Loc: 33rd
- 26th
Crew: Rick,
Gary, Russ, Klaude, Christina, Cheryl
Conditions:
1-3 FT, sunny, inconsistent, crowded, high tide
Bri and I have a late start today, and we
STILL find free parking. . . We enter The Strand at 33rd street. I
have no intention on surfing 26th just because I know that the
weekend crowd will be thick. We warm up on the sand, looking for a gap in the
lineup. There are few. We keep shifting north, and there’s a guy with a
gleaming, bald spot in the water. Looks kind of like Rick, I’m thinking. I look
at the bald spot longer. It’s lighter than Rick’s. It can’t be him.
Turns out that the closest thing to a gap
in the lineup is near the dude with the bald spot, and when Bri and I get
closer, the guy’s wetsuit looks familiar. He’s surfing with a stocky, dark guy
with curly hair and a mustache. Holy shit . . . it’s Rick and Gary; it is Rick!
I wave to him as I paddle through the
whitewash.
“I thought you were going to Bolsa?” he
says.
I explain that since my nephews birthday
party is tomorrow in HB that I’ll probably save the OC trip just for one day
this weekend. Gary says hi, and I realize that the pack of guys next to us is
Gary’s son Russ and his friends.
The tide’s gone back to being high in the
morning, so the waves are fat and mooshy. It takes a good set wave to break
through the moosh, and occasionally some waves do.
I get a couple of rides, but Bri is the
surfer who’s truly stealing the show. On her longboard, she’s schooling us in
these conditions, going both left and right.
After a ride, I see her caught on the
inside for a while near a kid who just caught a wave towards her. When Bri
makes it back out she tells me, “I almost got hit by that kid’s surfboard. He
was riding without a leash.”
Bri’s kind of pissed, and I tell her that
she should just use her NSP to shield her next time. The NSP is epoxy and
dense, and any board that collides into it is gonna lose, but let’s hope she
never has to do something like that.
Rick and Gary had the spot to themselves
when Bri and I had arrived, but now the spot’s sold. Another pack of dads and
grommies moves in. After Rick takes off, Bri and I search for another gap
towards 26th, and that’s when I see Christina waving to me. She’s in
the midst of another pack; Klaude is next to her.
A small left hander comes my way. I scrape
and kick my way into it, and it stands up a little more once I’m down the line.
I pump and get a nice front-side snap, seeing Klaude out the back while doing
so. I get one more turn to finish off the ride.
Going back to the lineup, I’m all smiles.
My friends should be used to this look by now. When I get back to Bri, she
says, “Klaude was like, ‘Yup, that’s gonna be his wave of the day.’”
There’s this stocky white dude with short,
brown curly hair who surfs at 26th. He’s the same guy that had yelled
out, “Fuck!” when Calvin was in his way while trying to get a wave. I see this
guy again. He’s going for a right, and Christina is on his outside. The events
unfold so slowly for me, because my surf Jedi powers have given me the ability
to know what happens next. CC doesn’t see the guy, so she goes anyway. The wave
is a closeout, and CC falls into the whitewash. Stocky just sits there and
stares at the white wash where CC is. He scrunches his eyebrows down, runs his
fingers through his hair, and pulls. Afterwards, Christina goes and sits back
with the pack exactly where he is.
While I’m looking at this, I’m thinking,
Hell yeah, Christina.
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