SOFT PULSE, TUE 21AUG2012 MOR

Location: Old Mans

Crew: Briana

Conditions: 2-3 FT, hot, glassy, consistent, crowded.

     Good luck on waking up early with Briana. There is just too much plundering going on to make up for the two weeks that I was gone. My alarm goes off at 0600, but we stumble out of bed at about 0700. There’s no debating on what to wear this morning. Bri and I both put on trunks and rashguards.

     The sky’s a bit overcast which gives the illusion of cold, and as we walk towards Old Mans I still can’t tell what the wind is doing. When we reach the lookout over the water, I take a good look at Churches. Some small rights are on tap. The north side of Churches, going into Middles, has another peak working. I turn to the left. Old Mans is clean, and the northern most peaks are working all the way towards the military campgrounds.

     We venture back to the same spot. As much as I’d like to check out the other breaks at Old Mans, they just look too crowded. It’d rather be at the edge of the lineup here than in the middle. Besides, we have a pretty good streak where we’ve been surfing.

     There’s a small gap between the crowd at the peak and the surfers sitting wide. We paddle to the gap and wait. I feel that my back and arms are sunburned from yesterday. My nipples are also raw. I wince as I rub them through the rashguard, paying no mind to the other surfers giving me weird looks.

     Some sets come in at three-feet, but the longboarders at the top of the wave have first dibs. It’s hard to get started. Impatient, I rush to the top of the wave at the first sign of a bump. I hear splashing behind me, and a longboarder races past me to get prime position and take the wave. When the next wave swings wide, I hurry my little ass on Zippy again to catch it, but the same longboarder paddles out to catch that one too. I stare at him as he’s making his drop in the first section. I think my paddling ability is not too shabby for an intermediate surfer, but I can’t compete against seasoned longboarders; there’s no way.

     A chick that he’s surfing with sees the frustration on my face and says, “Darn longboarders.”

     “Every wave . . . fuck.” I paddle away and head towards Bri.

     “I just realized what I hate about surfing,” she says.

     “What?”

     “Crowds.”

#

     I catch a wave that swings wide, and then another one. Soon my wave count goes up, and I’m stoked all over again. Some walled sets break on the outside. I always think that some longboarder’s gonna be on it, but this spot is so mellow that most of them pass up the wave if they’re too deep. I gun for the shoulders. Zippy’s so fast in the flats that I’m able to pump, and get at least one turn on the second section before it closes out. Being on this big, meaty fish and these small waves have made surfing slow motion for me. All the turns are slower, but it forces me to get really technical on feet placement and weight distribution if I want to pull anything off. I really think I stopped longboarding too early because I didn’t know how to turn yet, but being on Zippy is cool because I get to practice all the fundamentals that I’ve learned since then. I now realize how important it is to have the right equipment. To think I disregarded Rick every time he told me to ride a fish “because you need a board for Cali waves,” he’d say. But there I’d be, trying to catch two-foot mush on a standard shortboard.

     It’s nice to drop in on such small waves with the confidence that I’ll get to the open face. I take late drops that are still noncritical, so easy, so mellow. I’m able to practice the basic turns and fundamentals of surfing on such a small scale at Old Mans. Up on the highline, I can see the wave forming. I drop back down with speed and trim back to the highline, throwing in a slow, graceful turn if the momentum and shape is right. But when I say turn, it’s like trying to move an ocean liner. I think that for small days, days like these, I really do need a custom fish in my quiver. Zippy’s really refostered my love for small surf and the stoke potential in them.

#

     Bri’s picked up where she left off, still going through her fundamentals. On my way back to the lineup, she’s paddling for a wave breaking towards the outside. She’s so deep. She’s on her belly during the drop, and she purls. I hold my breath as the 7’10 Epoxy NSP shoots out from behind her, landing full-length where Briana’s head is. She stands up in the shallows next to her board. Slow and rattled, she gets back on and paddles out.

     “Did your board hit you?”

     It takes a while for her to respond. “No. I’m okay.”

#

     Once the wind turns onshore, we decide to head back to the cottage. After we shower and change, we head back to the commissary for tonight’s dinner: tilapia, zucchini, and squash.