YOU DON’T KNOW UNLESS YOU GO, FRI 27JUN2014

Chicken fried steak and eggs, a post-surf breakfast of champions. 

Loc: Undisclosed

Crew: Bri & Gary C.

Time: 0530-0745

Conditions: light overcast, glassy turned light onshore/sideshore, medium crowd, consistent, low tide, 3-4 FT+.

     Where I surf isn’t a secret, but this morning was so good, that I don’t want to do this spot an injustice by naming it, at least while the spree of good swell lasts.

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     Gary’s already in the lot, no surprise. Even at 0515. No one else is here. You’d think that after a session as fun as yesterday’s that there would be double the crowd.

     Walking down the hill, the wind’s not in my face like it was yesterday morning. In the dark dawn, we can see that the water is glassy. Two surfers are out. A four-foot peak breaks on the outside. The left is walled but the right is lining up well.

     Gary runs out to shore where a swimmer is making his way in. Gary runs out to a surfboard that’s floating in the water and guide’s the swimmer towards it. He lost his board.

     The surf is more consistent than yesterday, and I have to duckdive rows of whitewash just to get out. It’s low tide, but the waves are breaking far out.

     We’re paddling out together, but Bri gets pushed south to the next lifeguard tower. Not an easy morning for big buoyant boards. Gary and I are side by side, but not for long. He takes his first wave, and right behind it is one of those four-foot rights that I had seen from the shore. The sky is still dark, and the face of the wave looks like a dull grayish green. Dropping into the wave, the smooth face builds before me. I can’t even describe the quality. It’s not breaking like Trestles or HB. It’s not even breaking the classic way that this place is supposed to break. All I can say is that it’s so damn rippable. After my first snap, I’m propelled down the line again, the shoulder getting smaller after each turn until I ride out of my third. Now I’m far away. The two surfers that had been initially holding down the spot are mere dots from where I am. So is Gary. Such a long ride requires such a long paddle back.

     And a lull? No. We had paddled out together, but it’s so consistent that we don’t see each other for another fifteen minutes. Immediately, not even back at my spot, I turn and go on another right. Two turns this time and another long ass paddle back. I don’t even know where Gary or Bri are.

     When we finally meet again, we can only give shit-eating grins and shake our heads. Really? Is it really this fucking good right now? And yet, only five of us are out. Yesterday there were so many people early, and the day that everyone chooses to sleep on it, it’s firing.

     The wind turns a little sideshore going into the second hour, but the lineup is still uncrowded. The guy who had lost his board paddles past me.

     “No leash, huh?” I say.

     “Shit,” he says. “I surfed yesterday evening, and it was crap. I didn’t think it would be this big and breaking this far out. I’ve already had to swim back for my board twice!”

     He takes the next wave, a left. The lefts aren’t holding shape as well, and he tries to kick out, but the lip rejects him. Down he goes, and off to the races goes his board, all the way to the inside, sending him for a nice cardiovascular swim.

     “I don’t even care if it gets crowded now,” says Gary. “I’ve already gotten so many waves!”

     We have so many waves to ourselves that we’re already drained, so drained that we start making mistakes, either due to the combo of overexcitement or surf-worn muscles.

     Gary’s hamstring keeps cramping up on him. He’s in the lineup grimacing, digging into his muscles and stretching his leg on top of his deck. He shows me his board. There’s a nasty pressure ding. He had put his elbow through it.

     And me? I underestimate the speed on some of the drops. I should be fading out, but I stay too close to the face, and I can’t steer out. I poorly ride two perfect bombs.

     At 0700, there’s a little crowd now. The same faces I had seen yesterday are here, but much later. What’s funny is that the surf looks completely different from what it had looked like an hour and a half ago. It’s still fun right now, but they’ll have no idea what it was like at first light. It was so much better.

     Even with the rising tide, there are some freak bombs close to five feet. Bri has inside position on one of them. I lose sight of her as the lip starts to curl over her. She’s late, she’s not gonna— but she does. She goes all the way past the next lifeguard tower. Gary takes a bomb right too, a ride so long that I only find him ten minutes later when he’s waving at me from nearly two towers down.

     I force some lefts even though they’re not breaking as well, and I practice some layback turns. I don’t want to call them layback snaps because I’m not fully committed on the “laying back” part. The lefts are closing out more, but the face are so big and pumpy that they’re a good set up for frontside carves. From pumpy speed and a good bottom turn, I climb the face, reach back with my inside arm, lean back slightly, and whip my tail into a tight arc in front of me, but I don’t ride out of it. Since the left is closing out, I choose to bail after the maneuver and get back outside.

     I do another layback again on a closeout left. I get good torque on the tail, but the base of the wave bottoms out, and I can’t stick the landing on my 5’9 Motorboat Too. “It’s the Indian, not the arrow,” so I can only blame my lack of balance, but I’d need more board to stick a critical landing like that.

     And that’s how pumping the surf is. I could have easily used another board today, something better for all this water moving around.

     The waves get a little soft by the time we leave, but the surf is still consistent and fun. Catching our last waves in, Gary and I can’t help but claim the session with a high five. How could we not? It’s not even 0800 yet, and we’re surfed out. Walking back up the hill, we pass a guy in a van who’s just pulling up now to surf.

     Gary treats Bri and me to breakfast. It’s one of those days where the surf was so good that a post-surf breakfast is mandatory. He says it’s for my graduation, but it’s more than that. We get to share our waves of the day over coffee and food, get to hear more stories about how he grew up with Rick and the rest of the WHC. It’s the afterburn from a good session that Bri and I still ride, eyes alight while listening attentively to Gary’s words while chewing on jelly-covered toast. Without a 0445 wake up, none of this would have been possible. 

He's not sad, just drained. El Maestro himself, Gary AKA Balls Deep, getting his huevos rancheros on.