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.
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