|
|
Who likes a stale blog?Get freshly baked blog delivered to your inbox every Thursday. Sign up for Weekend! and get 10 ways to play and the Surfblogger and go have some fresh fun. |
Eastside Surfblog past entriesRead 04/09/09 entry
Useful linksYouTube video of the bigger bowl
Click here to e-mail the Surfblogger.
| 04/23/09 Greetings, space fans. I figured I’d do this week’s entry in chronological order, to give a better read on how it all went down. First off, I want to express my guilt at not having written an entry to go along with last week’s version of Weekend! I was working out of our Greenville office, was focused on that, and honestly couldn’t think of a thing to write about. Our staff up there is great, the hills are pretty and the dirt is orange — but what’s that got to do with surfing? I couldn’t figure it out either, and in a near terminal case of writer’s block, I shirked. I got home on Friday night to find the surf was going to be almost as flat as it can get. I say “almost” because we can always get flatter. I wouldn’t be surprised to walk over the dunes one day and find it concave. Maybe even a salty, brown whirlpool that would suck you down, like a toilet. But at least that would be a ride. Not so sure how you’d paddle back out for the next one, though. Being your full-service surfblogger, I’ll ponder that awhile and get back to you. So the weekend was spent enjoying the beautiful weather with Mrs. Blog and working as her slave labor in the garden. Now Mrs. Blog has a wonderful eye for design and knows the names of all the plants and flowers we have. Not talk-to-them, crazy-lady names for them, like Mitch or Hildegard, but the names that botanists and landscapers use. For some reason I just can’t remember any of that, and it’s probably just as well, because my role is mostly confined to digging holes and carrying stuff. That, and going to Lowe’s or Abide-a-While and buying more stuff I won’t remember the names of — which begets more digging and carrying. It’s sort of a symmetry of labor that keeps me useful in her eyes and attired in the livery of Lady Blog, like a coachman or footman. All in all, not a bad way to spend the weekend in pleasant company, except it has absolutely nothing to do with surfing, and that’s where I can get into trouble. Plus, hanging out in Mrs. Blog’s garden too much creates some, shall we say, challenges. I think it’s because she’s German and has this driving sense of ordnung, whereas I’m content to chill in the middle of chaos, sip a nice cool beer and let it happen. For instance, if a leaf dares to drop on the yard, you can bet she’ll be there with a rake to snatch it up, cursing up at the tree like a drunken sailor for being so foolish as to deposit a leaf where it doesn’t belong. I, on the other hand, think fallen leaves perform a vital function by keeping the grass from growing and thereby eliminating the need to own a lawn mower — and, tangentially, eliminating the need for me to operate said lawnmower. Unfortunately, my views on this were marginalized years ago. Her approach to the yard includes a lot of planning and discipline — and the discipline part is where I start to see the propellers coming off. So, when she started telling me the new rules for how many daily piles of this and that needed to be raked, and how many pods per day needed to be cut off the vines to keep them in check, I started looking for the parachute. I’ll surf some really crappy waves and be grateful for it, but I do have my standards. The tide has got to be favorable and I don’t really want to be cold or have to wear a wetsuit in knee-high slop. And on Sunday afternoon, during the rule review on vine pods, none of those conditions looked favorable. Luckily, I got a call from Matt Rat, who invited me to go skateboarding in a giant bowl that’s at a semisecret location not far from town. I haven’t ridden a skateboard, let alone skated on vertical surfaces, in at least 15 years, and the chances of getting severely slammed were pretty good. So, naturally, I leaped at the chance. I got the cordless drill and unscrewed my old skateboard from the ceiling of the tiki bar, where it has been hanging like some forgotten talisman from the 1980s. With any luck, I wouldn’t be able to dig a hole for weeks. Now, this whole mission didn’t come as a complete surprise. I’ve heard about the bowls before, and I knew the skaters who built them more than 20 years ago, but the idea to actually go out there and ride them came from Matt a couple of weeks ago. When it first came on the radar screen, I promised Vinnie I would take him with us. But when I found out he intended to ride a semi-longboard, I broke the vow. Because I knew that if he went, he would drop in, wrong equipment or not, eat it, and cough up a spleen or something — and I don’t want to have to avoid meeting up with Mrs. Vinnie in grocery stores for the rest of my life. I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden anything vertical on a skateboard, but it’s about as close to the feeling of surfing really big waves as you can get. The main difference is that the penalty for falling is severe, so full pads and a helmet are required. These are professionally built bowls for skating — picture giant, round, empty swimming pools. The only way to start the ride is to hook your back wheels over the edge, hold the board there with your back foot, stop thinking about the chances of feeling pain, put your front foot down hard and make the vertical drop. It’s definitely an adrenaline rush to match the biggest drop you’ll take on a surfboard, and it was just what I needed to shake off the inland cobwebs. The really cool thing about the experience was that much of the same crew I skated half-pipes with in the ’80s was still out there. Unbelievable, actually, when you think of the physical toll the sport takes out of your body. So it was like a reunion, really, and the guys are keeping the flame alive. The big difference is that the punks I knew back then now have kids of their own whom they are mentoring in the sport, and the bowls have this family atmosphere going on. Wow, the Island Images skateboard team as moms and dads and family values — never in a million years would I have thunk that. So I went and rode it — albeit gingerly — for, at 52 years old, I’m truly past hope of skating at any level beyond survival. (Funny story: One of the younger kids there was asking about my skateboard and when he found out that it was more than twice as old as he was, I could see the gears turning.) Here’s a YouTube link so you can get some idea of the scale of the bigger bowl. If you are a Star Wars fan, think of it as an inverted Death Star. Thanks to Matt Rat for the motivation, Hank for being the bowl master and MC, Jay, Kenneth and the other regulars for making me feel so welcome and, well, a little younger. And, following chronological order: If you checked it after work Monday, you probably got some good rideable surf in the waist to stomach range. I was a little too hurt from skating the day before, so I missed it in favor of nursing my wounds. I did catch a dawn patrol the next day before work — thanks to Burbo for the wake-up call — and ran over to the island and rode some fun little waist- to stomach-high glass in time to get showered and to work on time. The water is getting to the temperature where it feels refreshing in a light 2 mil wetsuit, and summer is definitely in the air when there’s enough daylight to surf before and after work. The forecast for something rideable looks decent for this weekend. The swell model shows something again in that waist-high-plus range, the swell period looks like it will be close to 10 seconds and the winds don’t look too harsh. Hope springs eternal. But this is the IOP I’m talking about, so don’t mortgage the house; it could easily be junk again. I’m going to let my body heal up a little before I decide whether I’m going back out to the bowls or going to screw the board back up in its place on the ceiling. One thing is for sure, if Matt and I go back, we’ll take Vinnie with us this time, get a few beers in him, pad him up like a hockey goalie and drop him over the edge of the coping in a wheelchair. That’ll be a rush he’ll never forget — and surely Mrs. Vinnie would forgive us someday, wouldn’t she? |
Yes