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Secret
spot
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Fragments : Home, Fiji, Costa Rica
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It's sometime around seven in the morning at a secret spot south of San Francisco. Oh, all right, we're at Linda Mar again. I've been out since dawn with Bill. I seem to have been out since dawn with Bill every morning for months. He's a big, cheerful guy who rides enormous long-boards (his latest weighs in at eleven feet) and happily snags every ripple that drifts onto that little reef at the south end. He says "yesterday was my 50th birthday". I say something nice. He says: "Yeah. My wife had a party for me. She stood up and said 'I want to congratulate Bill on entering the last working decade of his life'. So I thought 'f**k that, and went in on Monday and quit my job". For a minute or two, we share that nice offshore feeling - we're out here, the rest of the world is over there, driving up the freeway to work.
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After about three hours of text-book beautiful surfing in Costa Rica (coconut trees, waves pitching blue and white in the sunshine, a cool lineup of about seven or eight people) - we go and get lunch. There's a sign nailed to a tree that says "Sandwiches as big as your head", which sounds about perfect. In the bar, Bob Marley is playing, there's shade, and after a beer or two I feel more physically complete than I have since I left school. I feel 41 going on 16. There are two young American guys there - they are camping on the beach, surfing all day, hanging out at low tide. I ask one of them, Ari, how long he's been in the country - I'm expecting maybe a month or two. "Two years", he says, and I suddenly realize how many ways there are to go about living a life.
The next day, Ari and his friend are already in the lineup - they watch me paddle up. I smile cheerfully and say "so I called my wife, and gave up my job, and I'm going to camp out with you guys from tonight". Ari takes this addition of an aging yuppie kook to his crew pretty calmly, but his bro is worried - I get a serious stone-face and a low-key "really". "No, not really..."
In Fiji, I'm out with John in tiny little rollers. The water is crystal clear and warm as a bath - it's like sitting in air above the coral. A wave rolls towards us, peeling nicely down the reef. All of a sudden I notice an electric-blue fish, tucked into the wave, hammering down the reef with it. "Fish!" I shout, and John shouts "Fish" at exactly the same time. We laugh with the delight of children, amazed to see something so wholly beautiful, and let the wave go by, the fish whipping underneath us as it goes.
The Hook, early on a Sunday morning, one of the first decent swells of the year. The waves are clean, well over head-high, meaty grey slabs of water. There are already upwards of fifty people out, and the vibe is pretty stark. This isn't a time to check the beauty of our surroundings - we're here to get our FIX, baby - surfing is a serious business this morning. After a 45 minute wait, the right one comes my way. I'm up. It's like trying to surf down highway 101 at Friday rush-hour. About a dozen people are paddling up the wave in front and around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a white blur, moving fast. This was a mistake. I jink, juke, and fall off, go under, get dumped. As I come up, all I can hear is the word "FUCK" being directed at me in a wide variety of permutations. Enough, enough. I drag my sorry ass over to 38th and wait for another hour.
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Linda Mar, yes, again. Mid-morning, maybe chest-high, a peak working with about five of us on it. A young, fit guy paddles out on a massive long-board. The very first thing he does is paddle round an older surfer who's been patiently waiting for a set and grabs the first wave. As the Older Guy mildly says "hey", Young Longboard Dude says "go f**k yourself". Oh, now we're all really pretty interested. Sure enough, OG digs in and paddles like a maniac to where YLD has kicked out. The "go **** etc etc" language is loud, persistent and goes on for a while. It begins to detract somewhat from the serenity of the session. Finally, YLD, in front of everybody in the lineup screams at OG: "DO YOU KNOW WHO MY DAD IS?". Although nobody says anything, this is definitely the end of YLD's case. We paddle over to another peak, where the general judgement is that YLD's beahavior was "weak", and rather embarrasing. And to be embarrasing at Linda Mar, you know, takes some doing.
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