Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Waves’

Rincon51117

The sands of time continue to pass through the hour glass unrelenting.  As that time passes we grow older and subsequently our lives change.  More for some then others.  Myself I always seem to travel in some kind of cyclic motion never finding a means to an end. Maybe that is just the existence I have been so accustomed that it is the only reality I know.  Many of you might have thought I gave up on SurfingRuinedMyLife.net.

The thought did cross my mind for a host of epithelial reasons. First off there is a personal cost to blogging that in some ways changes the writer’s life.  Sometimes in the past I found myself wondering if my life was leading the blog or it was the blog that began to structure the outcome of my life.  This idea finally became so ingrained I needed a break to sort it out.

BigSur121816 040

As long as my life goes in this direction maybe I don’t really care what’s leading it.  Photo: A Lua

What I found was that after taking nearly a year off from writing, besides the surflog, was that my life still went on in the same status quo it has.  I have been publicly writing about myself on the internet since 2005.  That is over a decade.  I sort of forgot what life was like before documentation.  At this point SurfingRuinedMyLife.net has become a part of me making the thought of letting it go seems impossible,

On the topic of costs, there is and has been an emotional cost to blogging.  Mainly it is more or less pertaining to the emotions of the important people in the main subject’s life.  It is impossible to write a life style blog based on oneself with out including the important people in that life.  They are the supporting characters in my life that alter its course and adventures as much as myself.  In most cases there has been minimal backlash, yet in few cases, as my long term readers know, there have been some retractions.  Truth be told I have lost friends, family, girl friends, connections, jobs, and more likely then not other cool things I will never know about due to my writings.  Our actions have consequences and such I too am not impervious of.

FullSizeRender (11).jpg

Here I am about to learn the consequences of high performance surfing. Photo: A Lua

You know what “FUCK ‘EM”.  I didn’t start this blog to make friends (though the unexpected awesome people I have met and befriended because of SurfingRuinedMyLife.net have been amazing, you know who you are) and I never have lived my life in fear of my actions. To be honest I am really tired of making excuses for myself and the path I have chosen to take.  Despite the care free fun life that I portray it hasn’t come with out the omittance of other life experiences.   In the pursuance of surfing, doing and saying what ever I want it has left me in a sort of box that now as bit more of an adult I have found the world has sort of left me behind.  Or let me rephrase that, I have let it leave me behind. The ability and drive to catch up has almost completely alluded me.  Thus I am at the moment stuck in this proverbial box.

FullSizeRender (10)

Life moves fast like the cascading lip.  If we don’t keep up then we get left behind.  On another note I don’t mind being stuck in this box. Photo: A Lua

I hope this has shed a little bit of light on some of the reservations I have had about moving forward with SurfingRuinedMyLife.net.  This is also a declaration of my intent to write again and restore my inner voice. From this point on I am back to writing whatever it is I feel like cause this blog is not sponsored, supported or endorsed by anyone but myself.  Therefore I am going to be true to myself, my thoughts and beliefs  Take all your death threats, hate mail, bad comments, spitting at me in various surf locales I frequent and shove it up your ass.  Last I checked we lived in a country that values free speech.  In a world of easily accessible surf cams, information and social media my blog is a minor cog in the machine that is crowding and clogging our line ups.

That being said I do want to take a new direction on this blog because as life changes we change and some topics that I may have thought poignant to go on about in verbatim seem futile now.  There are some new thoughts and ideas I have that a few years ago were not even a twinkle in my eye.  I just wanted to announce my return to blogging and I once again would like to thank you for reading and supporting me.  My greatest hope is that I can write an even better, more entertaining and informative surf blog then I had in the past.  If you folks are down to go on this journey with me then please let me know in the comments.  I can use all the motivation I can get.  Welcome back everyone!!! I am glad to give this another stab.

FullSizeRender (12)

Here we go again! Photo: A Lua

Read Full Post »

It has occurred to me that I missed the January version of my monthly surf recap.  That is a little sad considering it has proved to be the best month in surfing of the winter season, which is about to close shortly.  February was a crazy and rather frustrating month to be a surfer in Santa Barbara.  It seemed that for every great day there was a flat day and for ever good run of swell it was followed by a flat spell.  Plagued by bad weather, diligence was key.  There were plenty of days where a great session went down but only for a short period of time at a certain location.

I found myself surfing a wide variety of spots and even a few rather unlikely places.  We had a head high SW wind swell that is unheard of anytime of year.  Overall though compared to last February this one was a bit unfortunate to say the least.  If you notice, in this surf summary there are a few more stats and that is because I have diligently been keeping track of the number of waves and amount of time of each session.  Im not going to get into that here.  Look for a blog all about my new wave to time in water stats soon.

Number Sessions Surfed: 21
Days Surfed: 21
Actual Time Spent in the Water: 32.5 hrs
Number of Waves Surfed: 556
Average Waves Surfed per Hour: 17 waves

Spots Surfed:

Rincon: 7
New Jetty: 5
Emma Wood: 2
Santa Claus Lane: 1
Stanley’s: 1
Solimar: 1
Bates Beach: 1
Oxnard Shores: 1
Mesa Lane: 1
Santa Clarita River Mouth: 1

Top 3 Sessions:

3: 2/18/11 PM Session – 3-5ft, Bates Beach
Waves Surfed: 30
Time in Water: 2hrs
South East wind swell in Santa Barbara?  And Rincon of all places!!!  JD and I sat around all day waiting in vain for the wind to change.  Finally by 2:30pm we set off on a wing and a prayer to check every semi north facing spot I could think of.  After three less then stellar surf checks in the pouring rain we ended up at Bates Beach (the top beach at Rincon).  Turns out there were solid chest to head high lefts peeling down the beach and barreling.  I was all over it.  JD however was not enticed opting to stay and nap in the car.  I however went out there and snagged a hand full a great barrels sandwiched between some pretty shitty beatings.  It was a classic New Jersey side shore day although it also reminded me of North East wind swell Frisco.

2: 2/19/11 AM Session – 2-4ft, Solimar?
Waves Surfed: 19
Time in Water: 1hr
This morning was another surf I had not planned on.  I thought I would have been too hung over to even get out of bed in time for work at 11, but thanks to things not going as planned I ended up making it an earlier night then expected.  As a result I was up early and since the sun was out and there still a bit of that SW wind swell on the buoys I figured I would just head to Emma Wood.  JD was awake for some reason even though he got home way later then I did and we gave it a go.  On the way down there were some fun looking waves at both Santa Claus and La Conchita.  Part of me just wanted to stop and surf either one of those, but I really had faith in Emma.  Turns out Emma was terrible, too bowly with the mix of NW and SW swells.  We were cruising back to see about the top of Pitas when I noticed that the north side of Solimar right before the houses start if your coming from Santa Barbara, looked punchy as hell.  We pulled over and saw a few dumpy, heaving shore breaky nugs with one guy on it.  Out of time we decided to give it a go.  To be wholly honest I did not think much of the wave while putting on my suit but as soon as we hit the beach we saw this wave wedge up, A-frame and then heave over spitting both left and right.  After that we were full on frothing.  I ended up getting a bunch of sick left hand barrels and hit a super clean backside indy grab air.  It reminded me of the grinds in Buxton, NC on the outer banks.  JD had a ball also.  It was so good I ended up being ten minutes late to work, but a lot of me thought of not showing up at all.  Sometimes you can find waves in the most unlikely of places I mean technically that is not even really a surf spot.  Soooo Stoked!!!

1: 2/17/11 PM Session – 4-7ft, Rincon
Waves Surfed: 23
Time In Water: 3.5 hrs
See blog Big Name Pros, Stupid Car Surfing and Aggressive Line Up Tactics

This picture of a kid sliding into a cheese grater pretty much sums up how February worked out for surfing.

Read Full Post »