Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Yet another trip to PR with Claudie. This is getting to be a habit of sorts.

Been here less than 24 hours.

Aguadilla. Not the plane we flew in on.

Flew in late last night, red-eye on JetBlue, into Aguadilla.

Off the plane, bleary-eyed. Walking down the steps to the tarmac into the balmy night air. Ahhhh.

Claudie’s friend David Dedos was there to pick us up at the airport and we roll almost all the way to Jobos, to his house. Classic Puerto Rican setup. Dark starry sky, coquie frogs peeping in the night, anticipation of the waves that are supposed to be coming.

Perfunctory organizing, or as organized as it ever gets with me and Claudie, and lights out, see ya later.

Today, mercifully, I managed to sleep in all the way till ten a.m. and woke up in fairly good shape, without any of the dreaded sleep deprivation symptoms to which I am so damnably susceptible.

David is a local clothing rep with a load of items that will need to be delivered to Mayaguez tomorrow. He’s a very low-key guy and just as nice as can be. Very gracious and kind. It appears as if he can use my computer guy services and sets me happily to work creating an invoice that will be used with tomorrow’s deliveries. While I’m at it, I can’t help noticing that his machine is in less than optimal shape, and despite my not having brought my full computer guy kit down with me, I set about doing a little housecleaning on his machine, as best I can. It pleases me to be of some small use to my host, who is putting me up in his home, on nothing more than the word of a mutual friend.

David's side yard greenery

Blazing sunny warm, mid to upper 80’s, just a few puffy white clouds in the sky, and a surprisingly light trade wind to go with it. Ahhhhhh. Walk down the alleyway a hundred yards or so in the direction of the beach road, and off in the distance that fantastic deep blue Puerto Rican ocean flickers and rolls languidly under a sky of softer blue.

Waves are small today. Maybe waist to chest from the looks of things up here. That will change soon enough.

Walk on down the road toward the airport a block or so, and hit the local store for a 2 liter coke. Again, classic Puerto Rican ambience with a couple of old men lounging around outside the door, tightly-spaced shelves inside jam-packed with anything and everything. Gotta love it. Nice people all around. The more I deal with the Puerto Rican culture, the more I like it. These guys have got a good thing going down here, and they know it. And their disinclination to be moved off-center by gringo money and gringo ways is a joy to behold. Stick to your guns, guys, everlastingly so.

Off with my poisonous mambo coke, and amble along the roadside, back to the casa.

Lots of piddling around, and finally David decides to take Claudie and me for a surf.

Bogie

Bogie, David’s large male yellow lab, comes along for the ride. Neat dog. Sweet as an angel. Well taken-care of, well loved, and it shows.

Head off towards Jobo’s, with the side door on the van wide open (it didn’t want to close and we just skipped that hassle and rolled on down the road anyway), and Bogie hanging half out of the car, checking out the world as it whizzed by at close range, readjusting his balance whenever we encountered one of the abrupt turns in the road.

If you were to try this kind of thing back in GringoWorld, you’d have an alarmed citizenry yapping breathlessly into cell phones, and then cops climbing up your ass, guns drawn, after traveling less than a hundred yards.

Just across David's side yard fence

Down here, it’s no worries.

We could learn a thing or two from the Puerto Ricans, if only we weren’t so goddamned full of ourselves.

Ah well, such are the ways of life.

Jobos has a bit of a wave, but the wind is crinkling things up and we drive by without stopping.

Further on to another little turn-off by the side of the road, to check a left that occasionally breaks, but not today. Or at least not enough to warrant bothering with.

Back we go, toward Jobo’s, and once again we drive by without even stopping. Claudie wants to go to Surfer’s Beach and that’s where we go, sliding door wide open the whole way, Bogie hanging half out, music on the radio, and a very easy relaxed vibe all around.

Down the looping jungle path to Surfer’s. Just before we take the last switchback and head back north through the potholes and winding dirt-road paths, David lets Bogie out of the car, and he runs along with us the rest of the way to the parking area. Today is a holiday, but there’s not all that many people around, with a couple of dozen cars parked every whichaway, people languidly hanging around, and off in the water, some surprisingly fun-looking peaks coming in with about ten or fifteen people spread out and enjoying themselves in the balmy afternoon glow.

Out of the car and get the boards off of the rack, my 9’7” on the bottom of the stack.

Claudie wastes no time getting into the water, and I’m not far behind him, while David takes his time with things, hanging out with the locals, talking story, and generally taking his ease about it, Puerto Rican style.

Out in the water, it’s a trifle larger than that it looked from the beach, with a few strays that may have been head high on me, right on the peak at takeoff. The crinkle is light and isn’t interfering with things at all, and the waves have a bit of a wall to run down, which is nice.

Clear warm water. Lots of bottom profile and features plainly visible beneath us as we ride the waves. Shoreward, dark green cliffs front the beach with the rock completely hidden by the vegetation except at the very bottom, north of the parking area, where erosion has sculpted them into fantastic brown shapes, with white spray periodically erupting in front of them. South of the exposed rock, khaki-colored sand beach winds off into the distance, interspersed with more exposed rock. Very beautiful scene, bathed in a clear clean late-afternoon sunlight glow.

Totally cool crowd in the lineup with no aggro guys, and a nice mix of longboards and shortboards. Three or four very pretty senoritas are out and they all surf well. Everybody is out here to have fun, and nobody seems to have anything to prove to anybody.

Claudie immediately begins doing his thing, styling along, making it look ridiculously, deceptively, impossibly easy.

Eventually David comes out on his fish and proceeds to join in the fun, slicing and shearing the water with force despite the softness of the waves.

Smiles all around.

Eventually my batteries run down a little, and I decide to wrap things up with one of the larger waves, which I take to the beach.

Bogie has been running around, making friends with all of the people and other dogs on the beach, and I find a handy stick and we proceed to play fetch, with me tossing the stick out into the water and Bogie bounding into the shorebreak and swimming out to retrieve it, and then swimming back in and dropping it on the sand, eagerly looking for me to throw it once again.

Eventually I grow tired of playing with Bogie and amble up to the dirt parking area at the foot of the forested cliffs and proceed to indulge myself in some serious hanging out.

Full Puerto Rican vibe and ambience in every direction. Delicious marine smell on the breeze. Damn, but I sure do love this place!

After a brief interval, I look over to my right, and driving up is Roger Caldwell and his friend, who’s name escapes me at this minute.

Small world.

Roger and his friend are all smiles and the three of us fall into discussing our sessions, the waves, and all of the things that people talk about when they’re happily surfed. Above us, a swarm of puffy white clouds pushes southwards, as the sky over to the west begins to take on the golden tones of sunset.

The parking lot is alive with people coming, people going, and people deeply enjoying this warm little slice of paradisiacal time and space.

Claudie and David finally come in and the surf scene on the beach deepens and mellows as the sun approaches the horizon.

A guy parked on the other side of the dirt lot has broken out a barbecue grill, and pork chops are sizzling and wafting their scent into the breeze.

Claudie and David head into town for some cold cervezas, and I’m staying put on the beach, hanging out, talking story, laughing, watching the waves and riders, and keeping a non-required eye on Bogie as he continues to find friends to toss a stick into that marvelously clear blue-green water.

The boys return with the beer, and everyone except me indulges themselves, and it’s all good.

Very VERY good.

Out in the water, the riders keep on riding.

Somehow or other, while looking the other way, I get signed on for a pork chop of my own, and Dave walks me over to the grill, where the smiling long-haired local plucks one from the flames, impales it on a plastic knife, and hands it to me.

Is this cool, or what?

I thankfully take my unasked-for surprise back toward my little perch on the edge of the dune, standing on the telephone poles lying there, and proceed to chow down on the pork chop. Just in case anybody was wondering, it really doesn’t get any better than this. Let the high-rollers roll as high as they like, and I’ll stick with rolling low, down by the sea. Surfed out, with an appetite to match, and suddenly delicious food falls out of the sky and into my unworthy lap, while I’m yapping with my friends and just generally taking it all in through the pores of my skin. Ah yes, it’s always better to be lucky than smart, eh?

David has backed his van to the edge of things, opened the back gate, and rock and roll blares from within as the crew ebbs, flows, and swirls around it, conversations forming, lasting a while, and then dissipating, only to immediately reform somewhere else, exactly as the now-golden fleet of clouds overhead are doing.

In the darkening sky, first Venus, and then Jupiter, hesitantly make their appearance, Jupiter above Venus, in the southwest sky. As the darkness gathers, they begin to grow in brilliance and beauty, playing peek-a-boo among the scattered clouds that have by now taken on a warm, dusky shade, with the sky continuing to darken behind them.

As the dark finally assumes a palpable air, the last surfer paddles in and we all continue to hang out in the parking lot, none of us wanting to break the spell by departing.

Finally, it is ineluctably time to go, and so we depart at last.

Helluva first day, and there’s real waves coming, which should be here by tomorrow afternoon.

I’m sitting here in David’s living room tappity-tap-tapping on the keyboard, and am the last one up. It’s nine-thirty, and we’re going to be up early tomorrow morning.

So I guess I’ll knock this off for now and return to it when time and circumstance permit.

It is good.