Swell came up a bit today, tried turning gain down on the 2000 (1.5X instead of 3X). Makes it a little closer to reality, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.Went to Ano, checked it from the parking lot and it looked like something was going on. There was surf but everyone was on the beach, a big crowd. Hurried down to see what was up. Dude got tagged by a whitey, which I guess wasn't that unusual in the old days but these days you don't shape a stick without building in a repeller. These things are solar powered so they won't run out, but they can flake occasionally. Anyway, this one seemed ok (one guy actually had a tester and was running around yelling the repeller was fine, the repeller was fine). Good for the repeller, bad for the head with his leg half off. Watched the medi-vacs airlift him in one of those new nacoustic rotors. You could hear his screams even after the nacoustic disappeared behind the bluff. I'd be screaming too, no way I'd let them take me to no hospital.
After the Authority left we nearly had a fight with the eco-queers. Eco-queers always gather around where surfers go, basically looking for a reason to hassle us. I was expecting them to start up about proper recycling of the bitten stick (which the kook medi-vacs had left behind) but one starving surfer had already claimed it (basically grabbed it and ran, no one was gonna catch him without dropping their own stick). No, what really set it off was one of them going on about 'well, at least he won't be scoring no gull now', and shit like 'whitey 1, surfer none'.
That's pretty much uncalled for, I mean, you know they'll just part him out at the chop shop. Some aging fat cat baby-buster will pay good fundage for the head's motor chords. They love surfers for that (and for pec's and shoulder's but those aren't such a commodity I guess). When you go out to the Point and see some old guy you've never seen before ripping it up, well you start thinking of friends you've seen only checked in at hospitals. So there was a little pushing and shoving, but nothing really started. It's been such a dismal summer and today there were waves, so mostly people just wanted to get back in the water.
Tonight they ran the obligatory piece in the network news. Surfer eaten at Ano, surfing is unsafe and bad for the environment, the surfer was a known polluter, "gull scavenger" and Amschelist pedophile wanted by the Authority for "dubious" activities. Quite the credentials! Then they showed some webcam footage which had obviously been retouched. The dude looked a lot worse than he really was (they'd added a lot more blood and another bite, also dubbed in a gull still stuck to his nose spike, yea like you could really surf with that). Mentioned that the repeller had failed, and, surprisingly, that there'd been some representin' between the eco's and the surfers.
Sure hope the waves last this time.
Writing and all photographs by Leonardo Dagum,
dagum@sgi.com.
Copyright (C) July, 1996. All rights reserved.