Sand Dollar

Zac starts driving at 10:30 pm Monday night. I'm in the back, having given the shotgun post to Justin, the 6'5" 19 year old recently relocated from Florida. The dude is like a two year old labrador, just realizing he has four legs, or in this case, the fact that he's fucking huge. He talks in a slow, deliberate cadence, much like the now famous Napolean Dynamite.
Justin and I pass out, and periodically wake up to see Zac, gripping the giant, ancient steering wheel of his Turbo Diesel Mercedes that he runs on bio-diesel. His face is lit up by the dashboard, and he varies his determined gaze on the road only long enough to mentally calculate whether the vista points we pass would be a worthy spot to "camp" for the night.
We drive into the night, until we get to Sand Dollar beach, just north of the small, irrelevant town of Gorda along Highway 1, where you can get a patty melt sandwich for $15.95. We pull in to the day use only parking area, slide into a spot, pull our gear out, and camp in the plush and bouyant grass next to the picnic area.
The trash crashes in the middle of the night, and we all three pop our heads up, wondering what that could possibly be. Is it a bear? A racoon? Is it going to eat us?
The next morning, Tuesday, we suit up an tromp down to the beach. Justin has a 3/2 Quicksilver wetsuit with no booties, while Zac has new booties and a wetsuit with 32 holes in it. I'm quite content in my 3/4 Ripcurl with 3 mil booties. We wait out the first set of head high, slightly troughless lefts and mushy but fun looking rights in the beach break bay.
After the pulse is through we start to wade into the water, walking until we're waist deep and the current and incoming white water make it pointless to walk anymore. Zac and I start paddling, while Justin wisely waits onshore for a complete lull. We paddle and duck dive through the first set, at least eight waves of head high, northern wompiness. I look over at Zac, and we both start laughing, "Good morning!" he grins. "My isn't it consistent though?"
I'm laughing so hard I almost don't have enough air to make the next duck. My duck dives leave something to be desired, as I usually come up right side up on my board, yet more often am swept sideways, barely clinging to the board while my body is flung about like a Raggedy Andy doll.
The set finally wanes, and as we continue grinding through the remaining current, we look back to see Justin, almost on par with our progress, as he was wise and waited out the set. "Hey," I yelled, "do you go to college?"
I looked over to the right and noticed we were parallel with the other groms in the water. I sat up to take a breather. Another set loomed. "We aren't far enough," Zac commented, and started scratching for the horizon. He made it to just outside the main energy of the waves, while I happened to end up right in the fucking swirling vortex of shame, getting washed back halfway to the beach, while Justin disappeared entirely, apparently having been swacked by the first two waves and given up to wait for another lull.
Finally, the set stopped, and I paddled out through relative safety, despite a few lingering waves. I sat way out, not really wanting to try for any waves, for fear it might be the sucker wave, and I'd end up inside paddling into another non-stop set. I ended up catching two waves, and flailing on both of them, especially the second as I tried to clear a section which simultaneously dredged onto the sand, grabbing my board from under my frail feet and flinging it toward my head, which slammed against the water and gave me mild whiplash.
We went up to the car after that pounding, and Zac encouraged me to start in on the second third of the watermelon he said we had to finish by noon. We piled into the beast and journeyed up to Monterey, where we visited Zac's white trash aunt.

Jobless Repose

I'm looking for a job like I'm looking for the cat to piss in my milk. I sleep in because I'm earning money painting. Painting is like sour milk: repulsive, annoying, demanding ... the list of adjectives I could derive to describe my lack of compassion for painting is limited only by the number of entries into the Thesarus. Instead of getting up and getting there early and getting it over with, I sleep in, squirming and swearing like I've got ants up my ass. Brown paint, white paint, green paint, navajo white paint; benches, cubbies, walls, hookboards, shelves, God damnit. It's excruciating, and to compound my dilemna, the pro painters working their job alongside me come up and laugh at the way I clean, because I get paint all over me. They joke that I should join them, since I am now a painter anyway. Oh god no. I'd rather eat manure.

Ignorance of Technology

All I wanted to do was respond to another blog, but I had to create a user name, which then prompted me to create a blog page. So be it. Herein lies my blog page.