Three Surfin' Safari Summers

THREE SURFIN’ SAFARI SUMMERS: In the summer of 2019, three years after my wife Anna Huling-Siciliano was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, it became clear that I was losing her. Time was precious, health precarious, money short, and I decided to mine the riches of Southern California and launch a defiant series of regional Surfin’ Safaris as health-driven, couple-shared adventures out of the mausoleum our home had become. As a family we’d always been beachgoers and it seemed a safe bet for my wife who was slowly losing her mind. She could sit on a blanket - as she always had - while I surfed. Things didn't work out to be so neat and clean, but that's the story. Reporting being of a second nature to me, I concocted Facebook posts after each outing through which I intended to keep friends and family apprised of Anna’s condition, and to put them at ease about her quality of life (ie; how I was treating her). Of course, others could read the posts, which were grouped under the ti...

    That's "The Gun," my go-to board (I only have two), and my soggy, new Rip Curl wetsuit apparently designed by Harry Houdini. This is the beach at Marina del Rey. It is right in the middle of the city and perpetually empty. You can park at the edge of the sand. Surfers used to call it "Shitpipe" because the sewage outfall was there back in the '60s. Now it is three miles further into the sea. When you are a surfer you come to grips with the fact the ocean is humanity's toilet bowl. The Marina is my home court. Not the best wave in Southern California, but I have been surfing it so long, I know most of the shapes. I sharpen up there before joining the lineup of aggressive loonies at places like Topanga. Surfed for two hours today and caught nice mid-sized waves to my heart's contentment.

      We went out to the Marina late afternoon. It was cold and windy and the water was mushy and I didn't want to go in, but have decided it's not a true Surfin' Safari Summer outing unless I get beat up by the ocean a bit. Managed to work into a wave that I'm still thinking about hours later.   We took Washington Blvd. out to the coast and stopped for lunch at an Oaxacan place. We shared a "Tlayuda." It is hard to make the case that Los Angeles is a handsome sort of city, but there are pockets where the best elements of Southern California are assembled to charming effect. This spot is one of them.  

    We left the house early for a jaunt to the Marina where the beach was empty and the surf plentiful. Ran to the Venice Beach Pier and back before getting in the water, where I surfed until my arms almost fell off. Rather than landing at some coastal cantina afterward, we ended up way inland, downtown, where we had to deposit the teenager in a dungeon at the beautiful Colburn School, to pay his debt to his talent for the French horn, and work towards an exciting future he lacks the life experience to even imagine.  

      Friday started out crappy and held form through the hours. So, with $20 to our name and just under a quarter tank of gas, we launched a 4 p.m. Surfin' Safari to Venice Beach, the famously funky seaside district of Los Angeles. The surf spot is known as the Venice Breakwater. Here the golden boys of SoCal's beach towns give way to Che Guevara surfboards, Mexican flag rashguards, South American soccer player haircuts and such. People talk about the breakwater as this gritty, no nonsense, urban play space, but I suspect that is because there are so many brown-skinned people surfing it. The vibe is very chill and the waves break far out, and are long, so more than one person can get on, eliminating some of the competitiveness   natural to surfing. There are more women, by far, than at any other surf spot I've been to and, I suspect, a diminished quotient of aggressive masculinity at the breakwater has something to do with it. I love watching women surf. But I digre...

       Had such a good time on Friday we tried to ring the bell twice by heading out to Venice again. The waves were enormous and powerful. It took 10 minutes and half my energy just to reach the break. Got up on one, but it was too choppy and the board keeled right, throwing me over. I paddled around and gagged on salt water for half an hour, got out, and then got back in after a while, to gag on more saltwater. It was a workout in any case. Started thinking about street tacos so we turned for home and hit the next stand on our bucket list, "Tacos Tamix," (Venice and Sepulveda) which treated us much better than did the ocean.                                            

      Struck out on my own very early to beat the crowd and arrived at Kook's Corner to find a crowd. Sundays are busy. Kook's Corner is at the place where Sunset Boulevard finishes its majestic 22-mile course from Union Station downtown to the edge of the continent. A "Kook" is a person beginning and/or not very good. Sometime in the annals of Los Angeles surfing someone decided that this prime stretch of wave would be a training ground; that you could go there and learn without being shamed and humiliated. It's a happy spot where it is okay to suck. Not coincidentally, I have surfed it many times. There are too many people, as the photos show. You have to position yourself so as not to be in the way of others, but still catch a wave when five people are paddle-sprinting on either side of you with the same idea. It's a reef, so the ride ends in the rocks -- what surfers call the boneyard -- where you can break your board or, you know, your face. It was cold s...

Pet Store on Washington Blvd. Anna and I tried our luck with rush hour in L.A., by slipping out at 4:45. It worked. In under half an hour, we cruised to home court - Marina del Rey - where the waves were not good. When you are surfing frequently, as we are this summer, it’s not the end of the world if you get a bad day. There will be others, soon. So I swooshed around for an hour, getting in touch with my board, thinking of Bruce Lee’s words: Tacos "al pastor." “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water…if you put water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.” I caught two waves, which is one more than any surfer is asking for. You don’t want to get shut out. If there aren't always good waves, there are always street tacos and we tried a stand at a desultory spot where Sepulveda and Palms intersect. It didn’t have the clean, colorful Mexican feel our prior streateries did, but it’s street tacos. You gotta take a ch...

We headed out into the city on a high-season beach day anticipating traffic. But in the spirit of Surfin’ Safari Summer, we boldly plotted a path to the ocean via Sunset. We cruised Beverly Hills, got lost in UCLA, and stopped at Gelson’s in Pacific Palisades to pick up a roast chicken and beer and orange cream Coca-Colas. The whole world was at the coast. We’d break out of traffic on California 1, only to hit another snarl. Topanga was having some kind of hippie festival. Zuma was jammed. Leo Cabrillo packed. We kept driving north until we crossed into Ventura County and settled into a beach nobody knows is there. Not exactly far from the madding crowd but hidden from it. There’s no sign, the parking lot is set down from the highway and that’s that. You have to know. It’s called “Staircase” after the steps hacked into the coastal scrub by pioneer surfers in a wilder California to access the sweet little reef beyond. Now it’s a county beach called... Staircase. It is a measure of surf...

This is the real deal type of safari. Dog Days. An open moment. The beach bags are already by the door, the rack up on the car roof for the forseeable future. We are in the habit. Whoosh, off to the Marina on the spur. We pushed our luck and tried a 5 p.m. launch and still arrived in under an hour. The surf was terrible. I got walloped and never really recovered. After a few honest runs I decided it was more beautiful outside the water than in. And that it was. Day nine was the best one weather-wise of any safari thus far. There was no wind and the sun was wan and a lightness laced the air. We watched the sunset and then drove into a full swollen moon toward the same taco stand we we ate at on Surfin' Safari Day 7. Still good. This little jaunt, including gas, came in under $20 and turned an average day into something much better.

There. We've already hung a ten-spot on the summer and it's only July 24. As with everywhere else, it was very hot in Los Angeles and as soon as my work story was done we headed for Marina del Rey. There was harsh traffic, but we know some alleys and side streets and skipped all the snarl to arrive at 6 p.m. It was not a day to get geographically adventurous, just to seek relief. I brought my new board and surfed for about two hours as the sun took it's time melting behind the Santa Monica Mountains. The waves weren't that good. I actually haven't had a good day since Kook's Corner (Surfin' Safari Summer Day 6). But that's how surfing is. The ocean doesn't care that you want to use a fiberglass tablet to harness its energy for a buzz. The conditions do not come together all the time. But it was hot so I didn't need a wet suit or rash guard, just board shorts, which is pretty liberating. The waves were breaking too close to shore so that there was...

  Anna Suffocating on the hard facts of my life, done with work for the week, I grabbed the co-pilot and lit out for Topanga State Beach at 5 p.m. Safari Summer has taught me that certain surf trips are not as hair-raising and impossible as I’d assumed. It took less than an hour and decompression kicked-in with the first whiff of salty air drifting up Sunset Boulevard. Topanga Beach lies at the mouth of Topanga Creek,  where it empties after a journey through the natural jewel known as… Topanga Canyon. Back when there was plenty of California to go around, it was colonized by hippies. In the ‘80s, some developers decided to turn Topanga into gold. The hippies, by then, were prosperous merchants with a residual talent for political organization that knocked the developers clear back to downtown Los Angeles (never to return). An alternative culture took root between the shady canyon’s walls. There is a new-age, witchy-woman-in-seven-veils feel to that insulated little world. For...

We braved serious rush hour traffic and arrived in Hermosa Beach at around 6:30 p.m. Hermosa is in the South Bay, "the Bay" being Santa Monica Bay. It is very large, reaching past Staircase beach (Surfin’ Safari Day 8) north and a few miles past Hermosa south, some 60 miles total. Just 20 miles south of Los Angeles, Hermosa cultivates the same hermeneutically sealed beach culture all such towns do, down to Imperial Beach and the Mexican border. I lived in Hermosa for three years after my expatriate turn in Spain, desiring a provincial existence within reach of the city so I could sell literature. Might as well have been on Mars, for I was one of few in town who had anything to do with L.A. I worked as a script reader for United Talent Agency. Then I did it for Creative Artists Agency. It was before e-mail and I had to drive up Sepulveda into Beverly Hills every afternoon, pick up the scripts, read them at home, and return day next with breakdowns. Movie agents don’t read scri...