california |

Mar 17

head over heels

A few years ago now, I wrote a column called Chain of Fools for Mountain Flyer Magazine. In this edition, the fool meets some new friends and makes the best possible first impression. This story ran in Mountain Flyer, Issue 76.

We meet at the trailhead early, but not too early. Waiting for the stragglers to arrive, there’s a lot of looking at bikes and talking about tires and toying with suspension. I’m the new girl. I try not to be nervous. I don’t know this crew yet, but I do know they ride mountain bikes just like I do. Bikes. It’s just bikes.

The ride begins with a climb. Is it better to climb first or climb home? Eat your vegetables, then you can have dessert: That’s what my mom always says. My inner whiner wants dessert both now and later. There is no too much when it comes to the good things in life like long descents and frosted donuts.

We string out on the climb and happy not to be last, I settle somewhere in the middle. The dirt changes with the elevation as the soil’s minerals stain each layer a different hue. Eventually, I will come to learn the sequence so well that I can count down each climb. But that’s for the future. Today it’s all new to me. The climb ends sooner than I expect, which boosts my confidence.

At first, I don’t see it. The descent drops abruptly off the edge of the fire road and makes a hard right turn. The fall line looks more fall than line. The first corner’s off-camber and littered with dry California dust. Manzanita bushes and assorted spiky plants surround the trail. A few loose rocks pitch in to keep it interesting. Looks fun, I tell myself.

big thursday

I cruise down the beach and pass through a parking lot littered with sand and kelp, the sure signs of a high tide and a big swell. Normally, there aren’t really even waves on this part of the beach. I look out to overhead sets, brown with churned up sand. Even from the beach, I can see how the long period swell is moving water deep beneath the surface. It’s anything but playful.

A pair of guys walk down the beach carrying Wavestorms under their arms. I laugh. Where there’s a wave, there’s a Wavestorm. They look excited and optimistic. The Harvest buoy off Point Conception reads 23.3ft, 18 seconds, 283 degrees. The ocean laughs at your optimism.

“We are all the idiots,” my friend writes in a text. “We just don’t know it until our luck runs out.”

the fabulous and ridiculous adventures of surfline man

Hapless yet determined, annoying yet impossible to hate, Surfline Man loves surfing more than anything else in life. He reads every last forecast like it’s truth and he spends so many hours thinking about surfing. More, in fact, than he spends actually doing it. Surfline Man knows what’s up, and has many opinions which he’ll share with you at length. But he’s also the most stoked guy you’ll ever meet. Surfing, it’s like his favorite thing!

Yes, of course he drives a Sprinter van. And yes, he bought the red fins, because the looked cool, not because they would actually work with his board. He can’t help but buy every latest and greatest piece of gear in the hope that somehow this one thing will make his life complete. You see how it is.

Here is the full archive of Surfline Man’s fabulous and ridiculous adventures over at Beachgrit, where he was born and continues to live out his days.

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It all began one fateful day: I did not know it was a Surfline Day, when untold hordes come crawling out from every nook and cranny. There is surf today! Everyone go surfing! Omg! And, obediently, Surfline Man and all his besties go surfing. — Surfline Man: An Anthropological Study