Earth Day Surf--April 22, 2008

The buoy I read was ringing up a South Swell at four feet at 16 seconds. I couldn't get out of work fast enough. I had a van-load of our kitchen cabinetry still in the Ikea flat packs, and Jim the Builder wanted to meet me at the house to unload just after lunch. Thus, I had a pretext for jamming to the beach, where I expected our wide open, western swell window would serve up some punchy, lined up surf. Combined with offshore winds and persistent rain, I anticpated possibly the best, least crowded surf in a while.<br /><br />I hit the house and Jim and I staged the cabinetry. We shot the breeze with the owner of the drywall company we're using. He's presently prepping the gypsum wallboard for texture, sealer, and paint. I also gave Jim the paint chips and the paint map created by esposa tres_arboles herself! At present pace, paint should be complete on May 2, opening the door for an Ikea-thon to prepare our kitchen cabinetry for installation. If you've ever built Ikea stuff you know what I mean!<br /><br />As soon as we could take care of business, I split, stopped at the bank to pre-sign what hopefully will be our last two draw forms, and headed over to the beach. Three cars in the lot. Either this was cause for pause or very inspiring. I chose to be inspired, but didn't like the look of the ocean. The long interval south swell was hitting the beach at a really oblique angle. To make matters worse, the pushing tide and a very short interval northwest combo-swell jumbled the surf leaving some long lines that either refused to break on the outer bars, or that just plain crossed-up making really narrow peaks that broke on themselves and ruined the southward wall.<br /><br />Seeing the mush, I chose a longboard from the quiver figuring on volume over quality surf. Except the LB did not add any fun. I ended up paddling back and forth between peaks, following a pattern where the peak over there looked better than the one I was sitting on, only to see the one I had just left was breaking better than the one to which I had moved! Frustration lead to laughter, then just a bit of purposeful paddling around, and catching the odd peak when I got lucky.<br /><br />As it turns out, the buoy only told half the story, as always. But thankfully so, because if I had known better, I might have skipped a surf. And we should never miss a chance to get wet, if even to spend two and a half hours paddling between peaks.<br /><br />Slideshow below. Oh, and don't let those lines fool you. The holes between our bars swallowed most of those waves right up.<br /><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ThreeTreeJournal/~4/276354328" height="1" width="1" />