I watch the snowboarders going to the Green Mountains for a day on the slopes. They remind me of surfers, kind of cocky, slightly outlaw individualistic. Of course they are all bundled up with the same watch caps that surfers wear before and after sessions and they have the same wear wrap around sunglasses, and on the street they sport t shirts and knee length Dickie shorts with sandals. And they've got the same vibe. They sound like surfers when they tell me that I would enjoy snowboarding because it's gnarly, like riding a 700 ft wave of snow dude, you'll love it Pappy, if you surfed you will snowboard!
I don't know about that. I have physical disabilities now and wiping out on ice and snow is not the same as wiping out in water. Besides, I am water. My home will be the sea always. I live one hundred miles from the sea now. That's OK. My spirit is salt water...Pappy sleeps with the fishes....Pappy! That's what the folks in the line up named me and it stuck, everyone at the beach called me Pappy, there is even a section of Beer Can Beach...a take off zone where a long right handed break reforms and continues another few hundred feet to the shore. I used to claim that area for myself. My old buddy Christian The Dominator named that section Pappy's. What an honor to have a take off surfing zone named after me!...even if it is Beer Can Beach.
My minds eye is always on the shoreline...It is always a bright morning on the beach, even while I drive through northern hardwood forests, Blue Jays perched in the wintering trees, warblers sing a haunting melody, woodpeckers jackhammer on the side of the hardwoods, it is the song of the forest, it is an ominous predator foot print in the snow, there are lairs in the woods where bears hibernate till spring. I feel like Siegfried in this forest, on my way to slay the dragon in it's cave. I have a dragon to slay up here in the great north woods. Like St George, like Siegfried, this dragon sits in the back of my unknown thoughts and here I am, sword in hand ready to lobotomize the beast. But enough of my dragons. I am in the forest but the sea awaits. I will return to the sea...always...and if my memory serves me well;
I go back to another winter, a winter of some years ago in the sunny southlands of California. Balmy air but cold water and a swell from the Alaskan Gulf...always a zoo at Beer Can Beach when the waves get that big, what with all the newbees out there and then suddenly there's these overheads coming in and these guys are crapping in their wetsuits. Me? I got one life to live. I figure if this waves takes me...I've gone out doing what I like to do best. But that doesn't happen, Not even close. I'm sliding down liquid mountains and I do come close to running someone over that does not realize the power of the sea this morning, guess he'll learn the hard way. I ride all the way to the shallows and stand in knee high surf. The waves are powerful and nearly knock me off my feet. I am waiting for a lull to paddle back out to my take off section. There is a riptide where I stand. That's good. I just wait for the lull, get on my board and let the rip take me out to the line up which has to be two football fields out there this morning. Boy! The waves are at least twelve feet That's pretty big for here.
Too bad about Beer can Beach though. It really gets overused in swells of this caliber. All the hipsters and extreme locals from Porto and points south have invaded it You see... all the movies you see about Los Angeles County as this surfer paradise is bunk. Ventura county is more like it, Orange and San Diego Counties are a lot more fun. So there's all these hardcore shredders who usually wouldn't be caught dead at Beer Can Beach in fear that someone they might know, might see, or might get their picture taken and put up on the Internet. Beer Can Beach has this reputation...it's the place where all the kooks go. It's an old folks break and a place for kooks. Kooks and old farts, just lame ass waves and Barney's galore I was glad it had that reputation...I supported that stigma...don't surf here, you will be the laughing stock of of first point Malibu. Don't surf here...anyplace but here! Dudes in the know don't surf here!
Of course my dissing the place only went so far. After all it was the easiest place to check out the surf without even getting out of ones car to do so. It was right in full view of the PCH so when the waves were breaking as good as they were this particular morning it was hard to say go some place else! And besides, the surf was big and all the beach breaks down south were closing out. I thought that was odd, it must be a huge swell if that was the case. El Porto, about ten miles south, could hold a six foot wave, Venice is trash above four feet, Topanga up the coast about half a mile, AKA Crime Scene was probably working but can't hold the crowd and then the locals get cranky and fights break out. That's why we called it Crime Scene. County Line was too far to drive and some of us had to work for a living some time that day, Point Dume was probably good but the locals take over on a swell this big and again the fights.
I had to face it. There was not enough room or everyone so everyone came to Beer Can Beach because when the surf was this big, Beer Can Beach could hold the twelve foot swell and my laughed at surfing hole becomes a world class surf film classic with every hipster, shredder, hotdog and noserider as far south as Palos Verde converging. I would have been pissed off but the waves were too big to do anything but try to get out there and ride.
It' s called the Christmas swell. It happens every year around the second half of December when Alaskan winter storms start to do their churning in the north Pacific. The storms make land fall in the northern part of California, Oregon and Washington. Southern California stays sunny and warm but the waves from the storms making landfall send waves down along the southland coast.
The sea is not a place to be if one is not prepared to give ones self totally to her. I always tell people; never say never but never turn your back to the sea. Surfers always face the horizon waiting for their ride. It's fun when dolphins and sea lions come up and check you out. Dolphins are friendly but sea lions tend to get a little testy. Especially if your around their pups. And there are hazards aplenty out there and on a morning with twelve foot waves coming in because one gets very aware of the prospects of getting held down on a wipe out or knocked on the head with someones runaway board in the soup while your trying to get out.
I guess I've always been trying my luck at slaying dragons. A wave can be a dragon and they were certainly great beasts out at Beer Can Beach that morning. But everyone has a wave just for them. I saw mine coming at me. It was a beauty...it wasn't the biggest wave but it had style, form and power. But there was a problem....
There was a little young lady with a huge voice on a shortboard just to my left. She was pissed off. She was complaining about all the longboarders and kooks that frequented this beach and how they should stay out of her way. She was here because the nasty locals at Crime Scene up the road had driven her off her turf because she was always whining about how she was training to be a pro and that everyone, because she was little and cute, should give her waves. nobody was giving her waves that day at Crime Scene because the guys there are a serious bunch of hard core hard as
ses and that kind of temper tantrum gets people persona-non-grada up there when the space is tight and the waves are big.Now at Beer Can Beach it's a love fest, all accept for me and Christian The Dominator and Ryan The Ripper, and we got our own ways of letting all the Faux-pas chuckle heads that come to our break to show us how it's done just who's doing what out there and we do it with savoir faire! Now this little lady with the large lungs was out there when my lover wave came rolling in. Surfing rules say that the person to your left on a right breaking wave has the right to the wave. And I clearly committed a capitol sin by dropping in on her but sometimes I just get ornery.
I couldn't help it...it was my perfect wave and I dropped down on it and the waves lip curled over my head and I was suddenly in the green room on a stand up barrel. (If my readers do not understand the green room than I say you should go to Surfline.com and look it up in the terminology page of that site.) It was the wave of my dreams, It was the wave of my life. It was me in total Zen, living in the total here and now, me, the wave, and a loud little lady on the shortboard behind me in the barrel screaming; 'ITS NOT FAIR! YOU DROPPED IN ON ME...IT'S NOT FAIR, THIS WAS MY WAVE!'
The two of us wound up in the shallows once more and I thought she was going to cry. I told her I was sorry...I told her I would give her the next one...I told her not to let it ruin her day. She said she was a pro and that I was a kook and to learn to surf. I didn't let it ruin my day. And I was stoked that I made it into The Green Room, just like videos I saw of Indo and Hawaii and it was all right here at Beer Can Beach.
I should have gone in on that ride, but I stayed out and maybe I should have really gone in with a ride like that. but I wanted the green room again, this time to myself. it was a sunny December morning. It was getting seriously crowded and the sea wall along PCH was lined with cameras. Here came my dragon! It was a mountain of a wave. It was the biggest wave I have ever seen in a lineup. As it approached in silence the glassy mountain was suddenly breached by four dolphins riding it. They were to my left and it was a right but I figured they knew what they were doing and I knew what I was doing. I had a dragon to slay, I had a dream to peruse. There was no one going for this one. It was a monster. All the hipsters were out on the point and the Barney's around me were frozen with fear and I had found my own take off point was deplete of riders so there I sat and waited. I quickly did a hail mary and and paddled like hell. I was suddenly in the wave and dropping down on the face. Just then a dolphin breached the wave right in front of me. It's body was sleek and blueish, he looked as if he was having a good time, he was made for the sea and he was on that wave like no human could. A strong offshore breeze hit me in the face and the water sprayed a rainbow in the suns light. The dolphin was so close to me that I thought that I was going to run into it.
One never knows just how big a dolphin is until you are face to face. He was a big serpent and I learned fear and went down, into the depths of the sea, into the belly of the giant wave that rolled turbulent over my head. I was sent to the bottom, I bounced off the sand and I headed up. Up, up and up until the sun I could spot above the surface. I had lost my board, I got to the surface and gasped for air just in time for another wave to crash on my head, sending me back to the deep. Now I didn't know which
way was up and which was down. I was struggling, my breath was getting short, I needed air. I stopped swimming and floated to the top, I saw the light and I came up gasping only to be tossed to the bottom once more from a third wave in a set.I survived it. I dragged my half drowned body to the beach, my board waited at the shore line, I sat down to take stock. That was enough for the day. And as I was walking to my car the little lady with the big voice passed me and gave me a victorious look. I don't know if she saw the dolphin incident or not. If I had been cut off by someone and then saw a dolphin, in return, cut them off I would certainly have felt a certain amount of justice administered. But I tried not to let it ruin my day.
That Christmas swell lasted about four days. I went out on all four days. I caught some great waves but I never returned to the green room. I hoped and I prayed and I wished upon a star, but the green room stayed aloof. And I never saw the little lady again either.
