any beach that has, in the distant background, some chunk of land that may or may not be Canada… well, who the hell sent that out?

PARTY LINES LEAD TO PARTY WAVES. Yeah, I get it. Back when I started realsurfers.net, 2013 (Yeah again, like ten years! of self indulgent content), I thought it was fine to write about how I surfed this spot until the wind got on it, then cruised over to this other spot, rode a few, then checked out this spot and that one on the way back home. I DID HEAR ABOUT IT from the few readers who, desperate for surf related stuff, stumbled across my… irk… blog.

“Hey,” I surfer asked a friend of mine with him in the water, “Is that the old guy (on the beach trying to put on my wetsuit) who posts shit on the internet?” “You mean… Erwin?” “I don’t know his name, but he’s got that gay website.”

The site is not, basically, gay; though I did, in the interest of inclusion, decide not to call it “Strait Surfing.” And, gay or not, thanks for checking it out. AND NO, I no longer name any spots, or even tell when I might have found some rideable waves. It’s all about the info, the intel. We are all (another sixties reference here, “Spy vs. Spy” from “Mad Magazine,”) trying to piece together enough info on tides and angles and periods and spots to make a reasonable gamble on heading on a surf expedition at a certain time.

WHAT WE HAVE, among surfers who want to find waves, locals and non-locals and way-not-locals, are CIRCLES OF INFLUENCE; maybe you are in my contact list, most likely someone not in mine is in yours. And, NEWS GETS AROUND.

BEFORE I Apologize for my past sins… Just coincidentally, watching some old Dylan on YouTube because, well, I love Dylan’s work, and because the latest podcast of “Nate and Koa’s Podcast” hasn’t shown up, and I came across a video pieced together by “Swingin’ Pig” from two live performances in 1966. It was “Ballad of a Thin Man,” and, because I wasn’t all that stoked on watching it, I hit on the ‘Comments.” Usual stuff, but in there was a reference to the line, “You should be made to carry around a telephone.” The commenter thought this was Dylan foretelling the future. I checked the official lyrics this morning (because I care) and found the lyrics were changed to “You should be made to wear earphones.”

It’s ear buds, Bob; but… hey.

Dylan, of the era, photo by Jerry Schatzberg

ANYWAY, I DO PROMISE to continue to contain if not curtail my gossiping and snitching on whatever super awesome sessions at some unnamed spot I happen to accidentally survive, and I apologize for telling ____ that _____ told me he, ______ was surfing at ______ with _____ and ________ a ______ ago, when, as you now tell me, you were working and totally missed it.

MEANWHILE, I got to the end of the manuscript for “SWAMIS” again, fourth time, and it’s under 100,000 words, and, rather than going through it again (not a rewrite), I am choosing to provide good if non-specific content for folks kind enough to check it out. OH, and if you want to be on the contact list of my super secret stealth surf phone, call me.

Please Don’t Interrupt Me While I’m Interjecting

Posted on by under adam wipeout, northwest surfing, old surfers

Here are the bullet points:

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.