Surfing Ruined My Life

I find myself once again at a loss to completely grasp what happen at Indicator Left at Rincon this morning.  Lately when such occurrences go down I just feel so let down by my fellow man and then maybe a little bit by myself for feeding into it.  This morning being that I was off and there was a severe lack of surf according to the buoys I decided to sleep in a little bit.  Fuck I have been having to get up at 5:45 most days to go to work.  Working back on mornings is a real bitch, although I have found it actually may allow me to get a bit more water time then working the dinner shift.  On the down side I am fucking tired all of the time.

I got up around 9am and was about to figure out some breaky when I got a text from my boy Trevor that he was going to paddle Indy Left and that it looked better then the grovel we had there last night (you can visit the surflog for more about that session, the 5/13/14 pm session entry).  Whatever, my plan was to go have a look around Ventura Harbor in the distant hope of scoring small, fun off shore Santa Clara.  I wanted to go to Jalama, but I lost my debit card in the atm machine last week and still have not gotten my replacement.  With no more then $23 to my name I didn’t want to burn up all my gas, especially at an average of $4.15 a gallon.  WHY?!? When I look out my window all I see in the channel is a line of oil rigs and I am constantly picking tar out of everything I own and off my body.  Citizens of the 805 should get some kind of gas discount for the inconvenience.

I decided to cruise to Rincon to have a grovel with Trevor.  I really didn’t have anything to do and it was already hot as fuck out, over eighty, might as well go cool off in the ocean.  I needed to kill about two hours to get on the other side of the high tide.  Sure enough Indy looked fun and Trevor was out there all by himself.  I paddled.  While I was stretching this other guy came down with his dog and decided to bare back it.   I know the air may have been warm, but the ocean up here is still just pushing the high fifties and that is being generous on most mornings.

Trevor enjoying the short lived solace of his solo session.

He paddled right to the peak and started hassling and even burning Trevor.  I was doing a slightly extended stretch feeling a bit more stiff then usual from helping my buddy Anton move the previous evening.  I jumped in and since there was three of us and not a ton of set waves coming through wanting to warm up I proceeded to scrap the insiders.  They were fun and punchy reminding me of the tiny surfs I used have in the summer time back in New Jersey.  About thirty minutes into the surf or less this set wave comes right to me and I am in the perfect position for it.

The left at backside Rincon is tricky to line up as it shifts all over the reef with little notice.  I found that my current position had me a little deeper then I wanted to be for the size of the wave thus I paddled a little for the shoulder.  While I was doing this the other dude out there  decided to use my current situation as leverage to paddle around me from the outside.  I was deeper first and he just had three set waves in a row.  Technically it was my turn.  Being that there were just three of us out we were following or at least I thought we were, the principles of low crowd surfing etiquette.  It was after all the “gentleman’s shift” in which most of the participants follow good surfing conduct.
If you are able to surf between 9am to noon then odds are you have  custom tailored your schedule for a surfing life style as Trevor and I and most of the people I surf with. Most of the time we are pretty mellow dudes out in the water stoked to be enjoying a surf with like minded surfing enthusiasts.  This guy was on a whole different program giving us attitude out there from the get go.  Not looking back I committed to the wave and I guess “Mr. Angry” (as I will refer to him for the rest of this peice) did too.

Rincon Left is the only real easy access wave in close proximity of Santa Barbara that breaks in the summer. With that in mind it gets crowded fast and only offers a few peaks and a tight take off zone.

I felt him on my heels, but since paddling around is a dick move any time unless the spot is packed beyond maximum capacity (at which time I will bail or not even paddle out) or your in a contest where it is still a questionable action.  I have been in many of altercations when younger for paddling around. I did not pull out.  Indy Left is a short wave, three turns at the most and if someone drops in then you might as well just pull out the back cause even if they kick out the wave is pretty much over for you anyway.  With that in mind I up pumped and hit the lip.  Mr. Angry decided to kick his board out at me.  It hit me in my back leg though I was moving rather fast and it was not a hindrance to my riding the rest of the wave.

When I kicked out the back dude was paddling straight for me with an angry face.  I figured it was going to be the usual stare down, yelling and splashing match that can frequently happen in those situations.  More times then not the two guys involved have it out.  Paddle back out all mad at each other and two or three waves later realize how stupid the whole thing was and become friends or at the very least surf the session civilly.   As soon as he came paddling over to me he slapped me in the face and spit at me.  Immediately things took off to a very bad foot.  It appeared I was going to have to defend myself.

Keep in mind this guy may have been a tad taller then me and a solid 200 lbs and well built.  I was most likely going to get my ass kicked here.  He screamed something at me about how he was “born here in 1972 and that he remembers when I first moved out here and was a little Globe bitch and how I burned him at Rincon back then”.  Now what he is referring to with the “Globe bitch” thing is that when I started spending a ton of time out in SB around ’07 my main sponsor was Globe shoes and apparel.  By 2008 when I relocated out here full time Globe was attempting to take the surf industry by storm and had built a very solid team.

Here in Santa Barbara they picked up like six of us and we surfed together as group to make filming easier a good deal of the time.  It was not uncommon that if one of us paddled out we would be followed by at least two others if not the entire six and a camera.  Yes, that can get annoying to the regular surfing public.  At that time the surf biz was booming and half the guys in the line ups of California up and down the coast were sponsored so it was not like it was all that uncommon for a team to mob a break.  Ultimately the bottom fell out on the surf Industry by the summer of 2010 leaving 90% of us in the cold.

Me back in my Globe days at Rincon

Since I was not from Santa Barbara and always wore stupidly colored wet suits I seem to take the brunt of the negativity for the era of guys sponsored by Globe.  Whether I burned this guy at Rincon or not it was like 7 fucking years ago.  I have no recollection of the incident at all nor did recognize this neanderthal that was now attacking me in the water over a  shitty wave on a two foot day with three guys out at Indicator.   This is not the first time I was in such a circumstance.  I had a similar altercation with some crack head at Hollywood Beach back in October of 2010, which steadily got out of hand.  You can read about that one in the blog entry “Another Altercation in the Line Up“.

I blocked the next slap that came to my face and this time was knocked off my board.  Before I could come up Mr Angry was holding me under water in a futile attempt to drown me.  I bit his finger while he was in the process and broke free from the hold.  Gasping for air I surfaced a little disoriented in time to see Trevor paddling to my defense.  At the moment Trevor not being a small guy himself and currently rocking a scary beard got right in this dudes face.  I guess from what I was told he took a swing at Trevor.  The two of them started fighting and splashing water.  With the same “Your not from here”,  claimed Mr Angry; “I was born in Carp”, said Trevor.  This went on for bit till I tried to intervene with “lets just shut up and surf guys”.

There were some fun set waves coming in and we were missing them as a result of our tomfoolery.  This of course brought the wrath back to me where I was being berated with “where are your from”, over and over again.  Oh and I got slapped again.   At this point I was over it and called the dude out to the beach.  At that he splashed us, spitted at us and paddled  away.  Trevor and I paddled back to the peak and the whole thing started all over again.  Mr. Angry kept provoking Trevor calling him my lap dog and me his bitch.  Then he attacked Trevor again and at that point Trevor I called the guy out and we went into the beach to wait for him.  I picked up a solid rock that fit and was easily concealed by the palm of my hand.  This guy was obviously crazy and I was not about to take any chances.

We stood there at attention, arms folded across our chests waiting for Mr. Angry to come throw down with us.  A few sets went by and he didn’t.  I was temped to throw his stuff on the beach in the ocean in retaliation.  Trevor calmed me down.  After about 5 minutes I began yelling out to him to come in and fight.  There were a handful of Rincon regulars on the beach, whom I am in pretty well with.  They had seen the whole thing and asked what happened.  None of them really knew this supposed born and raised Rincon local.

He never came in and with added support from others we paddled back out.  It didn’t take long for it to heat up again.  He kept calling me a bitch.  I said “your the bitch, too afraid to come to the beach and fight two guys smaller then you and picking on a dude half your size over an incident that happened 7 years ago”.  He then told Trevor something incoherent on how “he was backing up his boy from New York on the slopes of Colorado” (Trevor lived in Colorado for a few years).  Finally an older guy I surf rather frequently with all over the area paddled and immediately got our backs helping refute the idiocy of Mr. Angry.  He started with the “1972 local since” crap again.  This older guy said to him “1968 bud, been surfing since you were in diapers”.

Then a handful other guys I also know who are also Rincon Regulars paddled out.  With no leg to stand on Mr. Angry bailed forewarning me that he was going to make a point to get me when I least expect it with out my friends to help me out.  Considering I have never seen the dude before in my life I am not too worried about it, though I am going to surf Indy for the rest of the summer armed and will cut this mother fucker if he tries anything on me again.  Quote of the session was “Maybe my dog should have fought his dog” from the older guy who paddled out pertaining to the whole incident.  The rest of the session I was a little worried the idiot was going to smash up my car in the lot or be waiting for us with reinforcements or god knows what.   The last thing I wanted was to have my car destroyed or be killed over knee to waist high Rincon Left.

Trevor and I made sure we left together back to the lot and were ready for anything.  Luckily Mr. Angry was gone and our cars were unscathed.  Unfortunately I am sure this is not the last I will have to deal with him.  What a bunch of bull shit.  All I wanted to do was grovel a few fun ones then go get some at Santa Clara River Mouth.  After he left I got a pretty cool little tube that I came out of.  Fuck negative people.  I feel sorry for their sad plight in life.

Was this really worth fighting about when it could have just as easily been shared?

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