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Wednesday, June 27, 2018

6.27.18 Drop in Swell Leads me to Panga Drops, Bonus SUPER SESSION 6.27.98

The ladies were cleaning the condo today so I took advantage of the opportunity to have them watch Chucho.  Unfortunately, the swell had dropped precipitously and the tide was at its apex.  This combination has but one cure and its name is Panga Drops.

I walked down there and as I got to the sand spit, noticed the sky was an explosion of varying shades of gray.  There was one dude out.  I paddled past him so we'd each have our own peak.

The swell was small but it was still overhead, which is a nice thing if you're strictly a size queen, which I am NOT!

I caught a bunch of waves.  One one of my first, I tried doing an elongated cutback just before the flat section and was bounced off my board by the chop.

A dude on a log paddled out and now there were three of us.  He gave me a "Buen Dia" and proceeded to sit deeper.  I saw him blow a lot of waves but the dude was charging.

There were zero waves on which I got to ride which made a connection with the inside/shorebreak.  It just wasn't happening today but that's common.

The guy who had been out when I paddled out was looking at a left and I told him to go.  After a too-short ride on the right, I paddled back out and he took the time and had the chutzpah to say thank you, which was really nice of him.

It started raining pretty hard as a massive cloud came overhead.  Then the sun broke through and the water was a murky turquoise color.  It was a very interesting color combo with the sun making the sea shimmer.

I eventually went in and went for an off-the-lip on a shorebreak close-out.  I was a bit slow and I half-made it/half fell off after initially having semi-stomped it.

~SUPER SESSION~
Dateline: June 27,1998

I had graduated from high school just fifteen days prior to this.  This was the first summer my mom had allowed me to spend the night at her ex-husband's rented beach house (which he used only on Sundays and holiday weeks).  This was in El Salvador at a beach called San Blas.

I'd been surfing a little over ten months and had never gotten barreled.

Pando and I woke up early and it was going off.  Barrels were rifling off in both directions at the beachbreak almost right in front of the property.  It wasn't big, M A Y B E a little overhead on the sets.  I was riding this massive board I'd received in a trade from my older cousin Ed in 1994 (he got my Game Boy and all of my games).

It was just us.  I'd never been out in waves that barreled like this.  I got three lefts in quick succession and got barreled on two of them.  My first one was especially good.  I dropped in, posted up and the thing threw over me.  Unfortunately I made no barrels on this day.  But I popped my tube cherry and that was a big hurdle to get over.  I remember on both barrels I got pitched and ended up scraping my back on the sand.

At one point the tide kicked into high gear.  Seeing as to how I was on this massive thick board, I had a bitch of a time getting out.  I probably wasted forty minutes of the session sprint-paddling and doing my damnedest to duckdive this behemoth with my 125lb high school body.

I did see Pando get barreled going in both directions but I don't remember seeing him make one.

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