SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER TWO - DAY TWENTY-ONE - September 13, 2020
But tradition was nowhere to be found over the big weekend. No line-up of cars all the way down La Cienega to get into Partytown. There was no USC Trojans opener, no late-season drama up at Dodger Stadium, no Bruins at the Rose Bowl, and no GoodYear blimp hovering over them all.
Just a lot of ash and fear in the air.
The pandemic has obliterated so much that marks us as a culture and society that even our temporal metrics seem askew. It has been a little like floating through a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel where the lines between real and magical, between forward motion and backwards time-travel, if not erased, are not always where we usually find them.
So Summer got an extension. I convinced Anna to join me, told her it’s just not the same when I catch a wave and pop up out of the water to see she hasn’t seen it.
Told her the posts in which she joins the Surfin’ Safari are more popular than those reporting my solo outings and, that as always, it’s not that she completes me as a partner, but that she makes me look better (and this is how you stay married).
Alzheimer’s has left Anna's vanity intact for the time being and these remonstrances were enough to get her into the car. We headed out into the fire ash-filtered dusk, brooding about plague and firestorms and homelessness and the general mayhem that make up American life.
I posted Anna at the water’s edge so as to keep an eye on her from the waves. In SSST Day 2, I described the measures taken that would allow me to have a session while she stayed on the beach. They were all discarded after one trial run.
The Safaris marked Anna’s decline in a way we could not discern being with her day-in, day-out, at home. Simply put, things she could do last summer at the beach were no longer doable.
She "lost" the electronic tracker (Anna never liked it on her ankle), couldn’t/wouldn't find her way to the nearby public bathroom, and was no longer content to sit at the blanket, preferring to wander instead.
The waves at Marina del Rey did little to lift my spirits. They were breaking too close to shore and the water’s surface was a little choppy.
Then something untoward happened... I surfed well, overcame the poor conditions; an achievement attributable to the spaghetti with homemade Roma tomato sauce consumed pre-launch. The Italian American superhero food.
I was crisp and efficient in my paddle; selective about the waves to be chased. I watched the water and patiently calibrated, like an artillery officer, my launch position by degrees. This got me up on a wave, somewhat wobbly, but by then I was confidently zeroing in on my wet quarry.
The next ride was very good and it was so because of my efforts, not because of the wave’s shape, which sucked. There was, finally, a connection to my new board after three months of courting.
Muscularity, agility, light-footedness, and a brief suspended state of grace were all things I felt in those few seconds, rich and fleeting rewards for a summer of diligent striving. The command one feels in these aspects dissolves the biggest obstacle of all - fear - and once you are no longer afraid, things really open up.
I popped up out of the foam and looked for Anna who, naturally, hadn’t seen the ride. Another tree fallen in my forest.
In Spain they say, “quien teja cesta, teja cien,” which means, if you can weave one basket, you can weave a hundred. After what had been a pretty frustrating Safari Summer, I forged the same calculations and effort into a series of nice rides, which is how it goes, and how one stays hooked.
After exiting and wrapping my grinning self in a towel, the Surf Gods rewarded me by dropping four Surfing Neireids into our midst.*
We watched their style rooted in noncompetitive group fun, flops, showing off for one another, tandem riding, holding hands, mocking laughter. There are many ways to approach surfing and the Nereids' left us lighthearted under the weird pink-yellow wildfire sun.
And that was just great. Driving home, things seemed much less apocalyptic than on the drive out. Same drive, different guy.
So that’s a wrap. I’ll be surfing in a day or two, but no longer writing about it for a while.
There were a total of 21 Safaris played out over eight different beaches. The video of the sunset at Laguna Beach (SSST Day 18) was far-and-away the most viewed. It really captured the peace and beauty of the moment.
Anna only came out on six safaris. I hope Friday signaled a change and that whatever phantom was haunting her beachgoing has given way to another, in a different part of her troubled consciousness. Maybe she will become the beachgoer she was, at least for a while.
Last year we also did 21 safaris. Then it was more of an effort to keep going, because we were writing about it and felt a kind of editorial pressure to maintain rhythm in our appearances and variety in our destinations.
This year the trips were practically second nature, as if we lived right on the water instead of 8 miles away. The soft-rack stayed on the roof overnight and, sometimes, the board, too. Typically too hot for a wetsuit, we could literally slip into our boardshorts, drop onto our searing car seats, and cruise out coastways through the empty metropolis.
Take the two Safari Summers, plus a modest estimate of another 15 sessions during the other seasons, and you have 57 trips to the beach over 14 months.
Imagine if you were doing that. It would be more than a project or mission.
It would be a lifestyle.
Nothing is forever and I intend to enjoy it so long as sustainable. Thanks to all for coming along on these rides. It would not have been the same without you.
*In Greek mythology, the Nereids are sea nymphs (female spirits of sea waters), the 50 daughters of Nereus and Doris, sisters to their brother Nerites.
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