The Hogs

The Evolution

When I was a child our family had a boat. A blue and white Tiberias with an inboard/outboard motor, fishing pole holders on each gunwale of the stern, an open bow and a snap on canopy that didn't get much use. I never once contemplated the brand name Tiberias but later in life while reading scripture, probably while in Catholic School as a teenager, I came across the well know passage of the multiplication of the loaves and fish and a correlation was quickly drawn. The miracle had been performed near the village of Tiberias and is the only town named in the Gospels in reference to this miracle. That boat, the biblical reference unbeknown to our family, brought more fish and shellfish to us than we could have ever procured simply on land. In retrospective it makes me laugh to think how after a good day on the boat and a good catch my parents would outfit me with a huge Tupperware container of fillets and have me go to all the houses on our street and offer our catch to our neighbors. A lanky kid in brown rimmed coke bottle glasses still in wet boat clothes going up and down the street multiplying the fish for the masses. Jesus must have gotten a laugh out of that sight.

The boat was a place where not only our family was strengthen but friendships as well. More my father's friendships but still none of the significance was lost on the young boy. I learned how to fight fish on that boat, I learned the significance of the tides and how to stall the boat high on a current off a reef or rock outcropping and fish right down the reef, letting the current take you with the fish. These fishing outings would usually come in the late days of August through the cold days of October. But in mid-summer our boat wasn't so much used for fishing as it was for ski-bobbing and Quahoging.

Up and down Narragansett Bay (and no, I won't say exactly where) I learned to Quahog. Either off the side of the boat with the big two handled rakes which you handled like a life size pair of scissors or wading in the shallows with a single rake. I think it would be quite amusing to be able to see my younger self, maybe aged 10, maybe a little older like 12, leaning over the side of the boat with the double handled rake digging away waiting for the familiar scrape of something hard. Then to have my small frame drag the rake over the gunwale, remembering to keep the handles tight as not to loose what was in the basket, and then dig out any Hogs from the rocks and conchs.

Though I know my father was next to me for so many of these hog adventures, one instance sticks out so distinctly that it seems like it could have been the only time we ever went out hoggin. Though I would hazard to guess that said memory is nothing more than the conglomeration of all my memories lumped into one hot and sunny day on the port/stern side of the boat. While I worked the teeth and baskets my mother laid out in the bow reading a book with her hair pulled behind a ball cap, my sister was off snorkeling by herself and my father was hoggin with his mask and snorkel. He would dive, dig his knife into the sand feel for the hogs or watch them squirt out sand and silt as they closed up in defense. I was either too young for this avenue of hoggin or just didn't have the comfort of the mask and snorkel yet (I put the previous up for debate but know that it was the later, I didn't take to the mask and snorkel till later in my adolescence).

My father donated the boat to U.R.I. some years later, I'm sure they turned around and sold it, but it was for a good cause for a great aquatic studies program. Life ebbed away from fishing and hoggin for me during my adolescence. The reasons are both personal and lost and would take up far too much time to detail here in one post. I took to surfing and riding the sea instead of fishing from her bounty. I have never lost my accord with the ocean but fishing or spearfishing never took precedence over a good swell. And well, with moving to Florida at age 18 I lost the opportunity to go hoggin or fishing with my father.

It's nine years later and I've set lures (which he has handmade and sent to me wherever I've lived) in Florida, California and Alaska. It's taken the nearly four months since my return for us to hit the beach together while neither one of us were working. But still what's more impressive is that it's taken us fifteen to seventeen years to don mask, snorkel, weight belt, flippers, gloves and metal spike and re-enter the Atlantic together. He never stopped Quahoging this way and I never stopped snorkeling but I still had another lesson to be learned.

For my first time, in this manner, I dug a fair share of Hogs and Little Necks. I nearly caught a sizable adult Flounder and saw a hundred of inch long baby flounder. My father pointed out schools of small Snapper Blues and I saw a Blue Crab with a claw about the size of my own hand. We exited the water side by side with the same beat-up yellow dive bag in my fathers hand that I remember sitting in the stern of the boat and just like it sits in my memory it sat heavy with today's haul.

Holy no swell Batman, we've got to go make a sacrifice to Neptune.

What the fudge....I need to get into the water.

The Prediction

So the storm came as predicted, but the swell, well, not so much. It's one of those days where you just sit there in shock because you swore there was a chance you were finally going to get to surf. You're looking at the ocean and there's just not shit out there to ride aside from some deceiving chop. But you still wait and try to figure out how you could have been wrong. Eventually you get over it and start the truck back up and go home to lift. Always learning to wait and train for the next prediction.

"Announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh."
~~Al Swearenger

The Epic Fall

This kind of picture would never have happened in Cali. This is from Norman Bird Sanctuary.

The Horizon

It's all out there, sitting, perched, waiting for the tide to bring it to the shore. All the guys; Lando, Dannimal, Daddy Warbucks and T-Rocker have all left the island. No surfing during this visit because there just wasn't any surf. With their departure there is no real sadness for we've been doing this for the past 10 years. All coming and going using this rock of Aquidneck as our home base. Warbucks and Lando are just up in Boston and Dannimal will be back in Vermont, all easily seen but T-Rocker, well he's back to Hawaii, it will be a long time before I will see him again, maybe not that long, maybe I'll bring The Swell to Hawaii for a little bit this winter. And that's what I mean about the horizon. It's all out there. Life after this weekend will slow down. More time for fishing and family, surfing and stealing away for trips up to Vermont and Boston. I excited for the fall. There's swell on the way as well, I predict that tomorrow morning I'll be duckdiving chest high sets.

The Storm

It's later in the day, the next day to be exact, and I'm feeling the storm on my personal horizon. It's just past midnight and I fell no affiliation with anything good. I start a new job in some 10 hours and it's nothing to me for it's just another bartending gig. Though it's a potentiality 50,000 dollar job I just don't give a shit because it's just slinging drinks to the rich. But I'll suck it up and take their money. Tomorrow I'll roll into Castle Hill in a cocky manner and not because that is what makes up my person but because I've learned that if you're serving the rich and you feed your own personal cache you'll survive but if you falter in their bullshit than they'll tear you apart with their pompous judgment.

It's a matter of comfort and confidence. I'm comfortable and confident with myself, no matter what wine or water is on my table. These people I speak of lack a huge confidence in themselves. You may ask how this applies to The Swell or to the life of surfing itself and I'll put it out here and now that neither money or reputation will ever float you in the water. I have no respect for those who buy a yacht and know nothing of crewing the boat. I have no respect for surf camped adults and I have no respect for the rich with no affiliation with the non-profit.

I haven't touched the water in two days and I felt like I was losing my accord with the tide but today, off a minimal town paycheck, I bought a membership to the Norman Bird Sanctuary and the first thing I did was walk to Hanging Rock. From there I sat and looked on what I help mold for the last three months. It looked beautiful. The beach itself, three days closed, looked groomed and pristine. And here is where I engage the rich and blind; myself and a crew of kids under 20 years old sweat and bled so that this site, this beauty, this pristine, this tide, this habitat, this sanctuary, this haven, this escape and this bliss could exist for everyone.

I little expect that my 16, 17, 18, and 19 year old crew boys/girls knew the extent of what they were doing when they were scrubbing bathrooms at 8am or picking trash in the blistering sun of an August heat stroke but I hope that they had faith in my father and I. I hope they had faith in us for we were surrendering our summers, as a family, to the pleasure and enjoyment of the hundreds of thousands which came to the place we called our home, Sachuest Beach. And it's true that it's a home. It's a home to millions of person's memories and we, as a family of lifeguards and crew, had the duty of preserving and molding those memories and we did it well, we did it very well.

The Norman Bird Sanctuary and the Aquidneck Island Land Trust are doing amazing work, all year round, to keep this island (not just the beaches) undeveloped and pristine for our generations still unnamed. Please support them.

Aquidneck Land Trust:
http://www.ailt.org/

Norman Bird Sanctuary:
http://www.normanbirdsanctuary.org/welcome.shtml

The Calm

The Return

My truck found new soil familiar to my soul back on the 24th of May as I found Rhode Island by way of Vermont, Southern Canada, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Colorado and Utah. It was a trip ripe with nothing more than I needed to remind me that I was making the right decision. I camped at a solitary lake on the side of a mountain in Utah and by the side of a slow creek in the Badlands with the company of Joel and Joy, an older couple who had been coming back to the same spot year after year and who were so selfless and sent me off with some of the strongest camp coffee. I faced those cold May mornings in the Rockies and north of the Great lakes with a hot cup and Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline. An album inspired very much by Johnny Cash, of whom he does a duet with on the album. Just great driving music for slow morning touring through the overlooked parts of this, our continent.

Today is September 6th, a far cry from May 24th. There was a deviation in my writings where I had imagined I would have written much more. But the beach took up far more time that I had bargained for and the addition of being one of three bartenders to help open a new restaurant took everything I had to give this summer. I hardly saw my nieces and nephew, spent nearly not enough time with my grandparents but moreover not enough time for myself and my writing.

That being said and done, the beach did lend itself to many positive aspects as well it's numerous negative spurs. I'm not going to try and detail any of these at this point, I'd be sitting here writing well in November before I could detail all the madness of being one of a few who run the most beautiful stretch of land on the Eastern Seaboard. And I'll stand by that statement. You go up on St. George's Hill and cast you sight east over Sachuest Beach and Sachuest Point and if you're not in accordance with me after taking in that spectacle then, well, you might as well stop reading this scrawl.

There was no swell this summer. Maybe five afternoons where a trace swell crept up to our southern facing points but not a whole lot more. I caught a couple of these afternoons and surfed the fish on all occasions. I had the pin-tail in the back of the truck, just in case, but never had the opportunity to break her out. I did however use our lifeguard's cache of toys to the fullest extent. I had at my disposal an array of paddle boards, kayaks and well, I guess never did take out either the dory or the van dyke boats. One of the highlights of having a solid crew of Lifeguard Captains, like we had at the beach this year, is that you are inspired by their dedication. I took to the ocean harder than I ever have in times of no swell. They would run, swim, paddle and row and it drove me to stay out of the gym and train in the elements of my passion. I even took it to another level and incorporated long distance snorkeling into my days.

Details are lacking here is this post and I am fully aware of this deviation but rest assured my readers that there are thousands of images from this summer that will grace this log well into the cold winter we have somewhere on our horizon. But that horizon is far off and though the summer is waning away it's the fall which holds the swell. So it's the fall I wait for, for the swell to grow but as for The Swell in which I write, the sets are picking up as you read sit and read this post.

"Malibu...Outside"

The Nearing

I'm posting this, as a satalite post, from a friend's new apartment in the gaslamp district down in San Deigo. It's a slow day here, just getting ready for a housewarming party and one of the many good-byes I'll have to say this week. Buffet plays on the stero and a bottle of wine has been opened.

This afternoon as I drove with my windows down and the sunroof pulled back, I headed south past all the spots I'd spent so much time surfing, and i had them to my right for the last time. Laguna, San Clemente, Trestles, and San Onofre. The wind whipped through my truck as I creened my head to the right to try to catch a glimpse of the surfers pack at San O. There were cars and trucks all over the highway with longboards starpped to their roofs telling that there was some action in the water. It must have been a small day but i saw a set pull through what would have been just north of Old Mans. One guy out at the point stroking into a wave all by himself while there were three or four guys closer toward shore at the second point and too may to count waiting for the reform.

I rounded into Pentelten and thought of all the reasons why I had moveed here in the first place; a number of them all wrapped up into today: friends, surf, wind and music passing freely through open doors, a steel drum melody to surf the sunset away.

Thoughts from just North of South

4/17/2007

There's a milky sky of grays and blues above the Pacific as I look out to six surfers playing in the high tide push of an otherwise weak swell. But do not get me wrong, just an hour or so ago I was one of the six. Actually one of the three at that moment, but I digress. Presently I sit atop sandstone with my tin cup full of wine- I look out on Cardif-by-the-Sea and I look back on a fun session in a place I had never surfed before. I'm camping at San Eligo tonight and I got one of the best campsites, #57, in the entire camp. There's a view of the break from my picnic table and I'm on the beach level, no walking up and down the cliffs, just a few steps and I'm on the sand. I would have been happy with any site for I am just happy to get out of Orange County but to get the best site in the entire camp is really stoking me out. Call it karma, call it what you will but tomorrow in the AM, after some oatmeal, a bagel and some fresh French Press coffee. I'll be walking from my tent to the surf.

There are four surfers left and I would assume that the sun has now gone down. There is too much cloud cover to see any sky which means no sunset and also means no stars tonight. I had rather hoped that I would have been able to have a good night sky in which to watch as I sat on the beach but alas, no. Though I couldn't be further from upset at this moment. I don't even think rain could spoil this feeling for me.

I think on the fact that I'm alone right now, a thought which usually brings me any variation of sadness or depression, but now leaves me rather blase. There is nothing so unique or solitary about this moment which couldn't be shared with another -- it's just that I'm OK with it for the moment. I thought of Talia, one of the people who puts my travels to shame with her escapades, on the drive down here. I called her later in the day and we had a good laugh as I drove North from checking the surf at Torry Pines and she got ready for a business dinner in New York City. At this moment, the physical but not metaphorical, darkening moment I think on lots of people. People I love, people I want to get to know better and I think on sharing my ambition to sit on the rocks into the twilight. Though I am alone, that fact doesn't stop me from doing what I want to do and, I hazard that, that is what pleases me into the night.

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4/18/2007

I rose early this morning with the chipmunks. I kept putting off getting up and thought it was much later than 7am when I sat up in my sleeping bag. I made my coffee and my oatmeal and took them up to the bluff and sat upon a picnic table and watched the swell come in from the dawn. The wind was already hard and it was only 7:30. There were peaks and a few guys out but it didn't seem as if the tide was right for the place that I had surfed yesterday so I decided to pack it all in and drive up the coast and check for a more wind sheltered spot.

While packing I thought of how I must look to those around me. The lone wolf turning down some sort of surf and packing it all in before most people are up and I think on how they must wonder where I'm off to next. What's so important that 8:15 in the morning can't wait for...and there is no answer and that's the let down. I think south, I think Mexico--it's right there like a mysterious woman calling me from the shores. I could just keep going south, stock up on food and gas, and keep going. And I wonder what stops me...

The Consumption

I was doing some packing today and came across a letter from Dannimal from when he was fresh in Guatemala. He talked of time and it's allocation and how even on a basic level, something you love, (in his example writing and then furthered with guitar and song writing) ends up taking up your time and it can easily turn into "work." He used the "day off" metaphor of having nothing to do but spending six hours with pen or guitar in hand and then be left with limited time to accomplish everything else you wanted to do that day. I found this ironic for right as I got sick, my last day in the water, I thought on this subject and upon returning to the truck jotted down the shards of a conversation Taylor and I had some weeks earlier on surfing and work.

I think on Taylor and I's conversation of late, the one of delegating time and the different avenues of pleasure. How if you take out all the other pleasures in your life and focus all your positive feelings and energy (i know i sound like a hippie) into one specific aspect of your life then that aspect which was once so pleasurable becomes tiresome and ceases to bring pleasure but takes on the roll of being a chore of pleasure. The pleasure flees from the activity and it becomes a responsibility.

I never did ask Taylor what his exact thoughts were on the subject but it's something to that extent. When I wrote that excerpt I was still in the throws of Lent and I was still sober. Now that Lent is over and I can drink again I have started to see where I took more out of my life than just booze. I was taking everything pleasurable out of my life. Even though I still saw friends I would remove some aspect of the encounter because I was without a beer in sight. I made surfing the only true aspect of my pleasure because it was something that I had never done drunk and, at the time, I was learning how to do just about everything again while sober. And I can say that being sober didn't make sense at every point. I'm not saying that either extreme is the answer but rather that either extreme is never the answer. Maybe that's what I had to get out of all of this, maybe realizing that I can't annex myself and think that I can fit into the same society I live in is an option. Maybe that I need to retool my thinking and my environment. Cole, at one point during lent, questioned my sobriety in the way that if I was to just go back to being either the party animal or the wall flower, then what would be the point of doing it at all. She brought this up at an early stage which made me question my fasting, and I can not thank her enough for she gave me an answer to a blind question I was existing in. For I'm finding now that it's not one or the other but the degree of consuming one or consuming the other.


(On a side note, I did not head south today but will do tomorrow)

The Continuing

Billy Joel plays on my stereo, the coffee pot clicks from the kitchen, my shades are drawn back, I see a sky smeared with clouds and I watch the trees get abused by the wind. It's a Saturday morning and the Red Sox are playing the Angels. I speak of all these things for I am still sick, much better than before but alas still sick. I'm planning on going to the gym today, some light lifting to shake off the cobwebs for come Monday morning I'm heading down to San Diego County to take advantage of the State Parks system. I'm bringing my boards, coffee, pasta, wine and a whole lot of wood and I'm gonna do some car camping. Be it that I will go alone but I will go. My time left here in California is limited so sick or not, surfing buddies or not, I'm going to Swamies, Pipes and Cardiff. I'll camp North Carlsbad, take a hundred or ten pictures and return to work on Wednesday with another adventure which will be met with the standard issue: "You went by yourself?"

The Rivermouth

So I surfed the river mouth in between Huntington and Newport on the 4th, the day before I surfed Cliffs and watched El Porto. It was a decent day, head high plus, some shoulders, a lot of close outs, just big and heavy. I had a few good lefts, the best, by far, would have been my first wave of the day. A left just ripe with cut backs and perfect positioning. The wave made me happy with the entire session. What has not left me with any pleasure is that since that day I have been getting sicker and sicker. Today is the best I've felt in sometime but still quite short of fathoming the idea of putting on a wetsuit and getting back out there in the drink. It's a sad state of affairs when you get sick from the water. I'll post the Surfrider link below: just as a reminder....

Thoughts from El Porto

So the oddity of life and the peculiar way things work shows it's way through my recent blog entries, or lack there of. I created this to talk about surf and well, it's surfing that has kept me from writing. Or better yet, transcribing. Scrawled out in my moleskin are the thoughts and recollections of the past days but in keeping brevity in mind I'll just leave you with my thoughts from yesterday. Enjoy:

I've got a cup of coffee and my notebook as I sit on the rocks at El Porto. I await the call from Cole telling me she's out of work, so in the interim, I do the only thing which comes naturally, I go to the beach. There's a decent mix of surfers in both boards and ability.

The few times I've surfed here have been enjoyable. The fun lefts and the soft rights out in front of the power plant or who knows what it is industrial complex. I've had good luck here with the fish, stalling and continuing on into the reform - a soft wall which is good for a cutback and a crouch, pulling yourself through the back of the wave.

I feel a little antsy while watching some of the better surfers make their way through the sections and snap turn a rooster spray against the gray sunset. And though my boards are in my truck my wetsuit hangs on the balcony at home for the fourth day in a row.

Today was cliffs, around six foot with a current which could rip a hole through teflon. After crossing under the railing I was poised to traverse down the dirt cliff when I saw two guys digging for a wave. The second guy had paddled around the first to beat him out of position but as karma would have it, the first guy (who had original position) stroked into the wave of the day. I stood there board and leash in hand and watched as his red board cut high and fast across the face of a head high plus wave.

I was stretching in the intertidal when the aforementioned surfer came walking by - I told him that I watched him from the cliff and that it was a hell of a wave to the end the day day on, the kind of wave you just go in afterward. He admired my board and was shocked that it was a Becker, for his was as well. Not knowing the size we matched pintail to pintail and decided it was around seven feet. His board was numbered around a thousand, a real classic.


There's barely any sun left right now and just two black specks left bobbing in the water, the last of the El Portos

I did well today. The first few waves were nothing of glory or gloom. But as I raced up the coast, catching left after left, (A south swell in southern California is a goofy footers wet dream) I found my rhythm and the strength in the pain from my body. After each wave it was right back on the board and right back out into the breakers: hard, digging and taking lick upon lick, my head border lining brain freeze. I had the power of desire in my arms.

There were no epic waves today. One frontside crouch to put my head and shoulders under the lip, which proceeded to crash on me and I skated out from the wash onto the shoulder to finish the wave. And there was one left, a big boy I hit with a drop and stall on a great angle. I then proceeded to pump once or twice before a cutback off the lip, from which I saw a lot of open wave behind me so I returned right and cut back in the soup and raced the white up the coast. I pumped fast and she sped close but I beat her out for once and celebrated with a big swoop of a cut back. No spray off the top just a text book swoop with my knees bent in homage. The kind of wave you want to end your day on but it wasn't my last wave, and for that I was glad for that stoked the fire and made me burn my arms more and more until I neared Bolsa Chica and the yearning for a cup of coffee, a hot shower and drive up north to see one of my close friend's overpowered me and I jumped off my board and body surfed to the shore with a 6 foot 8 piece of fiberglass in-tow.

The Reasons

If you have been following this scrawl from it's inception you would be able to deduce that I started this when I decided to really dedicated myself back to the ocean. There was a distance which had developed in both body and spirit and being a writer and knowing where my motivation comes from, I created this avenue so I could create a world where when the night came, and I couldn't surf, I could continue my growth with the ocean. Other, relatively obvious, reasons were: so that I could have a somewhat tangible account of my growth and when I faced myself, my doubts, and my temptation I could look back and see the progress I'd made and furthermore I wanted a way for my friends to be privy to what I do on a daily basis. For a while, before I created The Swell, my friends and I had been corresponding via group e-mails. One person would send out a question or update on surfing and it's lifestyle and all in the group would reply. And the responses were never uniformed to one opinion or perspective. Our group ranges in age from mid 20's to late 30's and we are peppered from Boston to New York, California to Hawaii and Central/South America (where ever Dan can find a computer not covered in monkey poop). I wanted to create a single place for all of us to interact but that's not what ended up happening. This never turned into an open forum and I couldn't be more grateful. We still converse via group e-mails and this has taken off into my own endeavor.

Would I have bet that within a month I'd have readers in Sri Lanka, Soul and Nepal? No way. Those first days writing about how hard it was not to grab a bottle so I would have the motivation to surf were done for no one but myself. This wasn't about anything global it was about me finding the strength to do what I loved; both surfing and writing. And as people have found inspiration in what I have created I also find inspiration from the continuation of my writings.

What is not known outright, is that I foremost had planned on using this as a scrapbook down the line when I was sidelined with a operation that would keep me out of the water. The operation was met with resistance from a greedy insurance company and has had to be postponed. So The Swell will continue on. Secondly, I wanted to capture the rest of my time here in Southern California for I knew that the duration of time I had left here was minimal. I surmised that when I returned back east that this would fetter off and be a memory, once again, a scrapbook. Though something has happened in the past two months, something which was unexpected.

As you sever one aspect of your life, other aspects which were not so vibrant or apparent seem to appear more pronounced. And as the cliche goes: when one door closes another door opens. What amazes me is that no matter how cognizant you are of yourself and of your surroundings, things change every so slightly until one day you realize that whatever aspect of your life you cut out is very much gone and so much has now had time to grow having not been encumbered by the shadow of something less important. Cut what you will; ideas, notions, grudges, relationships, jobs, material goods, TV, drugs, friends, dreams, or whatever for things that were in the shadow will grow for they have been rooting themselves in anticipation for this moment, for their chance.

In my personal statement to Brown Graduate School, which I composed and submitted last fall/winter, I expressed that I had never harbored any desire to enter the more traditional side of writing which in my perspective was journalism or editing or the "great American novel." I still feel that way on the novel aspect and I could never take the journalistic approach of an unbiased voice but when I described my person then, I had yet to trim my life. As of late I have been editing environmental papers Taylor sends my way from his interaction with the governing land boards of Hawaii. Such detailed reading of this forward thinking environmental planning has stimulated much in my mind and in unison with trying to scribe my own aquatic life I have seen where I may have been wrong in my previous desires. Taylor's papers helped open my eyes and with my heightened focus on the ocean I have begun to see where I can use my talents for something more, something beneficial to more than myself.

This is no reason but more of a result. A result of the previous reasons. I have taken a position in Rhode Island working for my Father who is Beach Coordinator for the town. I think on the surfing legend, Buffalo Keaulana, and his preservation of Makaha. He forged his space in surfing history, like so many of that time, out nothing more than respect and a humble duty for preserving the ocean which gave so much to him. And as a true waterman he raised his children with the same respect he harbored in his daily actions. I have never met this man, or anyone from his heritage or lineage, and to compare my life to theirs is to compare giants and ants. Though it may just be degrees which separate us for I was raised with a fishing pole in my hand and I can not recall a time in my life where the ocean did not bring my family food or fortune, be it with Sol or solace. I will never never ride a 20 foot wave and my father can count, on one hand, the times he has paddled out on a surfboard but he taught me how to body surf and he also taught me what it is to preserve something for someone else.

So there is the reason this forum will continue to be used upon my return to the East Coast. To update on the surf, the beach, the politics of men without our respect and the teaching of the next generation. And I write this last sentence with a wink and a grin, believing some material may surface from the four generations of my family feeding off the waters that surround Sachuest.

Black Beard

This is my truck, that's my fish on top, that's PCH behind the truck and that's a relatively empty parking lot on a Southern California afternoon. Gate up, sun roof open, not a bad day.

The Respect

I have to show some respect here for a fellow writer, his blog, some brave world class surfers, and most importantly a natural phenomenon. The following link is about surfing the longest wave in the world which happens to be in the Amazon. Check it out, and scroll down to the video about half way down the page.

http://fogonazos.blogspot.com/2007/03/pororoca-surfing-amazon.html

Further

It was the kind of day where it was tough to get out. No real break in the waves on the inside and a current from the north which swept your legs out from under you. A day where you kind of pick and choose your waves because you don't want to get caught back inside. But at the same time, every time I said: "OK, this is my last wave." And would then find myself on the inside, looking back and forth between the the shore and he breakers, I'd dip under another wave and decide: "OK, one more."

and then one more.

I was duck diving head high waves on the way back out but instead of cursing the decision I was like a mad man digging and digging while looking up at the sets like after the last turn in 400 yard hurdle race. My literal obstacles were lined up in front of me and it was time to sprint and just let all my training run it's course. And for the first time I yearned for the crush on the 6 footer on my back as I dove under the wave. That force shooting me down, trying to rip my board out from my hands but it was to no avail as I would surface with my arms hitting the water in a windmill pattern: digging further and further. Further outside and further inside of my desire.

In the lulls between my wave choices I sat on the shoulder watching the the two guys I had suited up with in the parking lot and was presently trading waves with on this sun broke afternoon. There's something about watching the people you surf with, it's appreciation and awe and inspiration. My favorite is to sit on my board, just far enough down the line as not to break the lip and get in the way, and right there in the sight line of the wave they pop and you have a front row seat. They go out of sight for a moment as you, yourself crest over the wave and then you wait. This is a delicate time for you're in the middle of a set and another few waves loom in the distance and chances are that you're not in position and furthermore it seems like forever that you're waiting and watching to see if they make the section but in reality it's seconds and then: bam! The spray comes from no where and you see the flash of the white board and then the black wetsuit. You smile and let out a hoot because you know that when it's you on the lip, they're there on that shoulder nodding, smiling and letting out yell.

In the parking lot, you lock eyes and nod. Today it was three guys who fought together, two of which who were friends before and one, a new one. The fact of the matter is that you may never see these people again but there in the water, on the sand and in the lot, there's an understanding of respect. You prove it; to yourself and to them. And the nods may lead to discussing the session, the break, or the weather system which has brought these waves or like today the nods will lead to nothing more than a mutual agreement that, true, you each went at it alone but for today you fought with equals.

The Distraction

I wasn't quite whole out in the water today. For the first time in some time I was distracted to the extent of not being happy with myself or my performance. It wasn't quite unwarranted for there were several factors eating away at me; a night lacking of sleep, my old bird's sudden contact with me, my surfing buddy's contentment to stay in bed all afternoon (be it with a pretty bedmate, but still), and being surrounded in the water by 5 guys, ranging in age, but all older than I and far better in ability. I exercised poor wave choice, and just couldn't connect the dots from cut backs to floaters or vice-versa. I did pig dog some back side lines right under the lip, and stuck some fast drops, and had an all around decent (come to think of it) day out in the water.

But still, I didn't appreciate the solitude today. The 5 guys swapping waves and laughing around me struck a memory of last summer where I got to surf with the three surfing Lang's, and Lando. It was a day full of surfing, coupled with an afternoon beer and a cup of coffee and then a session straight into the pitch of darkness. There were hardly any waves for either session that day, but it wasn't about the quality of the wave, the session was about friendship and loosing the worry and loosing the stress. We cooked out that night in Lando's backyard, drank as many Narragansetts as there were waves surfed, Dannimal played his guitar while singing songs he wrote in Gutamala and we sat around a campfire laughing through the night. Then it was good friends, lately it's been good waves, hopefully one day they'll be seamless.

This is Lando's rigged pickup on the way to the sunset session
(Dannimal peaking out)

(Copyright Chris Lang, 2006)

Post Session tom-foolery
(Kaveman, Lando, Dannimal, Me, Daddy Warbucks)

(Copyright Landon Merrill, 2006)

Mid-Cookout
(T-Rocker, Dannimal, Your Editor-in-Board-Shorts)

(Copyright Landon Merrill, 2006)

Thank You

I'd just like to say thank you to all of you out there who are reading this on a consistent basis. I've had over a hundred hits on this since I installed a counter a week or two after the first post. I thank those of you who are spread out across the world at the moment and take time to check this humble log of surfing pleasure. At present we have readers in Sri Lanka, Korea, Costa Rica and Dan is somewhere in South America yelling at a computer because it won't give him coffee. And for all of you who have taken time to check this at work or at school, well I'm glad you're getting paid to read this or glad that you're not paying attention to class and am reading about my aquatic adventures. So thank you again, and let's spread the word and try to add another zero to the end of that hundred.

The Week of a Hundred Waves

I don't know what to write here. I surfed Monday through Thursday. Wednesday was the pinnacle for size, (6 to 8 feet) and Thursday was my personal apex. After each session I returned back to this forum and typed out something but never posted what I had to say. I called Taylor and Cole after each session for there was plenty to talk about but when I came here, sat down and typed, it wasn't about surf. I talked more of sobriety and how that is what let me excel like I had but I don't want to speak of that any more. Pages were written but it just wasn't enough to propel you, my reader, to come back tomorrow and see what I had to say another 24 hours later. So here I sit, Sunday afternoon, overcast, a chill in the air, coffee in the cup, and fighting to forge out what I want to say.

In the past week Taylor and I have been swapping surf tales. This time last week he was in the middle of a 3 day surf epic between the North and South shores of Oahu. He traversed between Cliff's at Diamond Head in the South and a spot on the North Shore which has been requested to be left un-scribed. On a yellow legal pad I have a scrawl of something I wrote during the week:
"Taylor calls me this morning, 3 hours behind my late cali wake up. He calls simply to tell me that he thinks he'll never loose his stoke for surfing. I was patiently waiting for my coffee to brew while he was on his second cup and still reeling from a way point weekend of conscious surfing. Conscious in the way of choosing to step up his level of surfing. Choosing to get to the next section, choosing to push his ability, choosing to link together all of his ability both mentally and physically to drive his surfing to the next level. Abandoning any idea of wishing or looking down the wave and saying I could have or should have, He pushed it and he excelled."

We had surfed the same swell, the same swell which ripped across the south side of Oahu and then marched it's way up the coast of Baja to Huntington Beach, to my Cliff's. Here I think of the Mike Stewart story. The tale of his following, and body boarding, a swell from Thaiti to Hawaii to Baja to California to the experation of the swell within the Gulf of Alaska. One man in sync with a force of nature, following it from it's inception to it's death. Though Taylor and I only experience one aspect of this swell, it brought us both to new heights in our surfing and it was a way for two old friends, two surfing buddies who are separated by an ocean, to surf together again. I broke out my pin tail for the last two days of my session and rediscovered what three sharp skegs and a tapered tail can do for speed and cutbacks. I pushed myself as well and took some risks where a year ago I wouldn't have been so aggressive or careless (in the fun way, not in the reckless way). Doing things like: pulling into head high close out tubes and Dropping straight down in an elevator drop through 6 feet of white wash for no other reason that nobody else would have been able to get the wave and I felt it needed to be surfed (I had my fist clenched and my arm raised in triumph as I went through the white). But every wave I went for, I made the drop. 7 feet to 3 feet, I dug and then popped and stuck. Just aggressive, just hard, just like I had never surfed before in my life.

The Result

In the peculiar way that winter tides work, yesterday found high winds, maybe a stronger current, and only one place in all of North Orange County breaking: South Huntington Pier. There were quite a number of people out there when I arrived around 2 in the afternoon when the tide was on it's way back out. With my toe tapped up and now my wrist I paused while suiting up and questioned my conditioning and ability to surf the shifting chest high peaks.

My wrist injury stems from some months ago, I'd say six or more at this point, when I fell skateboarding with a belly full of Jack Daniels and then subsequently, a week or so later, preceded to do the exact same thing again to myself. I healed the wrist then by not surfing or skating (drunk) and though it took a few weeks it healed nice and I soon forgot about the injury. I have re-injured it this time around not because of some drunken tom-foolery but because of my steadfast appearance at the gym. During this sobriety I have also resolved to eliminate sloth by working out and surfing on a daily basis. And while pushing myself in the weight room I strained my wrist but I take no excuses at this point: I wrap it and continue to lift. Light weight, high repetition. Run at least a mile and a half every day I don't surf and even sometimes after I do. My diet has changed, hardly any more fast food, no post surf taco bell, no late to work Carl's Jr., and though at night while I walk into my dark house with a to go container of Ahi Tuna or Swordfish I crave an addiction or vice I am learning to take solace in how good I feel.
I stood on the shore, facing the breakers, my feet sinking into the sand by the current ripping sand away from my feet and wondered how I would fare this day, in this spot where some three months ago in December I was bested and my limitations exposed.

My arms seem to find deeper water than they have ever before and when paddling into a wave it was like some larger hand was guiding me over the cusp and giving me an extra push. Half way through the session I contemplated my body and my performance in the water. I took into account all the hard work I had done in the past month and how all that work was now showing it's result. I forgot how simple this equation is: The harder you work, the more you sacrifice, the more time and effort (no matter how much it hurts) you put in to bettering yourself the greater the result. It's simple. I think of this as a lesson and while bobbing out there in the surf I wonder at what point I had forgotten this lesson. Or if it wasn't at a complete loss then how I let it slip into that old chest of memories hardly ever opened.

With my blood pumping and my mind racing I thought once further into the equation and contemplated the lesson in regard to the mental. I thought much on Tayor and I's conversations of late, and for that matter the conversations I have with Lando as well. We talk often of the choices of school, jobs, women, and the result of our actions in regard to our futures. I glide a few feet up and then back down, up and then back down. I skip a set and paddle out a bit further. How different, I think to myself, are our minds from our bodies and why is it that we segregate the tangible (our bodies) from the intangible (our minds). Today, I continue to myself, I have seen and felt the proof of what my sobriety, my workout, my diet and my surfing in less than favorable conditions has given way to and that is the tangible. So why is it that the mental is so hard to grasp? Is it that exercise and strengthening repetitions for the intangible are coded differently or is it as simple as we just don't understand how to recognise such growth for we are conditioned to only perceive growth as a physical attribute as in the muscles in my arms or my shoulders?

I surf my last wave in with a smile on my red sunned face, and still I didn't quite have the answer of the duality of the mind vs. the body but I also didn't feel like I had to define the two autonomously anymore. For at this period of my life, be it even this month or this season, I feel that the two are growing stronger and fusing together like a muscle ripped and frayed in exertion that will mend together to be stronger still. And I walked barefoot through the sand, felt it's warmth in the cold March winds and thought that maybe this is the answer: maybe we're not supposed to disenfranchise the two, but rather their usefulness is reached when they're connected.

Jonathan and Megan

Yea, I'm grooming my godson/nephew to be a surfer while his dad teaches him the ways of carpentry. His tool belt is epic, don't be jealous. And Megan, my goddaughter/niece, is an adrenaline junkie at age 7, she will stand up on a surfboard for the first time this summer, mark my words.

The Perception

Yesterday while out at Cliffs, a large object bobbed in the near horizon between us surfers and the silhouette of that distant lover Catalina. The object was of large enough size that it could be seen from the cliff, the shore and the line up itself. Myself and two other surfers, also enjoying the knee high play waves, speculated as to what the large mass could have been and settled on a baby whale after I explained that the channel between Catalina and the Western Coast is a main migration route for whales heading toward the Gulf of Mexico to mate during the winter months. We talked of the size of the object and the speed and direction it was moving in and made tense jokes about sharks and larger fish feeding off of the suspected carcass.

The whole while we were surfing the small peelers and laughing and wondering I could think of little else besides the memory of my home town back in Rhode Island and the beach which abuts my neighborhood, Sachuest Beach. I thought back on this sanctuary for twice in my lifetime whales have washed up dead upon her shores. A spectacle to all senses including awe and very much the olfactory.

It has been some years, the exact date lost in the memory, since these whales have washed up. Seal pups, birds, and fish by the dozens find that shore throughout the year but a whale, a whale brings out the town, a whale makes the paper, a whale moves you, a whale inspires the pen. It's a piece of poetry that I speak of which was written by Dannimal, or Mr. Daniel Lang to you.

I walk into my closet and remove his college thesis, "The Accolades," from my bookshelf looking for a poem whose name I cannot remember and I do this knowing full well that he wrote it while we were both in New York which would mean that it was written some two years after he graduated college. Still I sit back and read "The Accolades" for nothing more than to be inspired. Silence in my house right now, less the police helicopters outside and the sirens racing down Beach Blvd. He writes of three main themes: the celestial (both heavenly and perceivably tactile: starts, constellations, etc.); New York and being young at her volatile teat; and the sweet teaching lover that was the beaches and shores we knew as children off the southern end of Aquidneck Island. I can hear his voice while I read these pieces. I hear his voice for I had a recording of his graduate reading of which I took with me to Alaska and listened to over and over again while in woods quite foreign to even my imagination.

His line of two whales washing dead upon our shores, kept repeating in my head as I watched that mass come closer and closer as the tide pulled it in until I paddled out and found it to be a mass of fibrous roots some feet in diameter rather than a whale. And though here in this post I desire to quote those aforementioned lines I can not for his works are locked away in a file cabinet at 71 Kane Ave. in Sachuest Rhode Island and he, himself, is somewhere in South America, the exact country - even unknown. So what I can leave you is this, an excerpt from his graduate piece on the remembrance and yearning of an ocean once attached to and then lost,

Whetstone:

"This is me recreating you.

I fold together my remembrances
and offer them with smoke to the dead
because of something that should be obvious
and never is,
the fact that you are my memory.
Not a picture, not one frame of light trapped in space
but the whole thing, lost
between the cut-offs of beginnings and ends.
Here, my vision fakes you so I can see you again.
A voyage far
from the warmth of forgetting.

Do you remember teaching me
that high tide can fix most anything,
and the ice on the sand on the shore only waits for the long sweep and
lurch-
There can be a blizzard
and still the sea is massive,
snow doesn't form on the ocean."

copyright Daniel Scott Lang 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003

Excuse my excuse

Yea so my family has been in and out of tow for the last two weeks or so, so inbetween work and visiting with them and seeing them off in Vegas, I haven't had much time to surf. I broke the streak yesterday and surfed like crap. Cliffs again, cold water, windy (10-15 knots), and I just wasn't in the mind frame to surf. Still worn form a planned break in soberity in Vegas (i mean come on now, you think i'm going to go to vegas and not drink my weight in free booze???) I struggled against the current and just didn't have the pop up. I'll hit the gym the next few days and come Monday and Tuesday get back into the swing of things out there in the drink.

The Reality

ok so this is going to be a quick post. I have drunk friends in my apartment and I just want to get this off before they destroy my place so here it is:
I went out today, it looked small and managable but there was no one else out. I took about 14 waves on the head before I got outside. I then sat there geting ripped south by the current until i caught my only wave which I crushed. Fast turns, high lines, all power no room for mistake and then a launch off the top like a carnival ride. A good wave. Well worth it.

To a Friend in Puerto Lopez

I received word from Dannimal today, he is in Ecuador on the Pacific Coast in a town named Puerto Lopez. A fishing village no doubt, and upon looking up the town on Google Earth, I see that it is nestled into a sandy bay with hundreds of boats resting in the relative shade of the southern cliffs. He tells me he is taking it slow:

I picture a cup of coffee in a white porcelain cup while he sits at a rickety table outside of a shop, no view of the beach from where he sits but he can hear the sea birds begging and fighting for scraps and the smell, he notes as he sips his coffee, is something that he has never experienced before it's a combination of an afternoon on-shore breeze and the loose dirt kicked up in the streets. It's the sea and the earth combining in that moment, in a new hemisphere, in a time of silence. Maybe he will walk directly to the beach upon finishing his coffee or maybe he will find Chloe with her camera in hand and they will foot the path together. And upon reaching that final track of dry land before the ocean seperates the two worlds they'll leave the camera still, for this sunset is theirs and theirs only.

But I share none of this with him. I don't want to influence his action and I don't want to impede on my version of his reality so I respond to his e-mail with the following:

I imagine you down the railing from me checking the surf, both with coffee cups clad in our hands, eyes fixed on the horizon thinking thoughts of two separate worlds. Each paddling out at his own speed, each surfing his own way, in his own style, and for his own reasons. Two people existing in the same time and in the same place, seemingly doing the same thing, but in reality, each conquering or capturing or configuring his place in the swell, in the world, and in his mind. And soon enough my friend, you'll have wisdom unmatched to share with me and I'll learn it in the silence of watching a quiet sage, a nomad walking on water like a myth brought to reality by the hands of one who is blessed. We will surf together soon my friend, we will surf together soon.

My Girlfriend

I figured I'd put up a pix of my girl for v-day, just don't tell her that I've been cheating on her lately, alot.

Big Friday

“I remember the fall and the coming of winter, the water got cold. It was a time of the west swell. A swell of change – a swell you rode alone.”

These are some of the hollowed words from the 1970’s surf movie, Big Wednesday. Since the first time I saw that movie in the dank basement of Nates Parent’s house, my life has been altered. Friendships have been strengthen and dreams sought out because of the life written and captured in this film, but not until today, February 9, 2007, have the words above rung true or done anything more than to further the plot of the film along. For all these years the words: “a swell you rode alone,” had meant nothing more than one man in the line-up. Existentialism and ones personal place in or outside the lineup were a void to us and moreover to myself.

Today, alone in my car, cup of coffee snug in my hand, fish sung atop my car, I drove down Goldenwest to P.C.H thinking that this day, this session would be no different than the one the day before, or the one from days prior. I Pulled into Bolsa Chica State Beach and walked my coffee out onto the sand, stood there in the wind and watched longboarders struggle to pick off the wind blown peaks. I harbored no thoughts of grandeur toward my forthcoming session, and simply resolved to get wet and call it what it was, me trying to cleanse my mind before a long day at work.

I left Bolsa and pulled into North Dog Beach, cut the engine and leaned upon the cliff top railing. Some lines, some peaks, no sets. I looked further south to where I had surfed yesterday: Cliffs or Dog Beach or South Dog Beach, you decide. Yesterday was my first experience at this peak, and as I joked with a fellow surfer out there, it was nothing to send a postcard back to mom and dad about but it was a good day. A new spot in a way, though it is probably just over a hundred yards north of Goldenwest, I found that it holds the swell better and has a longer line, both right and left. And though it was some 24 hours ago, I can barely for the life of me, remember how I surfed or the details of my session. I know I befriended a surfer in his 40’s. We talked shapes, had some laughs, and more hoots and cackles than anything else as he on his 7 foot “longboard” and I on my super thick fish, caught more waves that the squash tail fellas sitting inside. So looking down the beach, looking back on yesterday, I fired up the car again and drove down to the next parking lot, pulled into the same spot I did yesterday and suited up. I taped my toes, pulled on my booties, stretched the frayed rubber around my frame and then stretched out my arms. I scraped my board and then rubbed on a little wax. I walked down the cliff and then stood there, watching the size come in: three, no, four, no, five deep sets which appeared to be chest high or better. I had made a good decision.

The details of the session would be too numerous to list here and I’d honestly rather tell you of them over a cold Narraganset by a campfire so I’ll just point out a few way marks and leave the rest for our reunion.

I stroked out in what I thought was a lull in the sets but ended up taking four waves directly to the head, cold water flushing through my beard and through the neck of my wetsuit as I pushed under the thick white wash. As I came up laughing after each one, I started to feel that today would be different. I settled right into the middle of the pack and took my first wave, a low chest sized left, not too steep, not too fast, just a nice welcoming wave. I took the drop and then laid into a huge cutback right in front of one of the guys who was kind of eyeing me, but it wasn't a sharp cut back and it wasn’t aggressive, moreover it was fluid, just like a strut of a cut back, all style, all hip movement, right in front of the guy and then off through the white water and back off the wave. I don’t know where it came from, I hadn’t cut back like that since I the last time I longboarded but this time there was about four feet less of fiberglass under my feet. That first wave was all mechanical, I hadn’t thought about it at all, I just popped up and then the waves was over. On the paddle back out I thought about what I wanted to do on the next wave. Granted I had just executed a cut back that would have made the men of the 1950’s proud but I knew I could have done more, so I mapped out my ride before hand. The next wave was backside (first was frontside) and I had decided to cruise the line and gain as much speed as possible instead of the drop and the cut back, so I pumped it and pumped it and then dug my left arm into the water and just pulled the best cutback, back frontside for a second into the white water and then back backside again. When I got back up to the top I shot down the face again and when I dug my nose back into the wash, finishing my wave ::::: dig this, I had the Beatles "Getting Better" in my head . Out of no where the song just came to me and I started laughing. "It's getting better all the time."

The pop was there, the drop was there, the pump was there but furthermore the stoke was there and I was cognizant of it all. Everything; the burn in my arms, the salt on my face, the wind seen only in the spray, it was a transcendent moment in my life that I had complete control over. And I was alone. Surfers to my left and surfers to my right but not a single person with a name. It wasn’t a lonesome solitude, like I’ve felt so many times before, but rather it was full, like I had learned how to fill my void with myself, or better yet had grown whole again, completed my being. While still in the water I knew that the session was going to end well, it’s that feeling of knowing you’re going to win. The feeling completely void of arrogance and full of well deserved confidence. This wasn’t 15 foot faces, and it wasn’t the biggest or hardest I’ve ever surfed but in a way it was: I had finally faced myself; my inhabitations, my solitary fears, my weaknesses, and my self inflicted void of confidence. I don’t know how many years I had been hiding and darting in-between these flaws of shortcomings and excuses but today, today I surfed them out.

The water was cold, the swell came from the West, I surfed it, and it made all the difference that I went at it alone.

Verbiage

Below is an email from one of our brethren, Kevin "Kaveman" Lang. Not only does this communication show his love for the ocean and his unfettered desire but it provides a fresh voice and explanation of what it is to be out in the water. His brother Dannimal would later respond to the e-mail with this passage:

"RIGHT ON BROTHERS!

kevvykave, that´s one of the best damn pieces of scrawl i´ve ever read regarding surfing. especially well taken were the descriptions, untinted or coded by surf terminoligy, those words and phrases that make you feel like you need to take a fucking class or talk for an hour with surfers after every session just to understand what the fuck they´re talking about when they describe a ride. originality, i dig."

This has sat with me for the past week or so and left me to contemplate the colloquialisms that I use on a daily basis and further more, the ones that I use within this forum to describe what is beautiful to me and to describe what moves my soul, what keeps me up at night and gets me out of bed in the morning (and for those who know me, I use the term "morning" loosely, very loosely). Both Dannimal and Kaveman have served as creative sounding boards for me for as long as I can remember and it has taken until now, until Dannimal's non-direct slander of this voice the masses of us use to describe our time in the ocean. Nor him or his brother are free from these descriptions but rather they have stepped back once further and taken stock of what it means to use fresh wordage in comparison to the habitual terminology that is intertwined into the surf culture; both in the water and in the corporate advertising office.

While driving back from Orange, which is in-land, this morning, I had my foot pressed about 80 miles per hour to the floor for I wanted to check the surf. Knowing that we were due for some swell I could think of nothing more than a session before work. Then I could think of nothing more than Dannimal's words. They sat and festered as I tic-taced through semi's and suburbans while racing to Huntington. Then it hit me. The guilt, the half shame, the personal let down of so easily using this cliched vernacular to describe my desire. I'm a writer, I have been published on both sides of this Country and some places in the middle as well, I have given reading in all four corners of this Homestead, and have a 30 page book anthologized in the sweaty catacombs of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida and yet I use a formula un to my own.

Can I ever break from this? Do I really want to abandon it all? An entire language which I've spent the better half of my life trying to master all thrown away on two e-mails? Over head, double point break, outer reef, dredged rouge wave, throwing a translucent lip giving way to a green room with not a drop of water out of place. An epic session of lefts and rights, floaters and just getting wicked slotted, stalling and crouching to duck under the pitching peak. Brah.

Sometimes it reads like a hyped up, half drunk monkey who has a smouldering cigar clutched in this teeth, is writing the rags and web-sites I read everyday, but I understand this madness. Maybe I've prescribed to the stereotype I search to defy, or maybe this isn't as black and white as I would make it out to be here in this post. In baseball one would never refer to the pitch as "throwing it down field" or in throwing from one player to the next it is not labeled as "passing"
as it is in football but rather simply "throwing."

In either case, my dear reader, I'm going to leave you to throw my stick in my car, head down to the beach, wax it up, and go stroke out into the breakers and try and catch a line before I have to go to work and articulate how much it pains me to stand up straight and bow at the same time. And while I'm gone please read the aforementioned e-mail I have posted below. Kaveman is a warrior, a writer, a foul-weather friend and a man of our generation who forges his own artistic way.



Fellow waterbrothers-

I went out for a surf on Sunday. If you can even call it going out for a surf. The air temp was 23 degrees with gusts of up to 20mph, there was a heavy fast moving slop constantly rumbling in, every 8 mins or so we would get a "good" set of 1.5 chest high sloppy joe roll.

Now granted - I was wearing keith's 6.5xcel, which has no zipper and I am ashamed to admit that I need my Mom's help getting out of it (2 bad upper body injuries in the past 6 years). My hood was on tighter than a rubber wrapped around a basketball.

I got in with my 6'3" pineapple (a little custome board I picked up in Narragansett in December... She's my first surfboard, my new girlfriend, and a bitch 'cause i haven't stood up on her 'wicked floatie" ass yet.) I digress.

Every time a wave slapped me in the forehead It felt like I just chugged a slurpie, but the cold headache was behind my eyebrow, and then the wind would bite it like a little bitter.

this happened at least 30 times, i'm being modest with the count. The sun was brighter than ever and blinding my dunked wet poodle ass.

After about 12 painfull mins of paddling out I was ready to call it a day. No... instead I decided to pull the all time rookie move of paddling out too far. The under toe was a bitch and the chasm was grinning at me as I was pulled closer to her.

I ended up flailing out there for just over an hour, never catching a single wave. Love or idiotiry I don't know.

But what I do know is how I feel about a heated wetsuit debate. I'm not down. And as far as i'm concerned no true Rode Islander should ever be. If it's too cold to surf than don't. Electricity does not belong surfing on the waves. They are now making a waterproof ipod case, it comes with waterproof earphones. So where do you draw the line my brothers?

No electricity on the waves, not if you're there to surf them.

My Dad spend a lot of time teaching me and my brothers to respect the Ocean. Respect means love, commitment, understanding, devotion, and appreciation. Enjoying all that the ocean does for all of your senses, even if that means cold on your skin and chill in your bones.

You may disagree with me. Well, that means 2 things:

#1 You have been out of Rhode Island too long and your getting soft

#2 It's time to come back and surf the point

The debate is of great importance, surfing should leave as small an environmental impact as possible. bringing wired suites into the mix is leaps and bounds past a wristwatch.

-kaveman

Best,

Kevin

The Teaching: Nose to Tail, Rail to Rail

The Rubber Blues

No surf today, or yesterday for that matter, hell it was so foggy yesterday that you couldn't see the ocean from PCH, just bonkers. Saw a couple kids with boards sitting waiting for the bus just north of Main Street in Huntington, for a second made me think that there could be surf but then saw the laughter in their faces and realized that it was one of those sessions you do as a kid, you surf in the fog, no waves but it's fun b/c it's fun.

Just patched up my wetsuit, carpet thread and a hooked mattress needle that looks like something out of the basement in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Drank some coffee on my porch, listened to the Stones, talked with Taylor, sowed up my suit, turned her inside out to really dry her and hopefully there will be some surf in the next few days. My booties are sitting in the corner of my shower and I spray them with Febreze to mask the funk. They stink so bad I don't even want to touch them, I guess that's what happens when you leave booties in your trunk for 11 months and then use them for 2 weeks in a row. God do they stink.

Old Red

This is my girl, the little red rocket, she treated me right today. I still have a smile on my face.

Seventeenth Street Sunday

It's around 10:30 at this point and I'm back at my apartment after spending the second half of my Superbowl Sunday at a friend's house in Costa Mesa. It was easier than I thought to sit through an entire football game without having a beer, especially since there was a keg in the garage. A free keg, bottles of vodka, rum and whiskey were all at my disposal and I drank Gatorade and water, and thought nothing of it until I was alone in my car driving home. The ride was less than 20 mins but still I grinded my teeth and yearned to knock back a few drinks. I think it's night time and solitude that drives me to feel this way. What keeps me from doing so is what I did with the first half of the day: backside cutbacks off the lips of a chest high waves with the dual tips of my fish poking out of the wave but hidden by my spray.

I broke my Newport streak today by surfing 17th street in Huntington Beach, the spot which I wrote about yesterday. The swell was coming in harder and the tide was weening off high so the conditions were much more favorable and from the small cliff I could see lefts and rights in two or three of the six or seven wave sets. I enjoy surfing in this area, from Dog Beach south down to 14th street, for several reasons. First, it is an expansive area with many different sand bars so over crowding is rarely a problem, a few guys on each peak on a crowded day. And the peaks, they shift 15 yards one way and then back the other on what seems to be every other set, so you can find yourself surfing a backside wave one set and then a frontside wave the next set and never really have to anything more than paddle straight back out from where your last ride dumped you off. And finally and maybe most importantly, is the vibe. It's a vibe of innovation. The wave here is big and slow and unless you're surfing a bit more to the north at Cliffs, your 6'3" square tail just ain't gonna be enough foam for you to catch these waves, so what you have instead is an assortment of fish, thrusters, hybrids, eggs and longboards. Many days I have surfed here and watched surfers flip their boards over to show each other their new fin set ups, to compare the depth of insets between swallow tails or to show how they trimmed the rocker off their latest project design. In these sets lies creation and innovation and some damn good surfing without the attitude of the Pier or the lower jetties in Newport.

To me it's always pleasing to surf here and today was no exception. I traded front and back sides for a while and then mainly went backside looking to pull into a fast line but kept finding myself careening off the top and pointing my stub nose back down in what is one of my favorite things in surfing, the backside re-entry. I think I draw such favor from this because for the first part of the ride, you have your back to the wave, you see what is ahead of you but, and at least to me, it's like you kind of don't know what's right next to you. That is until you hit the lip and point that girl shore side. For that second that feels like an entire weekend you're poised at the top of the world and you're set for a drop-in completely unlike the one you executed to catch the wave in the first place. Though in your mind that moment is frozen, the reality is that there's a wall of white water rushing toward you and a now crumbling lip behind you and it's decision time: re-enter at an angled pitch and continue pumping down the line or drop straight down, gain as much speed as possible and see if you can't flick that piece of foam and fiberglass back up there to do it again. I'll let you decide...

Koka Kola

Just finished making a late lunch after a noon-thirty session (or so). Had a good talk with Lando before I got into the water. We talked of the flippant surf culture and I articulated the growing chasm by detailing the difference between myself and another gentleman who I had happened upon earlier in the day while checking the surf at 17th Street in Huntington. My attire consists of a ripped and bandanna patched pair of jeans that I have had since high school (circa. 1997), a long sleeve Huntington Surf Shop T-shirt and my sunnies which are a pair of Ray-Bans that were left at my roommates work and which he later gave to me b/c they didn't fit him. That's it. No shoes, no flops, no nothing. Now the guy next to me was full on dressed for a photo shoot. He had the big "in style" sunglasses, I think they were Von Zippers or something like that with the big logo on the side, he had the flat brimmed baseball cap set just perfect so it looked like he just threw it on in a hurry, his un-zipped hoodie/jacket matched his tan cargo shorts and under the jacket/hoodie he had on a white surf logo silk-screened t-shirt (which by the way, all surf company logos matched). Surprisingly his white socks weren't pulled up but his skate shoes were in perfect condition and yes, you guessed it, his shoes, a light brown, matched the shorts, which matched the jacket, which matched the hat, which matched the magazine photo he saw sometime last week.

Neither of us ended up going out at 17th Street, I opted not to because I knew that the swell wasn't powerful enough, the tide was mid-way on the out and unless you had around 9 feet of fiberglass under your toes, you would have just floundered on these deceivingly slow rollers that don't break until they hit the sand bar shelf just off the shore line. I would hazard to guess that none of these factors were a part of his decision but rather the factors that his girlfriend was hanging on his arm and Jack's Surfshop down on Main Street was probably having a sale, drove him away from the water.

I ended up back at 56th Street just out of habit I guess at this point. I think I like surfing there because it reminds me of surfing Rockaway in Queens, NY. Rockaway, much like Newport, CA, consists of many jetties lined some 50 yards apart and when the surf is just right the lefts that come off the tip of the jetty are long and very wallish, not much close out on the right day, just nice rides, that is if you can win position with the locals, the die-hards of winter having their day in the summer sun. I look back fondly on my sessions at Rockaway and Long Island. Dan and myself away from the madness of the city and enjoying something similar to what we would have been doing if we were back in RI. Sitting right in the pocket next to the jetty, in better position than the locals, i would flick my 9 foot longboard on a leftward angle and stroke into a quick drop and a long shoulder. Wait a second and then cross over, cross over and though there's no lip to shoot, I'm in a cheater stance, crouched and trying to position my situation just a little higher so i can throw a few toes off the front. This was how I could assimilate with the New Yorkers, the Rockawayers, most of the hard core locals had a nice quiver of boards and always surfed the appropriate boards on the appropriate days so when it was a longboard day they were right next to me laughing and hooting at the cross overs and cut backs. If you show respect you gain respect. I'll leave it at that for the time being.

But today's session was not unlike the others of late, small surf, uncrowded line-up, sun darting in and out of the clouds, me singing and laughing to myself while no one notices. The only real highlight of the session was one right hander I slid into near the end of my session. It was kind of a fluke of a wave, bigger than the rest of the day, and i happened to be in the right spot at the right time (I'm talking like this was some 15 footer with a hollow 6 foot tube lined with hula dancers when in reality it was probably nothing more than chest high). I dropped back side and to my surprise i was not met with a fast forming wall of closeout white water as the case has been all week, but rather a slightly bending shoulder. For a second, I thought back to last Spring while surfing Trestles habitually and the long, rights just lending themselves to cutback after cutback. So I pump my fish, once and then again, very quickly down the line and let her find the lip on her own with her own speed. Cresting off the top, I dug my left arm into the water as a sort of pivot and whipped my board back toward the beach and then straight back into the direction from where I had come and in a fluid moment pushed the tail into the fast approaching white water and rode the rest of the close out toward the beach. It was the sort of wave that you finish with on a day like today but i was greedy and wanted another one. Nothing much more would come but I was left the reminder that yes, I could surf, and that damn it felt good to put together a line.

Members of the Team

This is me: Garrett Seiple. San Celmente, CA: Winter 2005/2006

(Photo taken by Nate Tracy, Copyright Garrett Seiple 2005/06)

Nate Tracy . Huntington Beach, CA: Fall/Winter 2006

(Copyright, Garrett Seiple 2006)

Dannimal. Sachuest Beach, RI: Summer 2006

(Copyright Chloe Lee 2006)


Taylor Rock. Ala Moana Bowls, HI: Summer 2006

(Copyright Jamie Ballenger: Hawaiianwatershots.com, 2006)


Kevin Lang. Sachuest Beach, RI: Summer 2006

(Copyright Chris Lang 2006)


Landon "Lando" Merrill. Sachuest Beach, RI: Summer 2006

(Copyright Chris Lang 2006)


Chris "Daddy Warbucks" Lang. Sachuest Beach, RI: Summer 2006

(Copyright Chris Lang 2006)