B.C.B Memoirs. The Adventures and Misadventures of Pappy and Ryan The Ripper Part 2 - Road Rage and the Mysto Slabs.

The way Captain Eric told it, it was a mystos slab and location and name not to be given away to any kook...especially kooks from Beer Can Beach. Its location was a long drive up to the next county north and hidden behind affluent beach front property, snuggled in against some orange groves and mountains. It was kind of close to and kind of like Rincon but maybe not as defined and certainly not as prestigious, but it was fun anyway. The truth was Captain Eric liked the idea of a mystos slab because he was a traditionalist with a romantic imagination about surfing and surfers (if he was in a good mood) But in any reality check....mystos (a mysterious and hidden surf break that no one knows about) have been long discovered and trampled from the Southern California landscape but it was also fun to make believe. But I did abide Captain Eric's mums the word when I was getting out of my Wet suit, or getting in to my wet suit, or sitting against my car and watching the water behind murder one raparound shades against the sun when Beer Can Beach people started talking up surf trips to San O and C Street and Swami's and I never piped up to say - Hey I was at this place up north and blablabla.....no way, not at Beer Can Beach AKA Kooks Cove. The last thing I needed was to see all those barnies polluting the aloha vibes when good surfers congregate which was a rare and blue moon happening as is, because aloha in the south lands was becoming as rare as a mysto slabs.
The truth is...this break I will call Little Rincon to maintain it's anonymity as not to piss off Captain Eric who I am sure still imagines it the way he last saw it....The truth is...Little Rincon is not really that unknown at all but rather a real pain in the ass to get to, especially at high tide.
Now Ryan The Ripper was getting good. He stood up not long after the morning of the dead chickens and he was starting to rip. The only worries I had about Ryan The Ripper was that he was expressing a strong interest in shortboards. Not that I had any thing against shortboards but I was a longboard guy, most people over 40 are longboarders unless you were raised on shortboards and are quick to get up which I am not. And I liked the glide and the dance of the longboard culture. Hanging ten comes from longboard culture, nose walks and all sorts of balancing acts are al longboard culture. You can ride pretty big waves on a longboard, just as big as you can with a shortboard if you have the skills. Its the speed of the shortboard that differs. Waves break at different speeds. Some roll in and take their time and that is great for a longboard because longboards are slow and easy. Some waves break fast and furious, steeply over reefs and on sand. Shortboards are shaped for that speed, longboards are not. And Ryan The Ripper was gravitating towards this speed and I was sorry to loose a Longboard buddy but I could see his point.
The longboard revival started in the late eighties, early nineties. It started with a few surfers, tired of the whole competitive and aggressiveness that dominated the surfing scene in the 1980's. There was a time in the sixties when longboards were all they rode and then around 1968 some Australian surfer named Nat Young came to California with a board cut back to eight feet, In a world of ten foot plus boards this was unheard of, but it opened up possibilities in surfing to a whole new realm of wave that until then could not be ridden on a longboard. Then things just got shorter. By the eighties the longboard had pretty much gone the way of the Dodo bird until some skinny kid from San Diego County named Joel Tudor and another young guy named Tom Wegener and some of the old guys revived the Longboard style and put a whole lot of new technology into the shaping of them and suddenly longboards were back.
Back in a big way at Beer Can Beach and getting out of hand. Surfing has never really gone out of style but it has waxed in waned in popularity since the first Gigit movie in 1959. In the beginning of this new century everybody in the whole world realized that they could surf with one of those new longboards and everybody from the whole world (and their brothers and sisters) decided to live the dream, The Endless Summer etc, etc...and with the help of Internet surfcams they could be in Palm Springs or London UK and be able to tell if there was a swell at Beer Can Beach or not.
So about five years into this new century it got to the point that if one wanted be original, and what surfer didn't...they'd have to go short again and distance themselves from everybody from the whole world (and their brothers and sisters)! This caused flatlander's and desert rats from Rivertucky and new rich beach front ponces with their $1,500.00 longboards to be terrified of shortboarders because they had seen Point Break and Surf Nazis Must Die and tried to pass rules at Beer Can Beach to forbid shortboarding but no shortboarder would want to surf Beer Can Beach anyway accept to throw buckets at longboarders and vandalize their BMW's just for the spite of it. Ryan The Ripper liked the idea of terrorizing longboarders and I didn't blame him even though I was a Longboarder myself.
Anyway I decided to tell him about Captain Eric's mystos surf break and made him swear to secrecy because if it got out and all that riff raff showed up the ocean would lay flat and me and Ryan The Ripper would never surf again because the surf gods and Captain Eric would be pissed.
So I told Ryan The Ripper about mysto slabs in Ventura County and we loaded up his SUV in predawn March weather and headed up. It was a cold and cloudy morning and coffee and sweet rolls and stories about Pappy's adventures of the sea rolled of my poetic tongue and I showed Ryan The Ripper all the places up the PCH that he would soon dominate and he watched the shorboarders at County Line shut down the longboarders and he was impressed. he liked the shortboarders style and wished he had one. - Why do you want to become a shortboarder? I asked.
- Because I want to go fast, Because I want to rip, because, even though you and Christian and Jeremy are good people...and Pappy...even though you have taught me the secret of surfing, and I am eternally grateful for that, I want to chase those Kooks on longboards out of the sea...and besides...Kelly Slater is God!
- Oh! I answered. And I held back tears.
Mysto Slabs was one blown out sloppy mess. We stood there staring at it.
- Lets go to Rincon...says Ryan The Ripper.
- It would be the same...I tell him.
We went to C street that morning and it was good. Crowded but good. I had this Tyler 9.5 with a super rocker and although it was a stellar board...me and it just didn't hit it off. I had a crappy session. Ryan The Ripper still riding the piece of shit over sized thruster, had a ball but all he could talk about was the purchase of a 6.3 Al Merrick. The most aggro board one can buy.
And aggro it and he was. On the way back we hit traffic on the PCH in Santa Monica and some lady cut Ryan The Ripper off and he got hot under the collar and shook his fist at her and tried to spit on her tail light, and when the light turned red he started to open the door and go to her car. To do what I have no idea.
- She can't get away with that, that stupid bitch! He ranted.
I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back in the car. - Dude!...Says I - This is LA...She could be holding a Mouser in her glove box for all you know. He sat for a few seconds and thought about it and as the light turned green he said; - I hate LA!
And like tell me something I never heard!
I was saddened by Ryan The Rippers decision to go short. I went home and could contain myself no longer and washed my 1966 Volkswagen Beetle with my tears of sorrow.

Beer Can Beach Memoirs. The Adventures and Misadventures of Pappy and Ryan The Ripper Part 1 Santeria & The Secret of Surfing.

Spring has brought the hardwood trees back to life here in Vermont. Maple, oak, ash and birch. I live above The Connecticut River. It is a mighty river. The house I live in is on a hillside above it. Fog shrouds the valley in the morning and it reminds me of the California coast that sits in a fog on most mornings.
The miracle of spring after five months of winter is so pronounced here. It is a time to celebrate, there are geese flying north, all the hibernating animals are back and the robins too. I haven't seen a northeastern spring in many years because I lived in California for most of my adult life.
People say California does not have seasons but I disagree. Even in the middle of Los Angeles on a balmy foggy spring morning one can sense the fragrance of sage blooming on the coast. It drifts into the basin kind of like the smog does, not much air moves in the Los Angeles basin. But the sage blooming on the coast and that mentholated scent drifting into L.A. with the gentle ocean fog always told me it was spring. That and the wild flowers in the hills, poppies! California poppies leaving a blanket of gold along the highways and roads. All this reminds me of mornings, sitting in the ocean, always colder in the spring because of the wind upwelling the depths of the sea and bringing the chilly waters to the surface.
Wind! Surfing in spring on the California coast...not a good time to surf California. Strong onshore blasts start like clockwork at ten each morning and increase with the day. Sometimes it's blowing at six in the AM and it's time to go back to bed. The water is chopped, the waves blown out, the winter north swells have subsided and the tropical winter storms have not started so the summer south swells are nil. It isn't till some time around the last week of April that a southie meets us at Malibu and other point breaks. Beer Can Beach gets it too.
I first met The Ripper on some crappy spring morning at Beer Can Beach in early April. It was a sunny morning. The onshores were threatening to blow out what little wave action there was. It was cold spring surfing and here's this guy out in board shorts and a surfing jacket, short sleeve. A real total ripper I thought. - So what are you doing? I ask this wise guy...- trying to get hypothermia?
- It's all I got, he says and I'm thinking either this guy is total hard core or he's nuts. I see big Hawaiian guys out there in the winter dressed like they're on Maui in the tropics with their flower print shorts and bareback, don't know why they do it. maybe they don't want to spend money on a wet suite because they're flying back to paradise that afternoon or maybe they're just big, Hawaiian and bad ...maybe this guy is a mean ass Hawaiian white boy.
He was not a mean ass Hawaiian white boy. He was a newbie from somewhere in the Northwest. He was so new that he couldn't even get up on the board but I didn't loose all respect for him like I do for the other kooks at Beer Can Beach. I mean a good surfer has to start sometime. He had kind of a attitude. I could tell he wasn't a person who was learning to surf, he was a surfer learning to surf. How I knew this I cannot say. His name was Ryan. Soon to earn the nickname The Ripper.
It was a week later. It was dark in the AM at Beer Can Beach. The Pacific Coast Highway was already coming alive with early commuters dashing by as I stood there in the predawn looking in revulsion at dead headless chickens floating in the stagnant tide. Beer Can Beach had two personalities, one in the night, one in the day. I never wanted to know what the night time was like. There was gang graffiti sprayed on the sea wall and what with dead chickens riding small waves in to the trash polluted tide pools, victims of Santeria and sacrificed to a fearsome evil god in the guise of Jesus and The Virgin Mary and God only knows what else! -Jesus Christ! I sighed - where the hell am I living anyway? And who was going to make that water safe for surfers after dead chickens (not even plucked) floated around in them for some hours.
- So whadda ya think Pappy! I hear a voice ask. I turn around and there's Ryan (soon the be The Ripper) looking like he stepped out of Point Break as one of Bodhi's sidekicks all dolled up with his spanking new wet suit and looking all pro and stuff. I look back at the miserable conditions, the wind is out there, the fog is in and as long as the fog remains then it will keep the wind at bay, but as soon as the sun breaks through...Oh hell! I think. The ripper is standing over me with a look like...what the fuck and I say - Sometimes you just got to get wet. and he looks at me like I'm an asshole and I problem am and the other Beer Can Beach regulars are showing up and looking at the headless chickens glumly and resigning themselves to the fact that sometimes they just have to get wet.
It was a bad session. The waves sucked and Ryan (soon to be The Ripper) was trying to stand up on on some over sized thruster that reminded me of a 1973 Ford Pinto on 2 foot pieces of shit and getting extremely angry and frustrated and cussing like the Irishman he turned out to be. The dead chickens remained as visible as a turd in the punchbowl , victims of Santeria, still rotting around the garbage strewn tide pools and nobody seemed to want to deal with it. Last week there was a dead cat in the water, the week before there was a dead whale but I don't think that was Santeria. Could have been all the garbage that Gladstones Seafood and Hamburgers right there above the point throw out there and the whale couldn't digest the deep fried breaded fish and french fries. There always seemed to be something dead at Beer Can Beech.
So with nothing else better to do I decided to reveal the secret of surfing to Ryan (soon to be The Ripper.) I told him; - Surfing is like playing pool, the less one thinks about what they intend to do the better the chances. I told him; - Once you commit to a wave you had better follow through, hesitation is fatal. That's how great surfers die, I told him. I told him; - The more you surf the better you get and if you stop for a while you loose ground, it is like the game of pool, it is a little geometry, perception. guts, intuition, and boldness and he looked at me like I was an asshole and I probably was. But it was the beginning of a true friendship and in the surfing world one had beeter be grateful for it.
Mary showed up with her red hair on fire and eyes like daggers as she waded out in the garbage strewn tide pool to retrieve the decomposing chickens, victims of Santeria. giving us all her contempt for none of us having balls enough to do it ourselves. I knew she wouldn't talk to me for at least six weeks and I was right.
Ryan soon got up on his 1973 Pinto thruster and went on to better equipment and in a remarkable time became a legend and a California household word. But more about that later.