Listless waves, and Barney

Today's session was pretty much the worst in months, but it wasn't me; it really was the waves. There really were none, and even in you managed to catch a ride on a fragment of a six-inch wavelet, it deposited you on the sand in about one second. Not fun, but there were a lot of people, generally clueless, trying and not doing much but bumping into each other, roller derby style.

Barney's back! See last summer's posts. I have actually missed this guy. Barney is an older gray-haired man, even older than me, and a total dork. Think high school English teacher, which is close to what he is, I think, and his real name I've forgotten, but Barney suits him. The thing that I like so much about Barney is that he is so genuinely, charmingly immune to the whole surf-culture, macho, competitive, aggressive thing. He's just out there doing his thing, being Barney, having fun, taking great pleasure in his small improvements, always smiling, always friendly. It's not so much that he doesn't care what anyone else thinks about him as it would never even occur to him to care.

Barney has sensibly limited his surfing this summer to the second, less crowded surfing beach twenty blocks away, which is why I haven't seen him. None of our local crew would even speak to him. But I like him. He's welcome here any time.