An Evening at Ocean Beach

By the time I found parking near the Rivera Street intersection and scampered my way over the succulent covered dunes, the tide was bottoming out and the dipping sun had set the ocean ablaze. Looking directly out to sea was useless. The glare from the sunlight on water bounced off of every oceanic movement until even the salty mist was blinding. Without the protection of the fog, the exposed, flat, two mile long beach became a vacuum to suck up sunlight. It was obvious that I would choose my peak blindly today, but I remained unconcerned. The surf was pumping. How could I go wrong?

I could tell from my exposed skin– my feet, hands, and face– that the wind was non-existent. And from what I could hear, it was big. The crunch of sets over the shallow sandbar echoed up and down the beach like the sound of crumpling newspaper in an amplifier. There is a strange daze that sets in on those late evening sessions where the blazing sun makes you squint and the cold water takes your breath. It creates an almost dreamlike state, where you submit to the mercy of the ocean and move trustingly towards the horizon in hopes of a wave that will make it all worth it. 

The journey out past the low-tide inner bar was not more treacherous than I could have imagined, but far more treacherous than I had hoped. Overhead double-ups cracked the water relentlessly, sending frozen walls of whitewater towards shore. The first few duck dives generated a brain freeze that sent me back in time to my first shaved ice at Waiola, except this time there was no vanilla cream syrup and condensed milk as a consolation. A quick lull in the waves gave me the opportunity I needed (and prayed for) to scamper across the bar in time to narrowly dive beneath the lip of a surprisingly big set. 

It was not until I made it outside, and then took a few more strokes for good measure, that I could finally take that long sigh of relief. From out the back, things move a bit more slowly. The large surges that rumble landward from the horizon have a lethargic sense to them. Like the journey of an elephant or a whale, patiently trudging forward with little regard to anything that gets in their way. 

Looking back at the beach, the Sunset District, with its sprawling and overflowing kaleidoscope of single-family homes, glimmered brightly with a glorious golden hour glow. The radio tower, perched on top of Twin Peaks, looked down over the town like the techy counterpart to the Christ the Redeemer statue that overlooks Rio de Janeiro. People, resembling confused colonies of ants, moved across the beach at random, stopping every now and then to check out a shell or admire the sun, all the while avoiding others like two positive sides of a magnet. 

I didn’t ride the first few waves that came my direction. I barely paddled for them. Instead I took just enough strokes to look over the ledge of the dredging left handers and down the line of a potentially makeable, but probably just a closeout, wave. It’s funny how you can be so stoked but so nervous at the same time. How even the waves that you can’t get yourself to paddle for give you that rush as you feel their energy move by. But my patience was thinning, and my anticipation for that great wave was beginning to outweigh my reservations.

I saw the set rolling in from the south, the green, backlit wall of water marching steadily in my direction. There was no way that I wasn’t going on this wave. Closeout, double-up or not. Sometimes the only way you go is if you decide early. I decided early. After moving into position like a waterbug in a pond, I began those deep strokes towards shore. As I popped to my feet I watched as the sandy water sucked up the face towards me. The drop was steep and for a brief moment my fins lost grip of the face. But in the next moment they caught. And with my toe nails digging into the wax of my stepup I began the extension of that bottom turn / pump. My full body extended for maximum speed as the wave extended as well, jacked up from the quick change of seafloor depth. 

It was a closeout. Deep down I think I knew long before I realized. Crouched tight with the fingers of my left hand grazing the wave’s face, I watched as the whole ocean sucked into itself. The horizontal tornado of salt water and sand exploded everywhere at once as I rag-dolled my way back to the surface. 

The rest of the session was spent throwing myself over ledges and hoping for the best. It never really got any easier, but the rewards were too good to pass up. Eventually I found a few that were makeable. But it wasn’t long until my feet began to ache from the cold. This session had become one of those memorable ones. One of those sessions that you don’t quite know how it will turn out until you live it. Riding my last wave to the beach, I looked back out to the lineup. A purple sky lay heavily behind scattered clouds. Sometimes, if you make the effort enough, you just stumble upon these sorts of things.