Dramamine Drama Queens

It's Murphy's Law. Two weeks without surf sends you into a complete funk, bitching, twitching, and itching to get back out there. As if on cue, your complaints about needing to get wet are answered by an ominous rainstorm. But you endure it all because on Sunday you will go surfing come hell or high water.

Well, high water came.

I drove out Sunday at 11:30 with Slim; we got to Cannon Beach around 1:30 (my new old car labors over the coastal range). Our first glimpse of the swell wasn't promising, but anyone who knows me knows that I'm a blind optimist. Putting images of "The Perfect Storm" out of my head, I floored it south until we reached Arch Cape, halfway to Short Sands. The way this little beach was facing, the Southeast wind actually threatened to whip the American flags off peoples decks and out to sea. We were greeted by the following sight:



Okay, we thought, looks like there might be a peak out there that breaks both directions, even if there only seems to be a two second interval between swells. We tug on our wetsuits and charge! Sort of. This is the first time we've paddled out here, and we soon face the realization that there's an insane longshore rip that pulls north, lickety split. We can't even make it to the outside because it's suddenly pretty far south of where we find ourselves pointed. I catch a couple rights that fizzle right from the drop. On our way back to the shore I notice that Slim has picked off a reform with a little juice so I wait to catch one of my own. Unfortunately, I wait too long and I'm a hundred yards north of the inside peak. I belly one in and run back up the beach. We paddle out again, trying to find the elusive inside wave, but it becomes apparent that if you don't time the sets right - bye-bye birdie - you're Alaska bound.

So five minutes later we're sitting on our board bags heading down the 101 and I'm doing my best Dale Earnheardt Jr. impersonation with my dripping bootie on the gas pedal. There's always Short Sands!

But Shorty's is even worse. Four-foot wind chop hiding three-foot set waves. Slim threatening mutiny and abandoning ship after 20 minutes. You get the picture. Squinting to find a silver lining in on the horizon, I hang in there in true Sissy Fish style and catch a few waves (if you can call them that). The best thing I can say is that I tested out my water camera kit--a disposable camera in a second-hand fanny pack. It withstood a decent pounding in the shorebreak and I snapped a few portraits of my sea sick buddies.

On a brighter note, it stopped raining and I did book a trip to Baja today. But more about that in my next entry.


Music: Lynton Kwesi Johnson - "It Noh Funny"