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| 05/14/09 Well, that was fun. My predictions of something rideable for the weekend panned out, which always makes me feel smarter than I am. It’s like following a sports team. When they win, you can tell all your friends why you knew they would, and when they lose, it’s the stupid ref’s fault. So we actually won lots last week because it was rideable from Wednesday through Sunday. Of course, you have to take into account that I have pretty low standards — and a quiver of boards shaped for slop. I surfed 25th Street Saturday and Sunday mornings and had pretty good sessions. Dare I say it was almost stomach-high? If you were there, you make the call. Otherwise, you’ll just have to take my word for it. On Tuesday night, I had a surprise visit by P.K. and we ended up out in the Tiki bar talking story and just generally catching up. The conversation turned to the inevitable getting older quandary, and we were both wondering how much longer we could reasonably expect to surf. I certainly feel the ol’ biological clock ticking. Not the one Mrs. Blog used to trick me into producing BlogSon1 years ago. Looking back, I think that was just something she said to seduce me. I’m talking about the real biological clock. The one that men have that measures important things like surfing; the one where the units of time are measured by the race my hair is having to see whether it will go gray or fall out first. So far it’s a dead heat. Maybe Mrs. Blog was right after all. Who would want to reproduce with me now? Looking around at the crew I’ve been surfing with most of my life, it seems for the most part we’re getting uglier but still going strong — but for how long? We’ll easily surf ’til we’re 60, because we’re almost there. 70? Maybe. 80? I don’t know. 90? No way. So I figure we’ve got a good 10 years of surfing at a high enough level to be satisfied. After that, will we just be in the way? Nobody I know would be satisfied to lie on a Boogie board. Vinnie has said repeatedly that when he is unable to ride a shortboard, I’m to take him out to the country and shoot him in a ditch; however, I continue to lobby him to consider a longboard, to save me a bit of prison time. One thing about having to work for a living is that I always have this calculator at my desk. In addition to talking to people, reading and writing, I have to add and subtract a bunch of stuff to make sure we don’t hit the side of a building or something. But that’s another story. So anyway, if you take the approximate 10 years of decent-performance surfing left and multiply that by 365 days, I’ve got 3650 days left to surf — if there is surf every day. Which there isn’t. So, being generous, let’s say there is rideable surf 25% of the time. So now we’re down to 912.5 days left to surf before I’m functionally decrepit. Now I know why waist-high mushburgers look so fun. I think I’ll rinse this calculator in the sink. And that’s a perfect segue into this weekend’s forecast. We’ve got the remains of this little NE swell for Thursday and a small south swell building back in on Friday. I would expect the ocean to be a little confused between Thursday and Saturday as one swell diminishes and the other builds in. With low tides occurring in the 6 to 7 a.m. and p.m. zone, neither dawn patrol nor after-work sessions look too promising. But never fear, I think that on the incoming tides on Saturday and Sunday we’ll have a decent little south swell to ride. So wax up. One caveat — the next ESA contest is this weekend, and nothing has a better chance of producing crappy surf than a contest. But at 912.5 days and counting down, you can be sure I’ll be out there. |
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