God Bless GPS: Or, The OTHER great summer pleasure

I am not surfing this weekend, though it's midsummer and midsummer surfing is one of life's great pleasures. But summer is brief and it's time to discover the OTHER great summer pleasure: the roadtrip. Yeah!

If there's anything better than setting off on a roadtrip, it's setting off on a roadtrip with GPS. I truly think this is one of the greatest inventions in the history of humankind. You can now truly go anywhere without planning in advance and can never get lost (for very long). Roadtrip perfected.

I like going places, but I just like driving in and of itself. Of course, the essential ingredient of a great summer drive is the soundtrack. And some of life's best moments are when road and music coalesce into an experience which transcends either of them by themselves. Great drives stay with you forever and are to be treasured. I've had quite a few and a couple already this summer.

Like the late-night, exhausted-from-sun-and-surfing drive from Santa Cruz to a little town I'd never heard of just outside of it, though a forest or what looked like one by the light of the moon, on a thrilingly winding and deserted road, the air cool and fragrant, listening to a CD I was hearing for the first time: Music for Drella by John Cale. Yeah, an old one but new to me, and with the pine trees and the moon it absolutely blew me away, it was so suited to the night and the whole day that had passed before it. I was going there to either sleep with or not sleep with a man who lived over a bar in this little town. The bar was something out of the 1950s movie and as far from hipster Santa Cruz as could be and I fell in love with it immediately. I ended up not sleeping with the man who lived above the bar with his dog and think it was the right decision even though I had and have decided for all practical purposes that at my age the word "No" should have no part in my vocabulary. And I will never say it again.

Or the drive this week that took me straight through a hailstorm so fierce that I had to pull off the road while hailstones exploded my car with such intensity and such noise that I feared they'd shatter the windshield; it was kind of like being inside an MRI magnified by a thousand and by fear. The rain came down in sheets and made me feel like the car was sliding away while it was parked and I could see nothing but slippery whiteness outside. And then it stopped and the sun came out and I started to drive again, looking for a rainbow and finding one, which makes any drive special. And the sky took on the hue that only comes after a violent storm, and the grass turned that extraterrestrial green of full summer, and there was haze on the river that ran alongside the road, and I said: I must remember this light, these colors, because it was like seeing a painting. And I had just gotten a Nina Simone CD and was listening to it, and it was a compilation of songs that had been recorded over many years but were all new to me, and one in particular I liked so much I played eight times in a row, because it was the perfect music for a day that had been pelted by a storm and washed clean and pure; nothing suited it like that voice. And I was glad to be on the road, many hours away from the ocean, headed in fact for Lake Ontario where there are no waves.

You Know It's Summer When...

It's the middle of the week, middle of the day, waves are teeny-tiny, and there's still fifteen people out.

But what a gorgeous day. There hasn't been a nice, mellow, sunny day like this in forever. At least it seems like I've been waiting for it all year; I have. The kind of day when the water's just the right temperature in relation to the air, and you don't want to get out of the water, and then you don't want to get off the beach.

With all the rain we've had, it's the first great summer weekday. And everyone who knows, knows weekdays are the best.

P.S. There is the most beautiful full moon out tonight over the water. It's light enough to surf by, if you wanted to.

Applause!

This morning, wonderful things happened:

I went surfing the first time this year without a wetsuit, woo-hoo!

Perhaps as a result of shedding the suit, I surfed great.

I caught waves perfectly. One was so perfect, and lasted so long, and was so well executed, that one of the locals (a friend, all around good guy, and experienced surfer) hooted for me as I exited the wave. He's seen and heard my struggles to learn for years.

"You're really getting good," he said.

"Nice drops."

Two words I thought I'd never hear applied to me!

S.I.F.A.

Back at home, what a relief. Surfing Is Fun Again.

I had a really good day today (thanks to the good waves). Lots of rides without effort, and that feeling of time standing still.

California coastline

Just looking at the waves at Ocean Beach today made my bones hurt.

They weren't measurably worse than yesterday's, perhaps, but now it was a grey cool day with nobody out and that made them look worse.

Plus I was plain worn out by so much surfing.

So I decided to take a drive down the Coast. I'm glad I did. The scenery was gorgeous. My goal was to find the Rockaway Beach in California, and I sort of did, it's hard to tell---I didn't see the sign. Well, I drove by it anyway. Linda Mar was flat and didn't impress me. There was another break, I think it was called Montero, that looked nice. If I'd had the energy and still had the board I would've gone in.

Mavericks was FLAT. FLAT FLAT FLAT! What's with that? I coulda gone in with a board and then I could truthfully say I surfed Mavericks, ha ha, it was that flat. I thought Mavericks was never flat. I would have enjoyed seeing that famous wave, except there were no waves.

Ocean Beach

I had some trepidation about trying to surf Ocean Beach, given what I'd read about it. And last time I was in San Francisco it was a grey, rainy, windy day with blown out slop and no one out on a Sunday afternoon.

But today the stars (sun/wind/tides) all aligned. I got up early, checked the cams, rented a board, and went. The waves were two to three feet, there was no wind, the sun was out and so were the surfers. All I could get was a softtop board a foot shorter than I like, but that would be OK, I thought.

I later found out that that is the only place in the area that rents boards, because, the other shop told me, the surf is usually big and rough and they have had to do too many rescues.

The waves were a lot more powerful and harder to catch than they looked, the board was not familiar, and it took me a lot of tries/wipeouts before I caught any, and a lot more before I got to my feet. But then I did. Then I wiped out again. I was alternating between: I'm just like a beginner, I might as well never have surfed before, I can't get anything---and: Catching a wave, getting up (though not often popping, my arms are so exhausted from the last few days) and actually riding a San Francisco wave. Five times.

Today it was the Aqua Board guy. He was the one catching all the waves and having all the fun. He actually smiled and said to me after one ride, "That was one of the best waves I've ever had." I said I hadn't had any yet, and he said what I had just been thinking: "It's hard to know where to sit today. You are either too far out or too far in." And that simple acknowledgment that it wasn't just me seemed to make all the difference---that and watching him and going where and when he went.

Though the paddle outs were short and easy and I only had to turtle once, there was a lot of strong current. I wiped out pearling quite a few times, other times wiped out right after standing up. It took strength to hang on to the board through all the wipeouts. What I am saying is, though I cannot say quite why, I don't think I have ever, ever been as exhausted after a surf session as I was after two hours at Ocean Beach this morning. I was ready for a nap at two p.m. All I could do was lie in the sun for an hour or so. And I'm not sure I want to wake up and do it all over again tomorrow.

And like yesterday, the surf session was only part of the adventure. The rest of the fun entailed me having been left---dripping wet, without so much as a towel, a bottle of water, sunscreen, even one cent of cash to buy lunch, my phone, my clothes, my shoes, etc.---at the beach in the hot sun by my companion, who evidently didn't see me looking for him and just took off. I might have been sitting in that wetsuit for hours without any way to get off that beach or any idea if he would come back. What a pissy lowdown thing to do to somebody. I'll be generous and say we had a misunderstanding, but even so that doesn't make it OK to dump somebody at a strange beach. Yes, by using my wits I was eventually able to resolve the situation before wetsuit rash, sunstroke or dehydration set in.

Be the guy with the red board

I spent the afternoon at Capitola, missing waves. There wasn't anything challenging about the waves or the break. But I kept paddling and missing, for a couple hours. Eventually I figured out two things: I was too far forward on this board because it was six inches shorter than my usual board. Second, the only guys getting waves were in one particular spot under the curl. As usual I was off to the shoulder so as not to get in their way. Which meant when we all paddled for waves, they got them and I missed.

And I was willing to accept this. What are the deep-seated psychological reasons why I was willing to accept having travelled across the country in search of waves only, once I got there, to forego said waves just because there were other people who wanted them?

Ah, let's count the reasons. I'm a white female ("the whitest person I ever met" according to my old friend W. who is white himself but not as white as me) of a certain generation before MTV, was raised Catholic, grew up in the Midwest, experienced abuse as a child...all of which translates boringly and predictably into: Someone who puts other people's needs before her own.

And then there was the guy with the red board, who was none of the above I am sure, except white. The guy with the red board was always in the right spot. He'd get ride after ride, then paddle right back out to the right spot.

And at this break as the one yesterday, there was really only one narrow zone for getting rides. A few feet away, and you'd get nothing.

Once again I was reminded of the primal rule of surfing, which is the primal rule of life:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BEING TOO AGGRESSIVE.

What was I doing thousands of miles from home out in the middle of the ocean? Did I come there to sit politely and not interfere with other people's fun?

Hell no!

So I started going right where the red board guy went, and paddling for "his" waves, and not caring whether anyone was taking off right beside me or sitting in front of me.

That was the key, two hours into the session, to finally getting waves: Just take them. Be the guy with the red board.

I did notice a lot of people (like last time in Santa Cruz) taking off next to each other, taking off with people right in front of them not caring if they ran them over, doing all that stuff that would get you yelled at in New York, but here it seems to be expected and no one gets upset.

After I got my few waves I was able to get out of the water with a shred of dignity.

Then I found my rental car had a flat tire, which was a whole nother adventure. If you happen to be on the West coast, do not rent from Fox Rent a Car, folks.

But that led to my getting my board back to the shop three hours late, which got me to the surf shop after dark, to find quite an interesting scene in the parking lot.

There was a half naked surf instructor, around my age and quite good looking (and not all of them are) and five tall blond men, very young and good looking, replaying the waves for each other over and over, smoking and drinking. You may have heard this phrase before, it's almost a cliche, but in this case it was quite literally true: They were dripping with stoke.

Turned out the guys were from Denmark and probably had never surfed before. The surf instructor offered them all a place to stay at his house, any time. We talked a little as I was returning the board and even glassy eyed with pot and stoke he was still smarter and more interesting than most surf instructors I've encountered. I got his number and an invite to stay at his place, too. I was leaving from San Francisco the next day or I might have called him up. Next time.

Wonder what happens when all the students he's given this offer to show up at his door at once?

Oh yeah, and this encounter in the Cowells parking lot was the first time in my life I've ever been addressed as "dude," which makes me smile every time I think of it.