I thought it was an earthquake, but nope, just a whole lot of booming thunder and resounding downpour jolted me from slumber at 4 in the morning. Hmmm. It’s going to be an interesting day of wave-hunting, I thought sleepily as I drifted back off for a bit.
Another bad car issue led me to my mom’s work, where I swapped for her more reliable whip so I could travel down the 405 to try and find a place to that would allow me to continue walking around on Earth (having looked at Hermosa and seeing massive wind-blown storm waves cracking against the bottom of the pier).
Down to my sanctuary of Doheny I sped, pulling up to the nearly empty parking lot save two other cars and a ton of puddles. The air outside was bone-chilling, so I suited up in my mom’s Subie and ran down the beach, wind blowing me around all the way to the water’s edge. There were two other people out just as nuts as me to surf in the post-rain nastyness, but they weren’t in their right mind, having not slept in 24 hours and just arrived after driving all night from San Francisco to camp for a week at the Doheny campgrounds. I traded more than a few waves with John and Rich, and when we paddled for waves, the wind was blowing water back into our eyes with such force that we all had to close them before standing up and most of the time riding the wave, prompting John to dub our session “Braille Surf.”
After about 40 minutes of surfing blind, I joined David Olive, one of the main Doheny locals, for breakfast at Stacks Pancake house and had some of best cakes I’ve had in a long time with some of their famous coconut syrup. I managed not to fall asleep on the drive home, and kept daydreaming of my braille session while at my work desk, wanting to teleport back to that blinding, windy, perfect morning.
