Given the previous session's experience, I was mad at South Pier and points even more south. I forewent a real surf check there and continued to Harbor, a place I hadn't surfed in close to a year.
I had to go almost all of the way to Avalanches, but I found something that looked pretty good. A-Frame peaks were popping up shiftily and inconsistently, but it was better than anything I'd seen in a while. I locked up the bike on a rusted street sign.
I paddled out and under three waves. On my last breaching of the ocean surface, I felt the initial sting of a nasty ice cream headache. If I'd had to duckdive four waves it would have been nasty. I've heard that if you hold your tongue against the top of your mouth, you won't feel it, but I would argue any improvement is as a result of the placebo effect.
Fifteen or so minutes in I caught a nice right and did a good snap on then kicked out.
On my way back out, I saw an older guy on a lot of foam paddle his ass off into the wave of the day; a left-his backhand. After spending what seemed like an eternity getting up as his board rose higher and higher into the reeling lip, he managed to put it all together and descend it. I cheered him on with a raised fist. As he paddled back out he regaled me with a toothy grin.
Toothy Grin and his cronies spent the next half hour terrorizing me on their thick boards, paddling for just about anything. I missed out on two solid waves because one of them was already on it.
I thought about paddling out past them to get position on them but my mind was interrupted by a not-that-impressive-at-first left. As I paddled for it, just in case it turned into something, it steepened into a semblance of the sublime. I jumped up and pumped. I was going really fast when I eventually met with the closeout section. I rose into it, laid my weight back and slid across the foam as my tail got away from me. I ended up going fakie for a half-second before I splayed onto my back.
I caught a less impressive left five minutes later and did a snap just on the outside corner of the pocket. I ended up splayed, less impressively, on that one too.
Eventually Father Time reared his ugly head in the face of my SICK Rasta watch and I had to pedal back to watch our daughter while Raquel held court over her conference call.
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