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| 08/27/09
Well, I hope you’re satisfied. Because if you haven’t been walking around in some sort of euphoric dream state telling anyone who will hold still how much fun/big/crowded/glassy/choppy it was, you surely missed it. Early Friday, I began to be a little skeptical that we would get anything of decent quantity, and Vinnie and I began comparing notes on the multitude of times there was a hurricane offshore merrily churning swell toward someplace else. If you’ve surfed here long enough, you will know what I mean. It’s the ultimate frustration.
However, the scene that greeted me Saturday morning as I trudged up the path at my spot quickly put all of that behind me, and the early morning sessions on Saturday and Sunday were quite satisfying. So, sitting here basking in the warm afterglow, I began to ponder the reasons for all of this, and — being your full-service Surfblogger — it is my duty to shed light on all of life’s mysteries. Yes, kiddies, that class you cut because of a hangover back in your freshman year is the reason the seemingly unexplainable isn’t explained. Thermodynamics. So, gather round and I’ll lay it down for you in surfing terms.
First: Entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics, along with the first law of thermodynamics — energy — constitute the most fundamental laws of physics. Entropy and energy and their relationship are fundamental to an understanding not just of physics, but of life itself. The laws of thermodynamics are laws upon which all the other laws of nature depend. Which pretty much means that, without the first and second laws — which define the symmetrical properties of the world — there could be no other laws at all. Heavy, dude.
The first law, energy conservation, says that all processes involve transformations of energy and that the total amount of energy is always conserved. So, if you think about it, there’s this hurricane energy coming toward the shore in the form of nice, tasty overhead tubes. (And if there were no such thing as waves, there would be no surf and you would be content to be on the beach playing a nice game of bocce with the tourists. Which would require you to dress really stupid. But, thankfully, there are waves, and you ride them.) When your ride is over and the wave is gone, where did that energy go? Into you, dude.
So after a day of surfing, you’re all full of that wave energy. And what do you do with it? You run around with a deranged smile telling everybody how stoked you are, and they get the energy in the form of stoke, acute boredom, or pity on you for being mental. Or, in the case of Mrs. Blog, get pissed off that you were gone all day. Then all that hurricane energy gets passed back at you, and you have to use it doing all kinds of chores to make up for your various transgressions — like vacuum the lawn, mow the house and feed the dog.
So, when I feed Blogdog, it makes him poo. And being a Great Dane, the hurricane energy transforms into a large volume of smelly gas which then goes into the atmosphere and accumulates all summer, until it causes the weather in Africa to change and spin another low out into the Atlantic. So I did, he did, and we have another hurricane swell heading our way this week. As I write this, it is a tropical storm north of Hispaniola that has just been upgraded and named Danny. Good ol’ Blogdog — so thermodynamic.
“But Surfblogger,” you exclaim, “it’s all too thrilling — tell us about the second law!”
Well, until recently, the second law was viewed as a “law of disorder” in which every system is supposed to go downhill from organized to disorganized. The major revolution in the past decade is the recognition that the spontaneous production of order from disorder is the expected consequence of the two basic laws. So this is why, no matter how good it is or how crowded it is, you still have to park your car in a designated area or you will get a ticket. And no matter how good or crowded, if you repeatedly drop in on Vinnie, you will get punched. So some new form of order always comes out of chaos. Oh, the symmetry of it all.
So, if you want to predict your stoke for the upcoming swell, use this formula:
Where S is the amount of stoke you will have. The negative “k” is the crowd, the summation is over “i” the possible defined state the storm system is in, “l” is whether or not you decide to put the longboard in the car and “n” is the degree to which your wax rash from last week stings. And the “Pi” are the probabilities for the system to be in a favorable state, given what we know about the system — which is that it has a high probability of pushing swell into us on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and that the wind model currently shows light offshore winds on those days. So, in this case, S = Schwing!
Because the next ESA surfing contest — the Governor’s Cup — is this weekend, the 13th law of thermodynamics comes into play, which states that, if there is a surfing contest, the probability of good surf is low. So the swell will probably drop Saturday night because the finals are Sunday. So hit it after work on Thursday and Friday, and dawn patrol it on Saturday. And stay symmetrical. |
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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 08/20/09 entry Useful linksWarp 11, the Surfblogger’s new favorite bandVideo of the bigger skate bowl Nosara Wildlife Jupiter Inlet Juno pier IOP pier surf cam Favorite surf forecast site Click here to e-mail the Surfblogger.
| 08/27/09 Well, I hope you’re satisfied. Because if you haven’t been walking around in some sort of euphoric dream state telling anyone who will hold still how much fun/big/crowded/glassy/choppy it was, you surely missed it. Early Friday, I began to be a little skeptical that we would get anything of decent quantity, and Vinnie and I began comparing notes on the multitude of times there was a hurricane offshore merrily churning swell toward someplace else. If you’ve surfed here long enough, you will know what I mean. It’s the ultimate frustration. However, the scene that greeted me Saturday morning as I trudged up the path at my spot quickly put all of that behind me, and the early morning sessions on Saturday and Sunday were quite satisfying. So, sitting here basking in the warm afterglow, I began to ponder the reasons for all of this, and — being your full-service Surfblogger — it is my duty to shed light on all of life’s mysteries. Yes, kiddies, that class you cut because of a hangover back in your freshman year is the reason the seemingly unexplainable isn’t explained. Thermodynamics. So, gather round and I’ll lay it down for you in surfing terms. First: Entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics, along with the first law of thermodynamics — energy — constitute the most fundamental laws of physics. Entropy and energy and their relationship are fundamental to an understanding not just of physics, but of life itself. The laws of thermodynamics are laws upon which all the other laws of nature depend. Which pretty much means that, without the first and second laws — which define the symmetrical properties of the world — there could be no other laws at all. Heavy, dude. The first law, energy conservation, says that all processes involve transformations of energy and that the total amount of energy is always conserved. So, if you think about it, there’s this hurricane energy coming toward the shore in the form of nice, tasty overhead tubes. (And if there were no such thing as waves, there would be no surf and you would be content to be on the beach playing a nice game of bocce with the tourists. Which would require you to dress really stupid. But, thankfully, there are waves, and you ride them.) When your ride is over and the wave is gone, where did that energy go? Into you, dude. So after a day of surfing, you’re all full of that wave energy. And what do you do with it? You run around with a deranged smile telling everybody how stoked you are, and they get the energy in the form of stoke, acute boredom, or pity on you for being mental. Or, in the case of Mrs. Blog, get pissed off that you were gone all day. Then all that hurricane energy gets passed back at you, and you have to use it doing all kinds of chores to make up for your various transgressions — like vacuum the lawn, mow the house and feed the dog. So, when I feed Blogdog, it makes him poo. And being a Great Dane, the hurricane energy transforms into a large volume of smelly gas which then goes into the atmosphere and accumulates all summer, until it causes the weather in Africa to change and spin another low out into the Atlantic. So I did, he did, and we have another hurricane swell heading our way this week. As I write this, it is a tropical storm north of Hispaniola that has just been upgraded and named Danny. Good ol’ Blogdog — so thermodynamic. “But Surfblogger,” you exclaim, “it’s all too thrilling — tell us about the second law!” Well, until recently, the second law was viewed as a “law of disorder” in which every system is supposed to go downhill from organized to disorganized. The major revolution in the past decade is the recognition that the spontaneous production of order from disorder is the expected consequence of the two basic laws. So this is why, no matter how good it is or how crowded it is, you still have to park your car in a designated area or you will get a ticket. And no matter how good or crowded, if you repeatedly drop in on Vinnie, you will get punched. So some new form of order always comes out of chaos. Oh, the symmetry of it all. So, if you want to predict your stoke for the upcoming swell, use this formula:
Where S is the amount of stoke you will have. The negative “k” is the crowd, the summation is over “i” the possible defined state the storm system is in, “l” is whether or not you decide to put the longboard in the car and “n” is the degree to which your wax rash from last week stings. And the “Pi” are the probabilities for the system to be in a favorable state, given what we know about the system — which is that it has a high probability of pushing swell into us on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and that the wind model currently shows light offshore winds on those days. So, in this case, S = Schwing! Because the next ESA surfing contest — the Governor’s Cup — is this weekend, the 13th law of thermodynamics comes into play, which states that, if there is a surfing contest, the probability of good surf is low. So the swell will probably drop Saturday night because the finals are Sunday. So hit it after work on Thursday and Friday, and dawn patrol it on Saturday. And stay symmetrical. |
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