The swell held through today. Surf this morning was definite fun. I was at one of the reefs north of Town, and it being a weekday, and it being heavy shark territory, there were only a couple other heads in the water.Weer was out, he's one of those mamman Deadhead surfers. Eats only sea mammals, like baby seals or sea otters when he can, and definitely no veg.Anyway, the surf was good and my session was going a lot better than yesterday which made me very happy and made my stick happy too cuz it was working with me so I didn't have to yell at it too much. So I'd paddled back out from a ride and was sitting way outside givin' props to my stick when a bomb set pushes through."Hey man, you know what chems they use to grow that shit? Let alone the water they use!"That's what Weer always says. Anyway, I can't figure being so choosy, but he's a cool dude and hey, he won't snake gulls off ya so who cares right?I'd drifted way too far out so I start paddling in when I see Whitey do a half circle around me. Well, I was a little jumpy like everyone else (the fat patch of Thrust didn't help any) and the past few days I've been paddling out with one of those sponger 'poons in case I did run into Whitey. So when I saw him there I just let out a banshee wail and fired a 'poon into its side. Next thing I know the beast is pulling me 30k to shore. Now this is where it gets really weird, see this happened just as the biggest wave of the set came through, so next thing I know I'm planing and naturally I let go and stood up and MAN I was carrying big speed!
So at this point I'd completely forgot about Whitey and was just stoked on this ride. Well, I'm just ripping the living shit out of this wave and I see it's flexing for a perfect barrel when all of a sudden the lip mushes out in a totally unnatural way. I'm thinking it's some weird cross talk between the 2000 and Junk's device and at this point I just want to strangle Junk cuz here was the barrel of the summer and I was wired off my ass on Thrust and him and his stupid ass shit was gonna ruin it. I was ready to maim and kill him in about a million different creative ways. I'm sure steam was coming out of my ears when I realized, hey, it wasn't cross talk at all. It was real. A fucking nacoustic was buzzing me and it's phreakin' rotor was mushing the lip! So pissed to hell I pump ahead of the mush and launch off the next section sending my stick straight into the bird's stabilizing rotor.
Well, this wasn't the best laid plan, if you know what I mean. It did send the thing into a free spin, which was good, but it also nearly ripped my leg off cuz I was still leashed. Thankfully my board quickly snapped and the nacoustic came down in a very acoustic mess. I'm not sure what happened next cuz Junk's device panic'd when it lost boot and file from my stick. (Now that's the sort of sloppy programming I would do, if I knew how to program) which basically meant I don't know what the hell happened other than next thing I know Junk's looking down at me, my leg hurts like shit and I'm in a strange room.
Damn. Would've been a killer barrel too!
Writing and all photographs by Leonardo Dagum,
dagum@sgi.com.
Copyright (C) November 5th, 1993. All rights reserved.