SURFIN’ SAFARI SUMMER THREE - DAY EIGHT - July 12, 2021

On Saturday, Home Instead, the caregiving staffers, sent their latest victim to wrassle with Anna for five hours while the Anna-Yellerer went surfing.

The Lady of the House continues to require sedation once or twice a day when the demon that haunts returns with a vengeance. Leaving her with a stranger at this point is an open question, so I asked the caregiver if she wanted to join us for a Surfin' Summer Safari.

The caregiver, Maria Segura, (Safe Mary!) looked at me as if there were two heads on my shoulders. And there are: Surfing Safari Summer head and Alzheimer’s Caregiver head, and should not the twain meet?

Surfin’ Safari Summer (One-through-Three), let us not forget, is a journalistic enterprise. In Summer One, when Anna’s range was wider and her mind more present, we talked about destinations and what kind of post would result.

Ergo, a post with a caregiver from Tijuana coming along for the Safari really tickled my editorial funny bone whilst getting Anna back on Safari would have represented a Barbara Walters’-style coup.

Tactfully, Maria Segura noted she was not dressed for “la playa” and we left it at that. We spoke in Spanish, which breaks down a lot of barriers in these here parts and the conversation revealed how her own husband was hit with dementia 14 years ago and that she has been caring for him ever since.

This meant that, as kindred spirits, we could compare notes and share the “oy” eye roll. So, she’s a pro and upon returning I noted certain changes made to the domestic landscape, such as taking the block of cutting knives and putting the handles against the wall so they are not sticking outwards. (!)

Do we have a keeper? One can dream.

On my way out to the Marina, I ran into Omar Torrez and his wife Masha Tsiklauri, whom escaped the urban/pandemic grind by jetting off to Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains. We hadn’t seen each other for a few months before lockdown and, just like that, it’s been a couple of years.

We got caught-up on a pandemic’s-worth of news, and I told them what they could do with their amazing, three-month Asian mountain idyll before hitting the bricks.

The surfing was great. It was hot on the sand and cool in the water. I did things originally ruled out of taking place in this life. It is an odd juxtaposition, this business of my surfing coming together and my world falling apart.

Position on the water has always been an unresolved matter for me, but after 16 years of “research” it appears one should post themselves for take off in the same place as when body surfing. This shouldn’t have taken so much time to figure out, but that’s where the business about “teaching old dogs new tricks” is probably born.

Another no-brainer was lifting my legs out of the water and crossing them above the board when paddling toward a wave. This produced an incredible reduction in drag and a smoother move to standing position. An instinctive, timed, leg-kick was shooting me into the pocket in a way I’d never experienced.

With bigger waves I’m getting longer rides and uncovering further iterations of what a board can do, especially when you let the water take the reins.

For years the increments in learning have been excruciatingly small, but as these simple hacks reveal themselves, the leaps are much greater and great leaps, we all know, are thrills.

The session lasted close to two hours and I got to show off for some tourists from Yorba Linda. To close the day, a rogue wave came along and I was slow in deciding whether to paddle out beyond its break, or high-tail it to shore.

The former course of action was chosen and, in an exquisite miscalculation, I caught the full force of the beast, which blew the board from my hands and tossed my body skyward, before running me through a tumbler of white foam and sunlight that ended 20 yards down shore with a sandscrape and clunk on the head from the blue Tony Staples surfboard (the secret to my success).

And that was the best thing that happened to me in a month or even longer.