SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER ONE - DAY NINE - July 17, 2019



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.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
Read more

SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER ONE - DAY TWO - June 15, 2019

Image
      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.  
Read more

SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER ONE - DAY ELEVEN - July 27, 2019

Image
  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 me, the
Read more