P.R. November 2005

Page 11 - Last Full Day

One more real day to go. After this, I drive out of here and although I’ll have some time to play around in the morning, I really can’t call the day mine.

Get up nice and early, and the wind has calmed way down, and there’s soup visible through the north window of the room.

Well then, let’s go have a look at THIS, hmm.

Knew I was going surfing SOMEwhere, so I didn’t even bother to run down, look, and then come back for the board. Just strapped it on and headed for Maria’s.

A little over head high, sometimes a bit more than that, and nicely lined out. Wind was dead straightway offshore and none too strong. Unfortunately, there was a fairly good pack on the head of the point and also on the middle peak, which looked to be well defined and working well. Dome’s was nicely overhead, but had a kind of chunked out look to it, which wasn’t really all that inviting to these eyes. The near calm wind, and the look I got from Rob’s, along with the amount of people out, caused me to drive up and over to Parking Lots.

Never seen the place better.

Nice and glassy, and the wind was just about dead east, which is slightly offshore over there. Nice solid swell coming in, overhead and occasionally hitting well outside on the right that’s a several hundred yards over to the east of the parking lot itself.

It’s a big mushball, that can throw a little at first, and then settles down to a nice workable shoulder when the sets come in just so. There’s exactly two guys in the water, drifting down from over there on the current, and neither one of them seems to really know what the hell they’re doing.

Where the hell IS everybody?

Maria’s, I guess. Or Dome’s? Sure as hell not here.

Take the board off the car and down to the beach for a good waxing, and then hike the several hundred yards down toward that right.

It was coming in nice and solid, so I had to just sort of stand there a while and look at it, and then took my chance, hoping I didn’t meet a set half way outside.

Right on through, tra la la.

And paddle over to where there were a couple of big boils, that were giving me an idea of where I should be sitting.

Kind of overshot it outside a little bit, in respect for those larger sets that were coming in, but finally found a mark and proceeded to have one hell of a session.

Three or four feet overhead and nice and thick on the drops.

Glass.

Big sweeping turn off the bottom and then work the wall as far as I dared, not wanting to get caught inside by the next wave in the set.

Nobody anywhere around me, so I was free as a bird to pick and choose, just the exact wave I wanted, or let the damn thing go and wait for a better one.

Beautiful sunny day with wall to wall blue sky and beautiful deep blue ocean water all around.

Some of the waves kind of died out, but others were just made to order for big sweeping cutbacks and turns, just working the 9-8 all over these spacious faces, going like a bat out of hell the whole time.

Eventually, another guy paddled out, and started outside and my way but then inexplicably stopped about eighty or a hundred yards down, and a little in, from me, and from then on held his place just as firmly as I was holding mine, and the two of us never interacted on a single wave together.

I’d ride yet another, and then paddle out and go right past the guy grinning, and we’d both laugh about the waves, but damned if he didn’t stay put exactly where he’d stopped, and he never got anywhere near me.

Why?

Beats the hell out of me.

I was picking off these bombs outside of him, and doing it over and over, but for whatever reason, he chose to sit tight, right where he was, and that was that.

I’m still having trouble believing it.

Somewhere along the line, I caught one from a little behind, and had to work like a dog to come around the corner, out past the soup.

Error.

I came over the top of that wave only to see the next one beyond it breaking.

And then it was game on for a twenty-soup cleansing.

Boom boom boom boom boom boom.

Relentless.

Unstopping.

I wound up nearly back on the fucking beach, refusing to admit defeat, and the soups just kept on coming.

I was thinking about the remainder of the day, and any additional sessions I might have, and was wondering if I should just say the hell with it and head on in.

But eventually it relented, and I scratched on back outside.

My buddy was still right where I left him and he laughed about my little misadventure on the inside.

But once back outside, and rested, it was time to go at it again.

During the festivities, a couple of fairly large waves came through. I caught some of them and missed others. One of them was a big fat peak that was setting up left and I had to paddle hard to get outside before it broke. At the last minute, I swung the board around intending to take it, which would probably have wound up with me getting caught inside again, but at the time I didn’t care.

But I was off to the side just a bit, and paddling like hell, I wound up hung up top, staring down into the maw of a grinding vertical take off with a booming soup coming at me from my right side, and at the last second, I backed out, glad that I didn’t wind up getting sucked over the falls, which I almost did.

The look and sound of that wave will remain with me a while, and if I’d gone, I would have just free fallen out into the open space forming below me and got the living shit kicked out of me.

Glad I had enough sense to let that one alone.

Kept on riding and started to feel it, and decided to wait for a right with a nice long shoulder and see if I could ride it most of the way back to the parking lot.

Finally lucked into one, and rode the thing damn near to the beach, almost all the way back to the parking lot.

Sat and chatted with a local kid who was out with a shoulder he’d injured up near Wilderness the week before.

Typical local, just as nice as could be.

Finally headed on out, and drove back over to Maria’s to see what was what.

Two hours session in the bag, and the whole day staring me in the face.

Back at Maria’s, it was still just as crisp and clean as it gets, and after a while looking and considering the crowd, I figured what the hell, may as well go.

Paddled out into the gap between the point and the peak, intending to kind of feel my way along and ease myself into it, and right off the bat I got kind of wonked up, and managed to drop in on a guy who I didn’t think was going to make it around the soup he was behind. I wanted to just drop and then come up and bank off the closeout section ahead of me, but just as soon as I came to my feet I saw him back there coming around the corner with a look on his face, and I just kicked out right away, which he did too.

He was nice enough about it, but I knew I’d interfered with him a little, and was kicking myself in the ass for being so stupid, especially immediately upon entering the water.

The guy paddled back over to the point, no worries, and I then managed to get another one in the middle, and then do some good old fashioned soup eating as I was caught inside, drifting down to, and beyond, the middle peak.

Finally came back outside past the peak and said fuckit to myself, I’ll just see what’s shaking with the peak.

About a dozen people on it, which didn’t bode good.

And then it just went from gold to diamonds on me. Big fat multi-carat flawless white diamonds.

I moved over to my lineup, and damned if the pack didn’t PROMPTLY seem to move inside, impatient to grab anything that was coming by.

Sure enough, here it comes outside, and there’s nobody around me and I’m just dead center under this thing.

And that began an insane series of set waves on the peak that all seemed to have me in mind when they came in.

 I just couldn’t miss on lining that sonofabitch up, and it was coming in up to a couple of feet overhead, and just PERFECT.

It was actually bowling and on my biggest wave I even got tubed. I hit a groove and just COULD DO NO WRONG. Wave after wave after wave. I was getting hoots and smiles from the crowd and nobody was interfering with me at all.

In the middle of all that, I got three insane rides with a young guy on a sponge.

On the first one we rode together, and I more or less had him right in my lap, midway up the face of the wave, directly in front of me. I could have touched him. And he knew exactly what he was doing and just fired along, and I watched him get tubed from about four feet away (DIRECTLY in front of me as I stood regular foot).

On the second wave we rode together, he set it up the exact same way, and as he’s RIGHT THERE next to me and we’re firing down the line together, I said “Gimme five!” Which he did, right away with his left hand, squarely. Here I am at Maria’s, shooting down the line like a bullet with a bodyboarder practically in my lap, and we high fived like we were standing on a street corner somewhere! Insane! We both continued on at express train speed and both made the wave, hooting and laughing together.

I paddled back out and was telling people about what had just happened and a couple of them had been paddling back out when we did it and said they saw the whole thing. Too wild! I’ve never done such a thing while surfing in my life.

On our last wave together, we executed a perfect cross-over. Unfortunately, after we crossed, he then got caught behind the soup and didn’t make the wave, which I did, but we were superstoked anyway. Fucking radical. With a complete stranger, Puerto Rican sponge kid.

The people down here just continue to amaze me with their kindness, stokedness, and general surfing skill.

In addition to the double rides, I got a zillion by myself and the board was working like it was a dream or something. I was accelerating out of bottom turns like I’ve never done before, and then the wave would just bowl so perfectly ahead of me that I’d fire up high, still accelerating, and then just pump it back down off the bottom and gain even MORE speed.

Everything felt so perfect that it’s really impossible to describe.

I must have really been surfing well (as opposed to just THINKING I was surfing well) cause I got a LOT of smiling feedback from the crowd and everybody was urging me on, on every wave. It’s definitely a nice feeling when total strangers are out there encouraging you loudly on your take offs. Drops. Bottom turns. Big wheeling roundhouse cutbacks. High speed trim. All of it. Some of the waves would bowl perfectly on takeoff, and then bowl a second time way down the line following a ground-gobbling speed run between bowls.

Just an amazing day! Probably sounds hokey, stupid, or just plain egotistical, and if it does, I can’t blame anybody for feeling that way. Days like this don’t come along all that often, and they’re hard as hell to describe without sounding like some kind of weirdo. So I just described it as best I can, and let the chips fall where they may.

Two hours of it and I was spent, especially after the previous two hours at Parking Lots. And as soon as I came in, at both places, immediately after both sessions, the wind picked right up. Go figure. Hell of a goddamned way to wrap this trip up!

Having not surfed the previous three days in a row really turned out to be the right thing to have done, ‘cause I had the energy this day when I needed it.

Insane. Just fucking insane.