Apocalypse Later

Body surfing

Ducking out underneath a breaking swell

trek

I decide to add a swim to my trek, which means doing just half a trek. I start at Butterfly Beach instead of the lagoon and go out and back along the bluff. A 25 minute round trip. I do some yoga exercises on the beach ..take a few deep breaths ..grab my fins and slowly walk out into the water. There’s a tiny swell but it pushes me around big time. I plunge in and slip on a fin in one swell foop. Standing upright in waist deep water ..the other fin proves more difficult. Trying to balance on one fin isn’t so easy. I get knocked over every time I lift my foot. I try rolling with the surf but it’s too disorienting and I end up swallowing a mouthful of water. I try a sideways stance to counter the incoming swells. That works and I slip on the fin ..fall backward into the water and float. The effort to lift my fins upward is substantial though. I can feel the weight of the water more than ever. Pushing down is much easier. So I take short kicks using my ankles as much as possible. That works and I glide along watching the shore zip by. I flip over to swim freestyle but its feels really awkward. I’m too uncoordinated. I flip on my back again and feel the weight of the water on my fins, ankles and calves. Tells me I’m working pretty hard. So I just float for a while and let the swells push me back into shore. I take big steps getting out ..plop my butt on wet sand and review what just happened out there. I counter feelings of discouragement by telling myself it’s going to take a little practice ..that’s all. Perhaps I’ll use the pool a few more times. Anyway, feels good to be back ..w00t!

Butterfly Beach

Scorpion Bay

San Juanico, Baja, California

Free falling

Late afternoon, Don calls and says the swells are getting bigger. I blow-off my plans, throw my Churchills in the alfa and zip down to the shore. I do some quick deep-breathing exercises and take a running leap into oncoming waves. The first ride nearly yanks my shorts off ..I pull the waistband as tight as it’ll go. The next ride throws me over the falls ..I go limp and bounce twice off the sandy bottom. After some more pounding, I head for the shore to get a birds-eye view. The swells are definitely getting bigger. I’m about to go back out when I see someone coming in. At first, I thought it was a guy I was watching out there. Instead, it was a girl I was watching out there. I meet Sara from Westmont College. I’m surprised ..she’s small, almost waif-like ..and carries a wicked pair of Vipers. She’s no Val .. and from what I saw ..knows no fear. We chat briefly ..and head back in the water. I zip down the face a wave and decide to ride it without bailing ..and get trashed in the collapse. I emerge in churning white water ..look around and see her pop-up ..breathless but exhilarated. We swim back as fast as we can to catch the next one ..too late. She ducks under while I go up and over the top ..feeling the vacuum of the curl almost suck me backwards by my feet. Dumb thing to do because the next wave is right on it’s heels. I know I’m going over the falls but I catch it anyway .. getting a fast-pitched ride into white-water oblivion. I lose my orientation ..scrap my shoulder against a vertical wall of sand ..go wtf ..and figure it’ll be just a few seconds before my sonar detects true bottom. Back on shore, Sara says she’s gotta’ go ..I stay, repeating her email address over-and-over, and ride until sunset .. wondering if this is the beginning of a cycle or the last amp of the day.

Smashing brain cells

I’m sitting here shivering on a beach near Refugio around sunset ..and wondering why Hurricane Jimena never delivered the 5-foot waves it promised. I’m not terribly disappointed though. I’m OK just sitting here feeling composed. Watching the water. Looking back. I believe that riding waves in my early days instilled confidence that has persisted throughout my life. And transferred to a lot of other things. It’s helped me ride out broken relationships ..negotiate tricky business deals ..and basically overcome a lot of the major fuck-ups of adult life. I’m not saying that I’m a perfect example of a self-assured human being or anything. Far from it. But I do believe that a small measure of mastery early in life goes a long way toward helping people weather storms later in life. For me, I’d say it was summers spent riding waves at sunrise in Newport ..catching the ferry at noon ..riding waves at Laguna until sunset ..then crashing campsites in San Clemente till dawn. It made me realize that waves aren’t just something I ride ..they’re cycles of energy I follow. They pick me up in the morning, heightening my senses ..and hurl me down slopes of fluid exhilaration ..refreshing my mind and deconstructing any networks of negative thought I may have built up since last time. It is most therapeutic. I have a profound reverence for the dynamics of the ocean and, by extension, a high regard for the forces of nature ..the nature of people and, in some small and inexplicably visceral way ..the dynamics of the universe at large. That’s probably saying a lot, I know, but sitting here with my feet buried in the sand and watching sunrays shoot across the water .. I’m not sure I care a whole heck of a lot.

Summertime

I’m buzzing with anticipation. Even though I live with a conventional ‘roof’ over my head ..it is the first day of summer and, somewhere in my bones, summer is still an endless cycle of sleeping outdoors on the beach ..riding waves at dawn ..crashing parties at night ..and either hooking-up, or crashing on the beach until dawn. Then we’d wake up with coffee and granola bars from 7-eleven ..ride waves till noon ..and argue about whether we should stay or move on. Unless there’s a compelling offshore wind ..the surf at Balboa gets blown out by late morning. So it would be time to roll up our packs ..catch the ferry to Coast Highway ..and hitch a ride to Laguna Beach where there are sheltered coves and clean breaks all day long. There were also hidden coves with sandy beaches for us to crash on ..unless we hooked-up with some ‘hippie-chicks’ at Taco Bell ..or trust-funders staying at daddy’s beach house while he’s back home in Chicago ..or a youth group spending the week crammed into a two-room summer rental. Sometimes we’d just go to the Hare Krishna temple for a free dinner ..then head back to the coves and crash. Further down the coast is San Clemente with aqua blue surf, campsites, bonfires, tents and kegs of beer. Charlie usually carried a large stash of hash, which was often our ticket in.

North wind

An arctic wind blows through my door .. leaves and other debris scatter across the floor. Big wave season has begun. Although I don’t actually surf them ..they’re definitely major league ..I feel the anticipation. I sit on the beach and watch 25-foot swells pound the shore ..starting from Aleutian storms ..they move swiftly down the coast ..falling like dominoes on beaches from Mavericks to Todos Santos. I feel the energy crackling on my skin ..and the rhythm beating in my veins. I must have been a sea creature in a past life. I have a friend who's a big wave surfer. He tells me that he hears his rational brain screaming: “No Fucking Way” ..while feeling a rush, coming from some other part of his brain ..reminding him what an awesome experience it is to blow those apprehensions away. I think he’s a junkie ..caught in a cycle where icy adrenaline turns into fluid exhilaration.

Wave action

The atmosphere looks blurry .. and the sky is a pale shade of blue. But the water has shape .. and slams me back to shore. The sky is fuchsia ..stars are shining ..and colorful dancers twirl by ..while others just float. I shake my head and they turn into a flock of birds. I lie there and let the white water wash over me ..remembering something that I heard one time ..telling me not to mistake the waves for water ..waves are the expression of a force passing through water .. appearing as a ferocious beast to anyone that hasn’t got sense enough to either plug-in or bail-out ..before it reaches shore. I drag my sorry-ass back to the sand ..and bow my head in hommage to the deities of the deep blue sea.

Wave behavior

Today I read about the humongous waves I experienced yesterday (see Offshore crush below). They actually started out as swells several days before ~ hundreds of miles out to sea. Somewhere between Hawaii and California; they got amp’d. Tuesday they started slamming into Mavericks (a beach near San Francisco) at a height of around 50 feet. From there they traveled south ~ mellowing a bit ~ and managed to slip in-between the Channel Islands (which usually serve as a break water for Santa Barbara) ~ where they hit Rincon at just over 20 feet ~ which is cool if you were at Rincon ~ because there’s a rocky point where the waves peel off ~ creating a nice side-ways barrel ride. That was not the case where I was, however ~ at Hammonds they were ‘beach break’ ~ which means skull crushing waves that crash all at once ~ offering no chance of escape.

Offshore crush

The forecast today calls for warm and sunny skies ~ offshore wind ~ and humongous waves. I pop some vitamin C ~ chase it with fruit juice and coffee ~ put the top down ~ toss my body board in ~ and careen through town ~ feeling warm but doubtful there‘ll be much surf ~ we just don’t get humongous waves here. I round the bend from Olive Mill Road to Channel Drive ~ that runs along the beach ~ where I enter a fog bank so thick ~ it blots out the sun. Burn-off, I suppose ~ no, wait ~ its ocean spray being thrown off the swells hitting the shore ~ creating a mist that hangs in the air. I pull over ~ run across the sand ~ and dive in ~ realizing, in horror, I’m over my head in break water ~ created by humongous waves crashing ~ one after the other ~ leaving me nothing to do except hang on and ride them in. I’m sitting on the beach catching my breath when I see half a surfboard wash ashore ~ then the other half still tethered to a guy named Chris ~ thank God, he says ~ he needed it to find the surface ~ I’m sitting on the cliffs watching the waves get bigger and bigger ~ and the beach get smaller and smaller ~ telling myself over and over ~ this is fucking phenomenal.

Indian summer

I’m sitting on the beach watching the waves break and thinking ~ there’s a current out there ~ and I’m gonna ride it ~ I’ll start at the beginning ~ body boarding in Tahiti ~ then I’ll get on a plane and follow it north to Hawaii ~ catch it breaking on a beach in Maui ~ from there I’ll fly to the mainland ~ catch it breaking on a beach in Southern California ~ go see my sister ~ pick up my Alfa ~ speed up the coast ~ catch it again on a beach somewhere in Northern California ~ if I still detect a pulse ~ I’ll board a plane so I can watch that swell pound the coast off a point in the Gulf of Alaska ~ because maybe then I’ll feel ~ and not just think ~ but really feel ~ the rhythm of the sea ~ and the rest of the planet.

Location location location

I haven’t seen the movie, but I hear Al Gore says global warming will probably turn the Nevada desert into the high tide mark of the Pacific Ocean ..in addition to wiping out a few South Sea Islands. According to my friend Jim ..it will also turn the Sahara Desert into the lush tropical paradise that it used to be. It’s a cycle in geological time ..he says. We’re in Huntington Beach watching the US Open of Surfing. Guy next to me leans over and says: “Ya can’t see nuthin’ like this in Atlanta ..no sir. It looks sort of like NASCAR ..except them surfers are driving boards instead of cars ..and lookin for the best pole position on the wave”. I tell him he'll have to wait ..it'll be a few more years before it catches on in Georgia.

Plugged in

It is my belief that a dedicated surfer knows more about the ocean than any well-trained oceanographer. It’s not because the surfer is more intelligent or anything ..it’s because he’s ‘plugged into’ the conditions of the ocean ..they make a bigger difference to him. Now, I’m no Joe-great surfer ..but I bet you I can see more shades of blue in the ocean than say ..a farmer from Nebraska. Living on the West Coast has fashioned my perception ..and tuned my senses to the signals of the region. It’s subliminal. I can generally tell what a day at the beach will be like ..the night before. For instance, when I hear trees creaking at night ..I know we’re in for cool dry weather the next day ..the ocean water will be greenish-blue and the surf will be fair somewhere farther up the coast ..like around El Capitan. If I can hear the sound of sea lions barking at night ..it means it’ll be a warm, windless day tomorrow ..and generally good surf up and down the coast ..from Rincon to Refugio. On the other hand ..indigo-blue skies ..sharp stars ..and a clear line on the horizon ..tell me there’s going to be an offshore flow ..making the air crisp ..the water glassy ..and the surf tubular ..a most excellent day to dodge work. I like an offshore flow.

Rad lands

Totally awesome day ..the sky is so blue I feel high. Anne and her niece Molly are at the skate park ..Molly is eight years old ..she’s small for her age ..but tough . She brought her skateboard decked out with new decals ..Frankenstein and Casper the ghost. She’s wearing a black on red alien tee shirt ..and a new pair of vans. I watch her do a couple of laps around the park .. ‘carving a slope’ around each turn ..we high five. I ask her what that guy just did. A fifty-fifty she says. And that guy? A grind. What about over there (a guy does a jump ..his board flips around and he lands back on). Oh, that’s an Ollie. Another guy crashes in front of us ..dude ka biff’d she says ..happens all the time. I’m amazed at how fast children pick up a second language.

Indian summer v.4

I wake up ..drink some coffee ..chat online with my sister Nancy ..then rush out the door. I put the top down ..zip through town ..turn up the Stones ..drown out the voices ..and check out the shore ~ I watch waves crash on the beach ..feel wet sand on the soles of my feet ..and take a running leap ..reawakening in the ocean. I ride a few in ..swim past the impact ..slow down and breath ..and just float for a while. I see pelicans dive-bomb for fish ..there’s even a family of seals out here today. They must have just moved in ..they weren’t out here yesterday.

Indian summer v.1

For the last several days, it has been like eighty degrees outside and absolutely gorgeous. Unusual weather for a beach town where it can be foggy and cold during the months of summer. Today, however, my body is rebelling ..getting back at me for a week full of head-banging hours in the computer lab followed by torturous spells in the ocean (where the water temperature hovers near freezing) ..in addition to strenuous and twisted hiking trails. Consequently, I’m sitting on the deck trying to medicate the last complaining nerve fiber by pouring whiskey and beer over it. Forget painkillers ..I need anti-psychotics to get at the root-cause of this misery ..and find a cure for my misguided drive to max-out Indian Summer.

Summertime

Summertime ..to me that means boogie boarding at eucalyptus beach ..taking Pacific Coast Highway to Big Sur ..and, this year ..visiting my family in Germany – 5 sisters and a brother. Means that pretty soon we’ll be sitting in beer gardens ..walking past orchards loaded with apples and pears, too small and bitter to eat ..but just right for the schnapps we drink. We’ll drive through the hops and vineyards around lake Bodensee ..take a ferry to the city of Konstanz, which is a town so old it feels medieval. We’ll also hike up Mount Pfänder (pronounced ‘fender’) ..and take the ‘tele-freak’ (cable car) back down.