I wasn’t thinking about real life. I wasn’t thinking about getting back to the grind at Little Company of Mary Hospital tomorrow, the pile of aging bills on my end table, and I beyond doubt was not thinking about busy airport lines and flights home. I was solely fixated on the 8-foot glistening liquid towers a few hundred yards front of me, and how me and my blue longboard needed to make the absolute most of the next four hours at Cardon Surf Resort. Leash, bikini, tropical wax, and I was enveloped in the warm Mexican sea, following a pair of bright red boardshorts.
Logging long water hours the past few days , I’ve gotten this place wired, and each passing sunrise breeds waves better than the last. Healing from a slew of injuries amid my visit (and ironically waking up with a cold this morning), I was more ready than ever. Ready to sit deep, charge the outside, and fly down one of those sets that I’d been sitting on the shoulder and catching the middle of.
I paddled out and was happy to be joined by the Cardon Family – the illusive owner Sergio Castrovega (some guests think he didn’t really exist — one of them thought one of the Cardon staff members was secretly Sergio) decided to join in for some water time on my last day, along with Jeff Phillips and Omar, Cardon managers, supervisors, nurses, surf camp directors, bartenders, house comedians, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Jeff, who has surfed Cardon cumulatively more than anyone in the world, paddled out in his shocking red boardies intent on getting me the literal “longest wave of my life.” I explained to him that I’d already gotten the longest wave of my life here. “You haven’t been listening. You’ve been sitting on the shoulder, letting everyone sit in front of you and not taking the high line. You’re getting the one today. I’m not letting you go home without it.”
I hate to say it – as much as I like to ignore him, he tells it like it is. That’s just Jeff, and Jeff was (and usually is) right (and I hope he’s not reading this right now). I’m not sure if it’s been a combination of unintended laziness, flippant elation that I was deep down the coast in Mexico, or slight fear of a big late takeoff. I had been isolating inside usually getting a spot to myself, picking off leftovers that the group would miss, and even though the waves I was catching were about 200 yards long, a few a little longer, they had the potential to be nearly twice that. I sat on the inside getting some “friendly” encouragement to sit deeper from Jeff, then paddled deep towards the base of a swelling wall, heard “GO!!!!” from everyone around me, took a stroke, screamed comically but semi-seriously “I’M GUNNA DIE!,” heaved my rail up to set my line high on the 8-foot plus wave, and me and big blue sailed North into lefthand nirvana; past the resort, past the condo, past the edge of the grassy fields, and all the way down ending in front of the yellow house.
I was boundless. My mind hasn’t kicked out of that ride since.
I hugged Ken/Jen Miller, Kristina, Deanna, the Andys’, Craig, Sandra, Susan, Omar, and last but not least my friend and cheerleader Jeff, tan skin so dark against those bright red boardshorts he practically lived in, and climbed into Sergio’s truck bound for the Mazatlan airport.
I don’t know where I’ll end up next. But I know it wherever it may be, I’ll be there soon. A big part of me will never leave Central America, having bounced around to world class waves and world class experiences in three different countries since the beginning of February. Coming back to the grandiose hustle and bustle is now difficult, and the warmth I’ve experienced in supposedly some of the most truculent areas on Earth has left me with many astonished tears. The dazzle of the South Bay is where I hang my hat, but after these trips, other unseen oceans are tugging hard at my restless heartstrings. Even in the midst of my Cardon stay, I found myself looking up flights and questionably affordable surf hostels for new waves, knowing that I would be under LA’s cloak soon enough.
The wheels just hit the tarmac. Time for those pesky bills and time to pay my rent – a few days late from my extended stay. Most of all, time to figure out how to get to Sayulita or Scorpion Bay. Maybe back to the lefts of Chicken Bowls in Nicaragua, or even shoot back down to Cardon for some more longer-than-life lines and delicious seafood. Maybe I can catch the rights of El Salvador again, this time a little smaller and a lot less windy. Maybe on to the warm and sharky waters of South Africa, or jungly back-dropped Noosa in Australia.
At one point I wrote about how a good wave can wreak havoc on your whole day, feeding productivity to the dogs. I have no idea where I’ll be in a month, but all I know at this very moment, is the wave from this morning, and sailing past that manicured resort, landing in front of that yellow house – that wave will not only ruin my day, but weeks, months, and maybe years. That wave started something, and I think I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to find what just began.
