#60 - last day

yesterday was tourist tuesday... today, forget the damn tourist, it's local boy wednesday. i'm sure there's a better way to say that, but screw it, i don't know how. anyway, it was south shore yesterday, let's go up north today. how much nicer is it to be on the north shore than in town? man, i can't even describe. it feels nicer in my soul. haha, that's dumb, but anyway, any chance i can get to pick north shore over south i'm there. but when you're just by yourself here's much more to do on the south shores so my trips north are limited, which is actually okay because that makes them that much better. another reason why i don't get up there as much as i'd like is because the surf is mostly either 1) flat, or 2) way too big for me. haha, plus, whenever it's in that nice middle-ly range, it's way crowded. so whenever i've got a day off (that's not the weekend) i love to head up there. today i picked chun's reef: it actually was pretty crowded on shore, less crowded in the water. i don't care for surfing in a crowd, i'd rather sit off to the side and wait for the waves to come rather than sit in the line-up and fight for it. and at chun's mostly people sit to the left for the prime break and i can paddle on out to the right and catch the smaller, but still decent stuff (and then when the sets come i can get some sweet rides out there too). anyway, my philosophy on surfing goes like this: i will surf based on these factors (in order of importance):


1. weather - i accept nothing less than perfect paradise weather (okay, not really, but i think i'm a temperature wuss because i get cold very quickly when it's not sunny, especially when it's windy)


2. crowd - mostly the reason why i pick my north shore days carefully is that i really hate fighting for waves, i'm a passive guy out there and i think to myself, well, if other guys are gonna be that aggressive for the waves, then good for them, they can have it, and i can wait... because the weather is perfect (see #1) and i'm just happy to be out in the water


3. waves - based primarily on clean-ness and then on size. i'm not big on wave heights, as long as it's clean you can get ultra-fun rides. but when you've got both... nice.

so today, 1) weather was perfect... clear blue skies, just a few floatly little cotton ball clouds, 2) crowded at the prime break, but very empty for a summer day on the north shore, and 3) pretty tiny waves, but rideable, a couple of shoulder-high sets rolled in which made it a bit more exciting, but everything was clean and glassy, perfect. when you can see every single reef head underneath your board as you're sliding in on a wave, that's the stuff right there. don't get that too much at white plains. so yeah, then, even as you're just sitting out there waiting for the sets to roll in, it doesn't matter that there's nothing to ride because you're sitting out there in a crystal clear ocean moving up and down with the waves, plus, bonus because you know when you go home that night and lie in your bed, you'll feel that ocean again before you fall asleep. see? it's like nature gives you a bonus to convince you how cool surfing is, haha.
so all in all, super-fun stuff out there today. a great way to end the summer (if there ever was a good way to END summer... but that's something else). me and my board here had an awesome surf session at chun's, ended it up with some kua`aina burger and now it's back to work tomorrow... sigh, well, this is hawai`i right? i guess the next "summer" day can wait until saturday!