OBSTACLES, WED 18APRIL2012 EVE

Crew: Solo

Time: 1830-1945

Conditions: High tide, 3-4 FT, inconsistent, mooshy, glassy, warm.

     Rick shoots me a text that Porto’s looking fun again. I’ve been writing all day, catching up with surf posts that I’ve let fall to the wayside. I check the wind reports on Surfline. It’s supposed to die towards the evening. I look outside and see the vast blue sky. The sun beams out towards the east. . . . How can I not go?

     There’s post work traffic on Vista Del Mar, causing a long line of cars before I can make the right turn down 45^th. Looking over the tanks, I can see that the water is calm and glassy. There are little lined, pulses, giving off an aura of evening surf stoke. Compared to yesterday’s evening session, it’s much cleaner. I snap a pic and send it to Dais, but he can’t make it. 

     I make the right turn early through Chevron and head down the hill. The warm, summer atmosphere has me wishing I came here earlier. I look at my watch: an hour and a half. It will have to do. 

     I change in a flurry of pulling and tugging from cotton to neoprene and head towards 42^nd. There’s a small group at 45^th and a sparse crowd by the tanks, but it doesn’t look that good. The shitters and the sandwich shack have the most, so I go there. 

     One thing about evening sessions is the beauty of it all. Even if the waves themselves aren’t that good, it’s still worth being in the ocean as the sun makes its way down. Especially when there’s no wind, the water turns lagoon-like with a reflection of golden honey. Even if it’s one-foot out, it’s hard to complain. 

     The sets are inconsistent with only a few spares, breaking on the inside, in between. I’m just north of the pack, but after the next set clears the line I make my way in. On the next set, a longboarder way on the outside gets the first left. On the second wave, I paddle-battle with another guy on my right. He has priority and slides in, so I back out. I have the last wave to myself. Typical as of late, the peaks are long and walled with a little section at the end to work with. It’s a little mooshy, so I’m pumping, waiting for it to stand up more to set up a turn. As I’m bottom turning to set up a carve, a guy on the inside panics and freezes right on my line, so I have to renegotiate around him. I lose the wave. 

     I’m upset, but . . . fuck. It just comes with the territory. It’s a crowded evening at Porto. It’s small, so it brings out a lot of people that don’t know etiquette yet. 

     On the next set, all the longboarders get the waves. I can’t compete with them. Every time I position myself further out for priority, someone goes a little further out than me, to the point where there’s no way I can get it on my little board.

 

     On my next wave, the inside is an obstacle course. I have to abandon my line entirely because there are too many boards and bodies, both sitting and paddling.

     As the sun sets into the last half-hour of surf, things slow down even more. Waves that look like they’re gonna break move past and fool the guys on the inside too. 

     “It was good earlier before the tide,” says a guy a couple feet away. 

     Yeah . . . I need to start paying attention to tide more. The main peak gets too competitive for the few waves. I’m looking for a final ride, and I finally get one on the inside. I get a lot of drag on my top-turn from the weak shoulder, still, nearly running over another guy.

     Maybe I’ve contradicted myself. It was a beautiful session. The sun’s long gone. A girl in a Fedora hat holds her dog on a leash by the railings. She looks back a couple times. I don’t know if she’s looking at me or the water dripping down my chest, past the hair on my nipples and down to my bellybutton. Or maybe I’m the one looking at the water on my chest and my bellybutton. The bottom line is that I’m single again, but I’ve forgotten how to talk to women. I’m not ready for that anyway.  

     I leave the Porto lot in the dark, my beams picking up the coastline’s moisture in the air. I’m glad I paddled out, but surfwise, I’m unfulfilled.