SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER TWO - DAY SIXTEEN - August 15, 2020

 




Still at it.

The temperature got very uncomfortable and the launch occurred around 4 p.m. Anna again declined. It’s as if the safari will take too much of a mental effort. She seems exhausted just at the suggestion. My kid offered to stand in for me.

Departing at 4 p.m. on a Friday would have, in the 2019 sense, been insanity. Talk about lockdown. When you get that rush starting at 3:30 p.m. in L.A. you aren’t going anywhere, at least not very fast.

Not these days. It's clear sailing.

Found a hidden surfer parking spot at Marina del Rey. I’d checked the surf report and it said the waves would be small. Again, it was very hot, so I made the trek out anyways.

There was no wind and it was a pleasure to be at a California beach behaving like a beach for once, and not as testing ground for an Arctic expedition.

The waves were, indeed, small and breaking in close to shore, which has been the way things have gone this summer. You start to get good at it. I decided there was enough to surf if I could make sharp right turns and skip along the small wall heading shoreward. It was a simple justification for the trip, but actually worked out to be a fun little game.

That’s right… game. Remember to keep playing kiddies.

Speaking of playing, when I got out of the water a Dee Jay had set up his dual-table rig and a group of young people were gathering for a sunset soiree.

Before the pandemic that could have never happened. There was always some guy riding around on an ATV giving out tickets to people with dogs and watering down parties.

There have been budget cuts and he's gone, along with half the lifeguards... there were plenty of dogs and things seemed just fine.

The music was creating a very cool vibe on the beach and really hated to leave. I immediately missed my wife who would have loved the scene.

My best friend and adventure buddy for two decades, I feel her slipping away from me. Not from lack of love or feeling, but from confusion, irrational fears, and a lack of tools for coping with them. Increasingly, I find myself out and about alone, "respite" defined as being apart from her.

Drank a beer and watched what was something of a tribal reunion. A girl called me over at one point. I felt like Marcello Mastroianni in “La Dolce Vita;” the last scene, where the personification of a youthful and innocent maiden beckons him to her, but he cannot move, because her world is not his world.




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