It’s overcast, but I prefer that. Good for the scar. The doctor said to keep the sun exposure to a minimum. Something about the newly forming tissue absorbing the sun super fast and doing something with melatonin.
Why am I upset about exactly? Some tone-of-voice thing? Probably something stupid. It usually is. I’m glad I didn’t make it a big deal. I’d just end up apologizing again. That’s pretty much how it goes.
At least my new suit will keep me warm. It’s a little wet from last night, but today I have more time.
I wrap my Rio De Janeiro towel around my waist and shed my clothes from the waste down. Right leg first. Always the right leg first. Left leg. It’s cold, I won’t leave my suit peeled down. I’ll get fully dressed to run down the hill.
Car’s locked, key’s attached to my leg. I’m running down the hill, in the rust brown canyon that cuts into the sedimentary cliffs. Running hurts. My heel has been bruised for months. I always run on it. It never gets better.
Great, mud. Nothing like going a natural stairway of sedimentary rocks caked with gooey mud.
“Can you hold this for me?” sure, I tell him. He hands me his board, and I wait at the top of the steps hoping not to slip, looking at the lefts at Ab. And the crowd. Everyone must have heard how good it was.
“Dude did you get out yesterday?”
“Yeah I went to Mission but it wouldn’t hold. Just closeout after closeout.”
“Man, the cliffs were firing!”
They were firing. Solid overhead. I only got 20 minutes of dusk after work, squinting at the solid overhead sets, trying to gauge whether they would break on my head.
Paddling. The water is cold on my face when I duck-dive my first wall of whitewash, but my torso is dry in my new suit.
Alec’s out, sitting on the inside. Not a bad idea with so many people in the lineup. Steve must be over at Sub.
“Yo dude.”
“It’s fun out here, man.”
“Yeah looks fun. Steve at Sub?”
“Yeah.”
The first wave isn’t memorable for more than a few minutes. Probably one or two turns, like hundreds of waves before it.
This one’s lining up. Whoa, bad drop. Off-balance. [expletives].
“Shoot, that one was barreling. Would have been sick.”
This one’s going to break too far out. Oh, no one on the outside got it. I’m paddling out and toward the shoulder to the right of the peak, facing the wave. Quick turn, all my weight forward, thrusting toward where I want to be, every fast-twitch muscle fiber in my legs twitching as quickly as it can to give me the momentum I need to join this swell of energy through water in its path toward the shore, broken up by the reef.
My hands press my body up – flat on the surface of the board, instead of wrapped around each rail, slowing the process. The lip starts to reach over the vertical face of the water, I send my weight toward the top, then back down the wall to pick up enough speed to get around the section.
No time for a bottom turn, I get up to the lip again and throw my weight in the opposite direction of my momentum, one of my fins breaks free of the water while I cut back toward the crumbling peak. Two more pumps, I’m thinking about going fast, watching the water go vertical and the crest of the small mountain of water start to curl over and ahead of me. I’m not thinking about earth science, or Shakespeare, or the Point Weekly, or organizing archives at Surfer Magazine. I’m thinking about my bottom turn.
On the second pump I go straight down the face, perpendicular to the cliffs. I lay out, nearly horizontal in the flats and point my inertia straight, up the wave, the timing is perfect. I push at the lip, the lip pushes me back, giving me enough energy to break my fins loose in a vertical snap. With speed from the snap, another solid bottom turn, another vertical snap as the wave collapses on itself for tens of feet across.
It’s overcast, and I’m smiling.
