A JACKASS IN JAVA: DAY TWENTY TWO (08JUN2013)

Hard to tell, but there are a caravan of horses here.

     I give up trying to go back to sleep at 0115, so I whip out my iPhone and start playing Angry Birds again. I just can’t sleep early over here. Some time just before 0300, I fall back asleep. It’s 0700 when I wake up. My head must’ve been positioned weird on my pillow because it hurts to turn my head to the right. I try to do some rotations to no avail.

     Oatmeal’s on the menu for breakfast, but I used the last of my milk yesterday, so I mix it with water. It doesn’t taste so well like this.

     Eric is on his way to the kitchen as I’m leaving it. “Did you check it this morning?” I ask.

     “No, but Randy did. He said it was small.”

     Sounds familiar, like the other day. I’m thinking that high tide is about to hit, I can catch the window again when it starts to come down. Another good session, here I come!

     When I reach the harbor, I see that the tide is the highest I’ve ever witnessed it. The peaks are scattered, and not many are lining up. I see Bin Tang, his girlfriend Sarah, and Ana. Supri, a local Indo Grom pulls up. He’s a cool dude, but he doesn’t speak any English, so we can only communicate in surf terms. I signal to him that I want to go out, but the tide is high.

     Expecting that things will get better, I grab my board and head out. As usual, the water is so warm, even under the morning overcast. Once I’m in the lineup, I’m patient to receive my first ride, letting waves go so that others can have them. After about ten minutes, I realize that the current is sucking me towards the end of the harbor near the rocks. Now my neck is an issue. Fighting the current, I try to look right to see if waves are coming. I’m so stiff, and it’s painful to look. Paddling for waves is a little harder too, as I just can’t turn my head freely. I have to face the beach, start paddling, and hope I’m in the right spot. This injury technique is messing with my surfing. I get desperate and even take a left. Of course, it materializes into mush. Here’s another fucked up thing about this place. None of the surfer websites have accurate tides for this spot. Magicseaweed is completely off as well as the new site that I recently found. The tide is supposed to be going down, but it’s still going higher. Reece had told me that you can’t rely on the internet for the tide. “Look at the beach for the tide,” he had told me one afternoon while scratching his balls through his Billabong shorts as a fly crawled across his cheek and buzzed away.

     Fighting the current here is reminiscent of Huntington, and on my potato chip thruster, it’s difficult battling all the water moving around. For the whole session, I don’t even get a turn. 

Random sheep just chillin' around town.

     About an hour and a half later, I leave the surf disappointed. It’s my worst paddle out at the harbor thus far, but I think my neck had a lot to do with it too.

     At the compound, I finish writing off my blog from yesterday. Randy comes to my room and says, “You wanna check out W_____ (Machines) this afternoon?”

     I sit back against the headboard and say, “Nah.”

     He looks surprised. “You don’t wanna get some barrels today?”

     Fuck, I’m just in a shit mood. This trip started off on the wrong foot. This spot, W_____, it is a barrel machine as he had said, but half of the time that I have ridden out there, it wasn’t working or it was too fucking crowded. The two times that I surfed it, I got cut and busted my board. Maybe if I had been surfing it consistently with him when I got here, I’d be more stoked about it. But when he had pretty much given me and Al the big “fuck you,” I never really surfed that spot. W_____ was one of the main points of this trip, so honestly now, I’m like fuck W_____. I’m just counting the days until I go home. I’ve tried to make the best out of this trip, and I really do enjoy myself when I’m catching waves out here. Too little too late right now. If changing my flight wasn’t so expensive, I would’ve been home like Al. I know my attitude is shitty, but I have to be honest. Barrels . . . whatever. I have less than ten days left.

     An hour later, Grant shows up at my door step. “Matt,” he says. “How about having a look at W_____ with me.”

     Fuck. Here I go again. I don’t want to tell him what I’m really thinking, so I just tell him how that spot’s had a bad impression on me, cuts and my damaged board.

     “Don’t be a pussy. You’ve only got about a week left,” he says. “To get a good barrel, it would be worth it to bust your board, now wouldn’t it? Come on, mate. Don’t make me go by me self.”

     I know he’s right, but my neck kind of hurts too. Today’s not the day to surf it like this. “Maybe tomorrow,” I say.

     I then head to the warung around the corner for lunch. The storefronts have a glass case where they display their food. A curtain is placed in front of it to keep the flies out. I pull up and park. The lady who owns the place smiles at me and says, “Yah, yah, macan,” which means eat. When I lift the curtains, I see that all of the food is infested with fruit flies. Fuck. This is fuckin’ gross. The woman is still staring at me, smiling, damn near ready to grab a plate and start scooping my rice. I shake my head from side to side and head towards my moped.

     It’s some kind of Indonesian holiday this weekend, so there are lots of people in town. I try Padangs next, but it’s crowded. I go back and circle around it again. The owner’s daughter watches me through the window, probably wondering why I’m not just coming in to eat. When it’s crowded, I feel awkward eating in there. One, my Indonesian sucks, people stare really hard at me, and then they want to talk, which makes me feel stupid because I don’t know the language.

     I head deeper into town and go to the nasi pecel spot that I’ve been to with Al and Ana. The place is empty, and I don’t encounter any issues ordering. My meal comes out to 13000 IR, about a dollar and thirty cents. Not too bad, and that’s with a drink too. For a dollar and thirty cents, you too can dine alone in a dark, unlit restaurant.

     I meet Reece at the Rajawali Hotel for some wifi, and I’m able to chat with Bri for a little bit. She says she’s going to my homeboy Klaude’s birthday bash this week. I’m jealous. I was there last year, but I’m glad that Bri can go and hang out with my friends and stuff. Klaude leaves me an interesting comment on my blog, about how you can only save your duckbutter to a certain point, and then after that it levels off. It gives me a good laugh. I even read it aloud to Reece.

     “Well then,” he says. “Why don’t you go in your room and have at yourself.”

     “I can’t,” I tell him. “If I start now, one jack will turn into two. Two jacks will turn into four. I’ll lose fifteen pounds by the end of this trip. Once you start . . . there’s no turning back.”

     It’s about 1500 when I’m back at the compound. Time to check out Choco Point. With this morning’s shitty session, I need to paddle back out and get one more. On the way there, I find Dreadlock Eddie, Reece, and a bunch of local guys looking at it. The tide is drained out just like yesterday, and fuck it looks tiny. Son of a bitch. What’s happened to my beloved Choco Point?

     “Maybe I’ll get a longboard,” says Reece. “I’ll need one to surf it.”

     “A bunch of guys just paddled out,” says Eddie. “But none of them caught anything good yet.”

     Way at the first point, I can see four heads bobbing. Meanwhile, Supri walks up to my bike and starts pointing at my board.

     “Yah, yah,” I say. “Take it.”

     He unties the bungee cord and starts inspecting it. He looks at the dimensions and says something to his Indo crew. This is the kid who my brother told me about, the kid that travels around Indo doing all of the contests.

     Looking at the surf, I see a little three-foot set roll through. I turn to Reece and say, “I’m going out there.”

     Walking out to the point, I notice how a lot of trash has washed onto shore. And of course, I find the main culprit of disgust, partially buried in the sand: a fucking diaper. 

     Near the deeper water, a new longboarding couple who are staying at Compound One catch a couple of waves. They work the three-foot lefts from top to bottom, even throwing out a little bit of water out the back. Looks fun enough. Ana is out there too. She catches a wave and goes straight, completely missing the shoulder. 

 

     Once I’m at the lineup, Old Rich paddles up on his longboard to say hi. “I hope it’s gonna get better,” he says.

     When I turn around, just about everyone who was on shore, except for Reece, is walking out to the lineup as well.

     The surf is flat until a random, five-foot set pops up. A couple surfers sitting at the point are too deep, and I’m in the perfect position for a late take off. It’s like clockwork, popping up on this Lost board. It has so much width; it’s so stable that as soon as I get up, I point the nose down the line and go. I get three big pumps in, trying to work my way through the racy sections before me. The last section in front of me is standing up. I want to attempt a massive floater to see if I can clear it, but Old Rich, Ana, and another guy are in the impact zone, so I kick out.

     Things are looking good for this evening session. I’m thinking that it’s about 1600, and that should give us all a solid hour and a half of good surf.

     A six-foot rogue set pops up out the back. No one is in position for it. We all paddle out to beat it. Ana gets pummeled by the whitewash. I’m a bit surprised myself at how hard it is to duckdive through it. Ana tries to turn and go after she resurfaces, but the wave is too fast, so she ditches her board. It almost hits me. In these situations, I would usually say something, but . . . I really don’t want to. What for? She’s from Germany. She doesn’t know. Plus she’s only here for a little while longer, almost all of the Germans here can’t surf, and no one’s expecting them to know these things.

     Even though there are surprise sets, something weird is going on with the water. I look at Bin Tang. He says, “Too much backwash.” He’s right. I used to think that backwash was a high tide thing, but it’s the direction that the swell is coming in. It’s creating a current, pushing everyone to the cliff on our left. The water is choppy, atypical for this spot at this hour. This is a low tide spot, but today the low tide is having a negative effect. The sets coming in have a lot of chop on the surface. The shape is lined and racy, again atypical. I get a couple of waves, but I’m unable to make the sections.

     I wish I had more to write about this session, but I don’t. Getting my last wave takes forever. “So what do you do back in the states,” says Old Rich.

     “Oh, I’m a reservist, just going to school, living off my G.I. Bill. I’m pretty much ‘surfing it’ until I graduate in a year.”

     “Sounds like a plan,” he says. “You do any active time?”

     “I was in Germany from ninety nine to O’one. Are you prior service?”

     He shakes his head. “No . . . I was in high school during Vietnam. I told my dad that I was off to Canada. I didn’t believe in it.” He looks out at the still flat horizon. “My dad though, he was angry.”

     “World War II guy?”

     “Korea,” he says. “My draft number came close though.” Just then, a set appears. He paddles to the point and catches a shouldery left, one of the best ones of the evening. He doesn’t paddle back.

     After Old Rich gets his, I’m out here by myself. After catching some white wash in, I talk to Eddie on the sand. “It was getting better out there,” he says. “On the inside, the waves were lining up.”

     Mystery solved. So the inside was breaking better, and my dumb ass was sitting at the top of the wave, waiting for the bombs.

     My brother’s washing his bike when I get to the compound. I tell him that Chocos was horrible.

     “W_____ wasn’t working. Too onshore, and the rip was going right through it, but there were head high sets at S____,” he says. “It’s the biggest that I’ve ever surfed it.”

#

     I head to Compound One. When I walk upstairs, Ana says, “Yayyyy, Matt is here! Come on, let’s go eat!”

     Grant says, “Wait a minute, Matt. Are you coming to the party tonight?”

     Grant had been invited to go to an Indonesian elementary school to help the kids with their English. He and Reece had went, and now they are invited back for a party. There’s only one problem. Fuckin’ dickhead Richard is sitting up here with the whole bunch; he’ll be going to the party too. I just can’t stand the fuckin’ sight of him. Fuck this guy.

     “Come on, Matt,” says Reece. “You ought to come.”

#

     I’m sitting back at the market by myself with fried tahu and mie gorang sitting in front of me. I eat them alone. Fuck. The martabak guy isn’t here tonight. I really wanted a chocolate, banana one.

     I plan to make up for that with some ice cream from Indomaret, but on the way there it starts to rain.

     FUUUUUUCK. You know, as a child I used to love rain . . . a lot. I was the kid who would show up on my friends’ doorsteps, dripping wet, asking if they could come outside to play. Most of their parents said no. When I was stationed in Germany, under thundering rain, my platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Pinckney, had told us to fall into formation. Standing at the position of attention with my platoon, shoulder to shoulder, disciplined at not saying a word still gives me goosebumps to this day. There was a sense of pride that we had, all of us together, not bitching, but being soaked together and accepting it. But out here in Java . . . it’s rained just about every fucking day. Yeah, on my scooter, in the fucking rain. Clothes stink after they are soaked with rainwater.

     I want to hit the Indomaret, but I’m so over this fucking rain. I make a left turn instead towards the compound. Better to get back dry than soaked and full of ice cream.

     Next to my room there is a coffee table and four chairs. Randy’s seated there when I get back. He has the tequila out again. We shoot the shit for a little while. I bring him up to speed with Briana and let him know what’s going on with us at the moment and how things are good. My mustache has grown to the point that it touches my lip. It’s annoying. I hadn’t intended on it, but it’s grown to the length that makes me look like an asshole, automatically. He lets me borrow some scissors, and with it, I trim the hair just above my lip, but now my mustache went from making me look like a dick to a homosexual; my mustache has bangs now.