I went to Venice yesterday to "go surfing," since the south-facing breaks of Malibu, Topanga, and Sunset were reported to have knee-high waves, and Venice sounded bigger. But alas, I chose the wrong place. Who cares about size when it's closed out? In fact, the bigger set waves there looked like hard-ass breaking walls of death. Is that fun? I watched from the pier as three shortboarding fools struggled to find a moment of what would later be called "pleasure." But there was simply nowhere for them to shred on their potato chips. They'd drop in optimistically and then the entire wall of death would fall down onto their little haids. It's just abusive at that point. And as I am all about loving the self in '07, I opted to stay on the pier. Dang.
This was the day after finally returning to my beloved former home break of Tourmaline, after not surfing there for a whole month. Abusive. I can't even speak about that pain right now, it's too soon. The conditions there were glassy, sunshiny & beautiful, but the surf was only 1-2 feet. I was desperate so I went in anyway, and it turned out to be relaxing. Low stakes, low pressure, easy paddling. Everything was fine until the end, when someone cut me off and crashed into my board, putting a MAJOR big gouge in my rail. My beautiful board. She was super apologetic and felt really bad, and even approached me in the parking lot, as she should have, and offered to pay for the repair. It was obvious that she hadn't done this on purpose, so I wasn't a dick about it and I let it go. But it left me wishing I was a better surfer. How stupid is it to have a destructive collision on a knee high wave? Yes, the other person cut me off bad, at the last second, but shouldn't I have been able to magically avoid it?