Pet Cobra

The Surf Report for Saturday, Sept. 30: Trigger, Pulled

So for eons I've been saying that I'm gonna shape my own board, this is the weekend I'm going to pick up my blank, blah blah blah. Happy to report that yes, I just got back from Mitch's with the Walker 9'8". Next step: calling the Psychic Friends Network to see if they'll hook me up with Velzy.

The Surf Report for Friday, Sept. 29: Aqua Obscura

Awake at 5:45 in the a.m., and it was pitch black. Coffee got made, Surfline got checked, and I was out the door at 6:15. Into the mist.

Surfing in fog can be thrilling. The mind plays tricks on you: your depth perception is skewed, and the waves roll in out of nowhere. There was the time, years back, that I took my roommate's 8'0" egg out on a particularly murky morning. Maybe 10 feet of visibility, with steep, pitchy 4 foot sets snaking through, and little room for error or relaxation. I took a late drop, felt the board buckle under my feet, and it was off to Roper's for repairs. Since then, I've been apprehensive about paddling out into fog. This morning, though, came the realization that with Beth not working, I've been given the gift of a couple of extra hours, and so I had to go, fog be damned. I took the Hogfish; the smaller board would be easier to whip around and paddle into a sneaker wave.

It was me and a couple of hungry cormorants. The shoreline was a black smudge, and out to sea the slate boundaries of ocean and sky were indistinguishable. The fog: I had a notion that if I paddled westward, just past the lineup, I'd find myself on the shores of Avalon. Impossibly quiet, save for the hiss and rumble of the surf. In such a state everything vanishes, both in the physical sense and in the abstract: there's nothing but the gray here-and-now. No horizons, no time, just water in all of its forms, and there's nothing for it but to surf. And so I did, paddling east, west, north, south, into smallish waves that quickly appeared and just as quickly vanished. There were a couple of good rights, and a couple of closeouts, and while I won't win any prizes for my performance in the water (still have a ways to go before the Hog is dialed in, but I'm getting there), there's a lot to be said for a solitary dawn patrol, in conditions that border on the mystical.

Then it was back to the car. The sun was burning through, and the real world was calling.

History

9:07: Wasn't going to do this - superstition, you know. Bottom of the 8th, Padres with a 6-0 lead over the Pirates, Chris Young throwing a no-hitter, the first in franchise history - will a live blog jinx it? We're gonna find out.

9:14: Game on. Giles catches a flyball backpedaling. 1 away. Young puts the next batter on - deliberate? Put a guy on so the next guy hits into a DP (and as I type that the announcer exuberantly crows that the Pirates have grounded into the most double plays in the NL this year). Joe Randa - now 3 and 0. 3 and 1. My heart is pounding. And Randa hits a 2-run homer.

Young's no-hitter is history. Crushed.

Autumnal

Since you're all close personal friends who can keep a secret, I'll let you in on a big one. September is the best month here in San Diego. Leave "summer" for the tourists - I'll take September's warm days, cool nights, the occasional offshore winds that make for excellent surf conditions, and the notable absence of hordes of  vacationing Zonies and east coasters.

This morning a work errand sent me to the sprawling campus of UCSD (it's college recruitment season - I had some schmoozing to do); a pleasure to get out of the office and roam around in the bright sunshine for an hour or so. And some quiet time, free from the constant barrage of emails and phone calls. Kind of a no-brainer morning, really, which was nice. There's been lots of craziness over the past couple of days, with Beth resigning from her job to do the SAH/WAHM thing, and we've been mulling over the implications of that (overwhelmingly positive - more time for her to be with Lucas and to pursue some of her goals, but sadly my dream of buying Saison Dupont by the case will, for the time being, go unrealized). It's funny to watch the college kids, so enmeshed in the drama of their academic lives - snippets of conversation drifting through the air, who has the notes to the prof's lecture, so-and-so can get a copy of the test, are you going to the party this Friday. I don't usually feel, well, old, but put me in the middle of a large throng of pre-21 year olds and yeah, I'm reminded of the years and the mileage. All these kids, with their lives ahead of them - one feels the need to let them in on the punchline to the Cosmic Joke, that what you think is gonna happen to you and what actually does ain't necessarily gonna synch. (Except, of course, if you're studying to be a software engineer.)

HIBO?

Ok. This is one of those rare occasions where I'm trolling for comments, especially from you surfers who are still reading my blog despite the fact that I haven't written anything about surfing for...ever, it seems.

Read.

My thoughts. One, Kem Nunn - I've read The Dogs of Winter, and Tapping The Source, and was somewhat underwhelmed by both; Nunn really does an excellent job at sucking all of the joy and fun out of the surfing life. And the plot of this show sounds like vintage Nunn - the surfer as lowlife criminal. Two - on the other hand, David Milch is a genius. Deadwood is/was the best show on TV, so if there's any hope that this won't be a darker version of Point Break, it lies with him. Three - and I'm prepared for the onslaught of hate mail from IB locals, so if I'm wrong here, educate me - IB? The IB that's closed about 360 days a year because of the vast flotilla of fecal lumps that patrol offshore? The IB with generally crap-lousy (pardon the pun!) surf?

So, all three of the surfers who read my site - thoughts?

Quixotic

Word of the day: quixotic. "Idealistic without regard to practicality." (Word of my life, it would seem - took up rugby at 35, got a skateboard for my 37th b-day...yeah, it fits.) Here are some windmills that I'm chasing:

• Board shaping: will be picking up a blank tomorrow (it's payday, after all) and will start carving it up this weekend, I think.
• Running: years ago I used to be a Runner - half-marathons were my thing, as were 6+ miles barefoot sand runs. Yesterday I impressed myself by doing 30 minutes on the treadmill, at a 12 minute mile pace. A far cry from my old average (13 miles at 7 minutes per), but I didn't puke or pass out, and am not hobbling around today, which gives me hope.
• Writing: remember that book project that I crowed about earlier? It's still in development. Publishers - they're picky, it seems. It's all about what sells, which explains Nicholas Sparks, which explains the mentality of the mass of American readers, which explains a whole lot of things (Paris Hilton, Iraq, etc.) My writing partner (oh, yeah, I should let you know that I'm gonna be contributing to her latest blog; as soon as I get my ass in gear and write a couple of posts, I'll let you know - the blog is a travel blog for those with kids) has challenged me to do this. So right now I'm doing research and outlining; I'm geeked about the novel, as it's an idea that's been bouncing around in my head for while, which finally came together after recent events gave me the last bit of thematic inspiration I needed. No spoilers, sorry.

Also, I've decided that for my 40th, I'm getting one of these. Vanity plate will read ROCINANTE.

Contrails

Fighter planes, screaming low across the sky.

Walk out of the shower, still rubbing sleep-snot from my eyes as I click on the TV and see the first plane fly - no, not fly, it looks like it just drifts, floats, right into the side of the tower. The brain, it clicks into a logic-processing mode - the emotions are shut off, for they'd cause everything else - sight, balance, even the ability or desire to breath - to shut down. The first thing the brain comes up with - I believe this is not an accident, then the second plane dives into the second tower. Everything following has since fragmented. The breathless call from Beth, working downtown; she's at the Convention Center, with a few thousand other people, and again the brain steps in - you live in the third largest metro area in California, and there are many, many things that would make dazzling targets, from the collection of navy ships at anchor in the bay to the nuclear reactor not more than thirty minutes from your house to that very large, densely-packed Convention Center. The drive in to work, flanked by an endless procession of police cars and convoys of Hum-V's. Numbly keying in payroll for the dozens of people that depended on me for their paychecks, reading live updates on CNN.com - people are jumping to avoid being burned alive, and they hold hands with strangers as they leap, so as not to die alone - while typing in the hours worked for this employee and that employee, because these people depend on me today, they have bills to pay and kids to feed and so I can do at least that much.

And the fighter planes. All day. Fast and low. So low that you can see the Sidewinder missiles slung beneath them, and you think, find someone, anyone, make them pay, make them burn.

Five years ago this morning.

Archetype

The day thus far: Woke up, got out of bed, Triple S'ed (shat, showered, shaved, for the uninformed), took the kid for a quick trip to the doc's for an EKG and a blood test (needed for his follow-up appointment with the doc who treated his Kawasaki Disease; no, not going to provide a link to the several posts I've done on the subject, it's Friday, a day for half-assing it), dropped the kid off at daycare, went back to the office, worked, etc., went to lunch, just got back, and am currently thinking about the word "archetype".

Great word, no? It popped into my head during the drive back from lunch; I was listening to an Audioslave song, and thought to myself, "Audioslave - decent band, but what a generic name. They shoulda stuck with Civilian. Or....Archetype. THERE'S a band name. You'd have to have balls to call yourself Archetype. You'd really have to be able to back that shit up. Zeppelin could maybe have called themselves Archetype. The Black Crowes - not so much."

Yep. That's my day.

Revival

Saturday night, and we're in Los Osos, somewhere in Central California, a place of eternal autumn, green hills rolling right up to an otter-filled ocean. We're in a red barn that's evolved into the town's community center; my grandmother has taken us to listen to a group of musicians called the Howlie Playboys. They're a bunch of old guys who play Hawaiian Cowboy music. The place is packed, and if you scratch your head pondering the allure of Hawaiian Cowboy music, why, you've never had the pleasure of the Howlie Playboys' company. Somehow, the slide steel guitar and the stand-up bass seem right at home here, even though Los Osos has more in common with Cicely, AK, than Lahaina, HI. We don't stay long - Lucas is a bit squirrely, and much more interested in exploring the adjacent playground and watching the kids tear up the skatepark on the other side of the barn. Still, we can hear the sounds of the Cowboys and the appreciative hoots and whistles of the crowd inside; the music reaches us as we watch our kid at play in the misty evening. At that moment, there's no place that I'd rather be.

We packed in a lot this weekend - excursions to Avila Beach and Morro Bay, two separate stops for wine-tasting in Los Olivos (tip for the unwary: if you go, don't mention Sideways, even ironically; they're over it), breakfast at the Madonna Inn (where they've raised the urinal to newfound heights), a crazy-ass detour through the Los Padres National Forest to avoid Santa Barbara traffic (took us just as long, but ah, the Audi, she loves powering through the twisties - wow, taking the Audi and going wine-tasting! It's official - I'm Yuppie Scum!). After five days in Texas, it was needed - time to explore, see family members that I hadn't seen in months, just get away from it all.

Of course, "it all" always comes back to bite you in the ass. This time it chose our dog as it's avatar; when we got home earlier this evening, we found that Mick (who'd been in the care of a local dogsitter), had worn a five-inch hotspot onto his flank; Beth rushed him to the emergency vet while I tried to put an overtired kid to bed ("NO Daddy! I'm AWAKE!"). Late word that the dog is fine - antibiotics, an anti-inflammatory, a radar dish around his neck, all to the turn of $300. Think I can the get the Howlie Cowboys to come down and play a benefit?