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Posts Tagged ‘California Street’

I wrote this blog back on March 2nd 2009.  At the time I was living in an unofficial fraternity that I had started to enable myself to live rent free.  My ex-wife whom I wrote about last night in Feeling Awkward and I had split up only  a few months prior and I was for all extensive purposes drinking myself to death. This was initially published as a segment I used to call “Week in Review”, which is the equivalent of “News from Lisanti Land” now.  Initially it was a two parter, but I do not have part 2 currently at my disposal so you will just have to wait for it or got searching for it yourself.  I will tell you what, if you do find part 2 and are the first person to post the link in the comments it is worth 3 extra UCB points!  As always anything in red is added hindsight for this blog.

Well this week was a pretty big blur of a 6 day party fiasco, a ridiculous amount of surfing, a ton of visitors from the east coast and way, way, way, too much gnarl.  So I know I said I was going to take it easy on the party scene, but this week was a special exception.  Monday was my boy Brennan’s Birthday, Tuesday was Mardi Gras, then Scott got into town Wednesday and we had to celebrate, Thursday two friends of Cory’s came into town from Pennsylvania, and then it was Friday and Saturday so of course I had to keep on cruising.  Plus Pixie Rixon came up from San Diego to party on Saturday.  Rather then going day by day I’m just going to grab the highlights from the week.

Monday, Feb 23rd, afternoon:  After surfing some of the worst Rincon ever I was pretty much over surfing for the day and headed over to J7’s work shop to fix some boards.  3 hours later Brennan calls me and says he would be super amped  if he could surf a session on his birthday.  I tried to dissuade the guy knowing it was going to be on shore, super low tide and tiny.  Never a man to truly stomp on stoke we ended up cruising to C-street.

We get there and its like knee to waist high and side shore, but no one was out and there were a few lips that looked worthy.  We get out there and I soon realized wearing a 3/2 was a bad choice, the water was freezing and you know that once I get cold I just sit there.  Then there were these two little grommies who were constantly paddling me up the point add up all the adversities and I was pretty much over it.  Brennan got on my case about the whole little kids surfing circles around me thing so I made an effort in the last 30 minutes to school the kids which I did thanks to a 3 foot backside air on a knee high wave.

I got out of the water and my stomach was all cramped up.  These are not your average cramps.  Nope, these are those dreaded explosive diarrhea cramps.  Now I was surfing at the top of C-street and it was low tide leaving me a good 100 yards of rocks to walk over and then another 300 yard dash to the bathroom.  I charged that shit. I don’t think I have ever hustled that fast for anything in my life.  I get in the bathroom, the dirtiest public bathroom probably in all of Ventura County and rip my suit off as fast as humanly possible.  Of course I wore  the new Body Glove Vapor front zip, a very warm and comfortable suit but a bit on the difficult side to take on and off.  Not the sponsor plug, yeah I did my job back when I was a professional surfer.

I managed to get my suit down to my knees just in the nick of time before pissing out my asshole for a solid 15 minutes.  I mean I have had some pretty gnarly diarrhea before but this was crazy.   Straight up nothing but liquid was squirting out my hole.  To make matters worse I was dripping wet and freezing contributing to making this one of the top 3 worst bathroom experiences of my life (shit maybe I will write a blog about that on one of the free days).  Back in the myspace.com days I used to poorly attempt to adhere to a daily blog schedule.  It failed miserably.  I mean look how well I keep up with the UCB and that was suppose to be every Thursday.

Barley surviving I cleaned myself up, pulled back on my cold wet wet suit only to do a sorry walk of shame all the way to bottom free lot just above the pier.  I felt so violated and disgusted by the whole experience.  I got back to the car to a very jubilant Brennan ready to jive the shit out of me.  If it were not his birthday he definitely would have made it onto one of my lists.

I got dressed thinking the whole ordeal was over only to find out 5 minutes later as we are pulling out of the parking lot that the same dreaded cramps hit me again.  I was like dude we have to stop or I’m going to blow the seat out of my pants.  Luckily we were right across from the Habit Burger on Ventura Ave.  I got in there just as this haggard ass homeless lady was walking out.  I open the door and the bathroom is a mess, shit all over the place.

Clenching my ass closed with all my strength I quickly brought the toilet up to a bare bones level of cleanliness for me to sit on the seat.  Once again I took another ass piss.  While I’m in complete digestive agony this Mexican guy keeps banging on the door.  Finally after the 5th  time I scream at the dude that I was in the middle of the worst diarrhea of my life and to get off my fucken case.  Dude backed off.  Finally I guess I must have shitted all that was left in my stomach cause I was good to go, but the whole night out I was in constant fear of the shits coming back with a vengeance.  Luckily for me the whole ordeal was left behind in Ventura.

On a side note this whore I was seeing at the time ended up going home with my boy Brennan. Her excuse “It was his birthday Chris, everyone should get laid on their birthday”.  Somehow that did not make me feel much better.  At least I sort of had a hand in getting my boy laid.

 Wednesday Feb 24th 9pm:  While pre-gaming to go to the bar Face manages to pound 8 beers in a matter of 45 minutes.  Drunk as shit Scott, my Swedish neighbors and I persuade him to table dive through the pyramid of empties he build on the coffee table.  He goes for it belly flopping flat on the table after which I proceeded to poor beer all over his head.  From there he put on his dirt bike helmet while Scott and I hit him over the head with these two broken surfboards that I was going to hang on the wall.  Needless to say he was even more fun at the bar where I’m pretty sure he managed to hit on and aggravate every girl there.   I think one girl even slapped him across the face.  It was classic.

 

 

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Yeah we all knew not to expect much from this coming NW season, but then fall kicked into high gear with plenty of although not epic very consistently fun surf.  November opened up strong with a handful of days at Rincon and the first signs of town breaking.  The first half of the month I found plenty of surf to entertain myself with.  Then in the back half the flat spells from summer we all thought were past came back.  It was not just Santa Barbara that was flat, I mean that is a given since SB is the only water front town that might as well be surrounded by land as far as surf goes.  The whole fucking state was pretty much flat.

Hopefully December will pick things back up a bit and with the incoming forecast at least it looks like the week should be rather fruitful here.  Maybe it will get the ball rolling and we can get a few more fun days this season and I wont have to kill myself. Here are the numbers for the Month of November and the top sessions.

Number of Sessions – 20
Days Surfed – 19
Average Wave Height – 2-3+ft

Surf Spots

Rincon – 8
New Jetty – 3
Emma Wood – 3
C Street – 1
River Mouth – 1
Santa Clause Lane – 1
Oxnard – 1
Little Rincon – 1
Hammonds – 1

Top 3 Sessions:

3: 11/10/10 PM Session – 1-3+ft, Santa Claus Lane
Local wind swell in Santa Barbara is so aberrant it makes finding the right place to surf a little mission.  One day Rincon will be head high the next flat.  The thing about wind swell is that the angle is always changing making certain spots that never break fun and the standards poor.  It all comes down to how hard you want to search.  Today I was not in the mood nor did I have the time to go on a proverbial goose chase.  I headed straight to Rincon after observing some solid swell at Santa Claus yet when I got to Rincon the wind was South although it was NW and offshore up at Santa Claus.  I decided to just drive back there and see what there was to surf or if it was just a freeway mirage.  Turns out it was offshore/side shore three heads spread along the three mile long stretch of beach, waist to stomach high with the occasion chest high nug. Overall it was mostly walled with some racy corners.  I had one really fun Backside tube and brought down a good backside air reverse and a front side ally oop that I was pleased with.


2: 11/5/10 PM Session – 2-4ft, Rincon
As I was driving back from the previous session below I saw tons of waves peeling down Rincon with a very light crowd, maybe fifty guys along the entire point.  Needless to say I pulled off the highway got dressed and powered a second session.  The cove although fun looked pretty long boarded out and smaller then the top.  I went up to Lower Indicator/high River Mouth and snagged a bunch of great five to six hit waves.  I even managed a back door barrel through lower River Mouth.  Then after about an hour and a half that south wind caught up with me and so did the crowd.  It was all good I was pretty much over it by then anyway.

1: 11/6/10 PM Session – 3-5ft, Rincon
What a day.  I could not believe my eyes when driving by Rincon this afternoon that it still had waves and better waves then the day before with better conditions.  I started up top at River Mouth looking for the barrel but although I found some pretty ridiculous ones that I managed to connect from River Mouth through middle Cove I did not find that barrel I was hunting.  After an hour up top I made my way into the cove which courtesy of the negative tide was pretty much flawless with plenty of consistency and only about forty heads out. Most were visitors giving me the local edge.  I only got about a little over an hour and a half but my legs were spent from all the long rides anyway.  As I got out of the water towards dusk I contemplated the fact that every wave I caught this session even my throw aways (meaning I only got eight turns on them) could probably have been the best wave of someone’s life, but for me it was just another day at Rincon.  Im pretty fortunate to have the life I live.

November was all about getting Skunked!!!!!!!!!

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Normally I save all the day to day surf experiences for the surf log but I felt the last two sessions I have partook in were worth a more insightful recount.  Not the actually surfing or conditions although I must admit yesterday Emma Wood was rather fun and Cstreet did offer up a few waves this afternoon as well.  What I would like to talk about here are two instances that I found amusing.

The Abstruse Rob Machado

Last night I was super stoked at the sight of clean chest high Emma Wood, super bowly lefts and rights with only three guys out.  I tore on my wetsuit and ran down the trail so that I could take full advantage of the miniscule moments of daylight left courtesy of the time change, thank you 100 year out dated customs for making my life even more annoying.  As Im boring down the path I see a very familiar looking persona behind an open hatch back of a mini van.

I get closer and notice it is some strange looking scruffy dude with a fro fooling with a blow up mattress.  Then when I was with in fifty feet of this character I realized it was none other then once world number two, goofy foot aficionado, free surfer extraordinaire Rob Machado.  He looked right at me and I exclaimed “whats happening bud” in typical Santa Barbara surfer speak.  “Not much” he retorted and then jumped into the back of the van, closed the hatch and that was the last I saw of him.

I guess Rob Machado was going to spend the night sleeping in his van in front of Emma Wood.  I would have thought he would be in Hawaii by now for the Triple Crown.  Its not like there was a good swell in the water that he was trying to chase.  Im sure there must be more then a dozen people he could have called to crash at home in either Santa Barbara and Ventura, yet the dude was going to sleep in the van.  Shit Im still kicking myself for not inviting him to come home with me and crash in my spare room.  I guess Rob and I are destined to cross paths in the strangest of circumstance.

Those Darn Groms

Today after work I thought I would take advantage of the NW/SW combo swell in the water down at one of the Ventura beach breaks.  My buddy claimed it to be light winds and with the mid tide Emma was out of the question.  Stoked I hauled ass down the 101 and sure enough the wind was pretty light.  That was of course till I got with in earshot of Cstreet.  From there South it was howling WNW.  At that point I was not left with any other options besides Cstreet and there I found myself.

The surf was not bad solid chest high with the bigger peak or so, but the line up was mobbed with grommies.  I mean there had to be at least fifteen after school specials frothing all over the wind blow rights.  I took my time getting dressed for what was a forced paddle out.  Upon getting in the water I was equally let down by a sudden upwelling making the holey 4/3 I chose to wear a bad choice.

I sat out there for the first thirty minutes or so feeling rather un aggressive as the groms swarmed all around me poorly slicing and chopping away at the broken up lines.  All of these factors were enough to send any sane person running for the hills, but I stuck it out and actually ended up getting a handful of five and six turn rides.  I knew most of the groms out by face from both Emma Wood and New Jetty, just stoked Ventura kids.

Towards the end of the session one of such paddles up to me and says “I remember you, you used to rip New Jetty all the time, what happened?”  I did not quite now how to respond.  I still rip New Jetty somewhat regularly and was not sure to take his words as an insult or just plain stupid grom ignorance.  Before I formulated a replied he continued with “How come you don’t have any stickers on your board any more?”

Ahh it all made sense now.  I must not surf anymore cause Im no longer sponsored.  I tried to explain to the kid how Globe and Body Glove dropped me and that I was kind of over the whole thing anyway, tired of starving.  I did my best to try to annotate that I was now living life after “professional surfing” (in my case meaning I helped to pay into the profession of other surfers and industry type people) and have more fun surfing now then I ever had when I was a logoed rider. Now when I paddle out I have nothing to prove or contests to train for and other things of that matter.

I just get to go out and surf and surf however I want.  If I want to spend the entire session boosting airs I can.  If I want to fuck around in waist high close outs trying to perfect the drop in floater basically making a fool of myself kooking it its my choice.  I can surf rights, lefts, straights, wherever I want, however I want, whenever I want and because I work I have money to boot (ok that last part is a lie Im still pretty damn poor).  I did my best to construe my situation on him, but at 16 years old he just could not grasp how I could give up “living the dream”.

Then he caught a wave and about five minutes later a different grom paddled up to me and we basically went through the same saga.  I don’t understand these kids.  I suck at surfing, especially by California standards of performance.  Why would any of them believe I could still be a pro surfer?  Shit all I want to do is surf as much as humanely possible and cook food to support my living.

Speaking of Rob Machado in strange settings...

With awesome moves like this it is a wonder no one wants to sponsor me...

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