Endless Session, Day 157: I’m dreaming of a whitewash Christmas

The sleighbells of my shredmobile, aka my subaru, were jingling this blustery Christmas morning as my buddy Nickolai and I cut through the wind and landed in Torrance Beach, meeting my friend and talented cameraman Brendan Simmons in the parking lot.

Santa decided to bring some stormy onshore breezes to the South Bay for the holidays, making day 157 of 366 (its a leap year) days of surf interesting to say the least.  Nickolai and I suited up, walked down to the empty beach, and watched for a while as the stormy surf pounded in, the tide so high and waves so powerful that the beach was flooding with foam.  We started our long and grueling paddle out, and I fell behind and got pounded by an incoming set, so strong that it completely ripped my board from me and my leash, which I swam with difficulty in with, still attached to the string.  I exited the water having not caught a wave yet, and chatted with Brendan, slightly shaken up and thinking that I might try a more sheltered spot after Christmas morning festivities.  I was able to jerry-rig my leash and ultimately decided to paddle back out, and as I was about to begin the journey watched as Nickolai took a huge outside set on the head, and shortly following, his broken – in – half board was rolled in by the unforgiving whitewater.  He made the intense swim into shore as I scraped up the pieces, the chunks of fiberglass staring at me as if to say “what are you even doing here, this is crazy, go find mellower waves to ride.”

Nickolai and I stood on the beach and just looked at each other – then in an instant he grabbed the better half of his surfboard, I picked up mine, and we hopped back in the whirlpool that was the ocean.  As he bodysurfed his mangled piece of surfboard, I caught an inside wave, and soon after we exited the gnarly sea, feeling like we just took on waves from the movie The Perfect Storm.

After I dropped off Nickolai and started driving home, the song “Renegades” started playing in my subie, and I started laughing uncontrollably at the lyrics, adrenaline still pumping through my body from the Epic, Gnarly, Thrilling, Exciting, Amazing Christmas morning.

Hey hey hey, hey hey hey, living like we’re renegades.  Renegades.