SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER TWO - DAY EIGHT - July 19, 2020

 



Took off down Sunset Boulevard on a hot Saturday afternoon. I was committed to getting into a lineup and fighting for some real waves, crowds be damned. It also opened up the drive a bit from our normal city-based route, passing through some sweet ravines and small canyons as the urban landscape thinned out closer to shore.

Last year I wrote of this iconic, gritty surfspot:

"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."

When I arrived at the Pacific there were only two guys in the water. You can now go online and see what the waves look like at your fave spot via permanent video camera. It’s called Surfline. I don’t use the service, because it discourages the Safari launch. Surfing involves a considerable amount of gear, a rack on your car, and other bits of assorted, but necessary crap. California beaches are notoriously windy and cold and seeing that on your computer is reason enough to drop the whole claptrap and have a hot cocoa. And you can’t go by it, either. The ocean is a big, unpredictable mood ring that is ever-changing. But it tells you something about surfers. They do not hit the beach for a tan. They will surf a cove in Iceland wearing a 10-pound neoprene suit before heading out to a sunny spot without a decent wave.

Covid Courtly, I let the two guys already in the water have the peak as I tried to pick off the corner of the same waves. There was no force so I had to position myself near them. I paddled up and saw they were wearing masks. That seems like the surfing equivalent of walking and chewing bubblegum at the same time, but Los Angeles is very mask-compliant. I started a discussion about the poor pickins and one of them told me it wasn't so bad and that I just needed to inch-up on my board and keep my head further down during the sprint. To prove his point, he let me have the next wave and it was a great ride. I do that trick all the time. I’ve said it before, you don’t want to get shut out. One wave gives you something to wash away your wee-hour worries.

I am missing some ribs from cancer surgery a few years ago. There is a mesh -- like a rug -- in there, and a post or something holding it all up. Believe it or not, I didn’t much care about the details at the time since there was no real choice in the matter. I surf wearing the same Velcro corset I left the hospital with for support. At Sunset, I went all Tarzan for some reason. No wetsuit, no t-shirt or rashguard, no corset, just what surfers call a “boardshort” and the rest of the world calls a bathing suit. After about an hour, stuff started to rattle around in there. A post-operation chat with the surgeon regarding things I could still do going forward did not include surfing… that was my old friend Darren Wiseman, who used to get me into all kinds of trouble as a kid.

The conditions were getting progressively worse, so I bailed, content the Safari Mission had been completed.

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Organizing a Past

Image
ORGANIZING A PAST. Bathing and helping my wife in the bathroom is nothing that ever comes easy, but it’s a breeze in comparison to the task of organizing her dresser. This is what they call a “Fiddle Box” in Alzheimer’s parlance. Even a full-time caregiver is limited to what can be done with a person who has lost the ability to focus. The Fiddle Box is a place a patient can be left alone to spend hours screwing things up without doing much harm. For Anna, this is an altar at which she stands endlessly moving bits of her life around willy-nilly; expensive jewels, gloves of Spanish leather, scarves from India. My wallet is missing of a sudden, so this is one of those times when order must be restored and to do so is to pass through our life together. There are a thousand garments in different storage places around the apartment. I am trying to liquidate but can’t bring myself to throw away anything she designed. Anna was a prolific fashion designer. She not only had her signature Anna Hu...
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
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