0031: glad you werent here.

friday 3pm and i ran out. the work recently has kept up at a pace thats been difficult to keep up with. more responsibility means more people with the eye out over you. dont slip, they'll know. but the weather had been decent and the prospects good for a decent evening.

I was glad to ditch the pager.

the wait for M was unbearable. I wanted to get to LM before it got too late and the lady would change her mind. Even left before i'd heard the word from M just to make sure there'd be some rides in my near future. the brief stop for tea was in order then the trip to the beach was made. 40 minutes. a terribly long time and terribly boring drive.

Amazingly the small conditions made for excellent shape and a carvable face on a pretty decent wave. The experience and countless trips to the area breaks have allowed me to call the right spot for the right conditions. we had great 3 footers and the occasianal 4 foot that would simply kill. Just two of us paddled out in front of the taco bell and sat out far to the left of a crowd of salty fuckers. pretty much alone, we didnt have to wait long till the set came in and it was fantastic. the sets were spaced just right and we didnt have to hardly wait 5 minutes before a decent wave would roll in. beautiful carvable faces, the hog performed to perfection. going up the face and dropping some wait on the tail to whip its fat ass down the line. The drop ins were picture perfect, keeping the nose from digging and pulling the bottom turn for a decent trim. Wave after wave this happened. unreal. it was a real treat and a nice change from recent sessions of endless paddling and endless burns.

The next morning i headed to the reef break with high hopes of clean faces and magazine photo conditions. Instead it looked like LM on a shitty small day. A small crowd had already formed and it looked dumpy and closed out. Hardly worth jumping in for. I drove up and the spots all looked promising but for some reason or another i didnt feel comfortable going in. I ended up a decent hidden sand bar fishing for perch. casting off of 40 min allows a person to get pretty bored but i was really entertained staring at the waves rolling in. most about 4 ft and the occasional head high set wave was making me wish M had woken up so i'd be out on the water instead of futily tossing plastic worms out into the rips. The hike up to the car is a bitch. A vicious steep ravine bordering on canyon, alone it spooked me. I'd jump after hearing birds jump from bush to bush. I kept thinking i'd get bit by some fucking snake and hope poor bastard driving by would be nice enough to suck the poison out! but by the car there were some people who where getting ready to make the trip back down for a couple of rides.

fantastic. speedy waves pushing in with nice faces. my second wave was classic. a nice head high peeler that i made a picture perfect drop on and pulled a nice bottom turn on. I was heading down the line and i realized i gotta take advantage of my luck and go up the face for one carve. I pushed out on the tail and then dug in, raced up the face and pushed out one more time for a drop back in, one more bottom turn and i was good. just headed down the line smiling.

This went on for a while. when i surf shittier waves i try to get the most of them, push for as many carves as possible but this wave was different. the environment was something out of a nature mag. sitting out you see nothing but open ocean. Riding the wave is dreamlike. you drop in and turn and just kind of stare at the water in front. I almost lose myself in it all.