Ode to Texas Surfing

The Perfect Day

I have always liked food metaphors. Everything from a “slice of life”, to “that was just frosting on the cake”, these little homilies sum up complex situations with delicious and to the point observations. Since I like to eat as well as ruminate, food metaphors seem to kill the proverbial two birds with one bb-gun or something to that effect. Of course those two birds would be quite sumptuous in a fricassee, but I digress.
My convoluted point is that I think food metaphors apply nicely to memories. Words like tasty, zesty, or bland as dirt could describe a memory as well as they describe mom’s meatloaf. And we all have our favorite memories that are the comfort food for our souls.
My favorite memory is the perfect day. Even better, the perfect day was not simply one day in the past. The perfect day was any day that came together in an exquisite blend of experiences. I remember the perfect day as I remember my last bowl of really good gumbo, a complex mix of ingredients whose product is so much more than the sum of its parts.
Now gumbo is a regional taste and also a food that has a theme. In Louisiana, chicken and sausage gumbo holds sway. I have often suspected that other meat of more dubious origins end up in the pot, but Cajuns could make road-kill taste good so we will leave them to it. I myself prefer a seafood gumbo with just a dash of Tabasco sauce in it. And so it is with the perfect day, complex and just a little spicy.
For my perfect day the theme was surfing. The reader will now have visions of Frankie and Annette doing the beach blanket bingo while a Beach Boys song plays in the background. And maybe that’s what it was like in California, but the Gulf Coast was another cup of tea. Not that I didn’t drive my father crazy begging him to move west to that glorious surfing paradise, but you have to surf in the ocean you have.
Now when I mention to Texas natives that I surfed the upper Texas coast I am sometimes accused of lying. “Son”, they say” I’ve been to Galveston and there were absolutely no waves”. And in truth they are quite right. On just about any summer day there is nary a ripple to be seen. Of course our casual visitor has not visited in the dead of winter after a monster cold front has pushed through. He was not hanging around on the kind of day when a wetsuit is all that stands between the surfer and hypothermia.
And our visitor probably wasn’t splashing playfully in the surf as a major hurricane is bearing down. The next time you see scenes of hurricane evacuation traffic stalled on outbound bridges, look closely. You will invariably see a car stacked high with surfboards heading shoreward in spite of dire warnings to the contrary. The news services have made interviews with crazy surfers their bread and butter in these situations. And of course any surfer that can be persuaded to stop long enough to talk to the camera will always describe the waves as “gnarly”.
But just having big waves does not make the perfect day in of itself. The waves must be clean and well formed. They must come in at a slight angle so that they present a nice long wall of water. This wall is the canvas on which the surfer will paint his masterpiece. Bottom conditions play an important role and structure such as jetties and piers help shape the bottom conditions. A surfer greeted by large ruler-straight lines of waves would call this situation “tasty”.
Wind also plays an important role. Wind blowing form the land into the wave face will help shape it and keep it from breaking until it is quite steep. However too much wind is like too much spice and will cause the waves to get “blown out”. When it’s just right perfect walls will form. “C’est Magnifecent”, exclaims our proud Cajun chef in his tortured French accent, and we know how he feels.
Desire to have at this banquet is strong and must be resisted. It is very important to find the right location to indulge. Cars that we recognize will tell us where to park. Because surfing like eating is a social occasion, and we like eating and surfing with our friends. And a day such as today is like throwing chum to hungry sharks. You just know everybody will be there. On truly large days there is only one place really, the Flagship Hotel. Built on a huge pier over the water, it serves to funnel the waves and also serves as a kind of stadium for spectators, hopefully including some pretty girls. And sure enough all the ingredients are there and desperate calls ring out to “park this heap now!”
Eager to sample this fine fare from Mother Nature’s kitchen, we race from the car to the ocean’s edge stopping only to wax the board and fasten the surfboard’s leash.
Paddling out through the shore-break whets our appetite and we inhale that heady aroma that only the ocean has. Soon it’s time for that first spoonful. Turn and paddle like a madman as the sun sparkles off of everything around you. You feel the board speed up and leap to your feet so naturally that you may as well been born to it. A hard turn at the bottom at what seems an impossible speed, and then that long wall set up right in front of you. The hoots from your fellow travelers as you shred this wave is the Tabasco sauce that makes this day complete, and makes the perfect day a spicy dish indeed. Twenty years later I can still taste it. SnarkyShark

Not light and fluffy

SnarkyShark
I have never come across anything that so beautifully sums up my life philisophy as well as this little screed.
It comes by way of James Wolcotts blog. I know its kind of long, but if you read it I promise we will get back to the standard insanity.

This comes from this blog "http://www.secularhumanism.org/fi/

Quotes Mr. Wolcott

"I prefer to subscribe to the following statement of principles, as published in each issue of Free Inquiry and on its website:

* Our best guide to truth is free and rational inquiry; we should therefore not be bound by the dictates of arbitrary authority, comfortable superstition, stifling tradition, or suffocating orthodoxy. We should defer to no dogma - neither religious nor secular - and never be afraid to ask "How do you know?"
* We should be concerned with the here and now, with solving human problems with the best resources of human minds and hearts. If there is to be meaning in our lives, we must supply it ourselves, relying on our own powers, observation, and compassion. It is irrational and ultimately harmful to hang our hopes on gods, the supernatural, and the hidden, which arise out of imagination and wishful thinking. It is pointless - and often dangerous - to push aside human intelligence to reach for some flimsy veil of alleged truths.
* We must be committed to moral principles, which are derived from critical intelligence and human experience, and we must pursue positive ideals. We should therefore observe the common moral decencies: integrity, humanitarianism, truthfulness, trustworthiness, fairness, and responsibility. This means caring for one another, being tolerant of differences, and striving to overcome divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, creed, or class.
* Constitutional democracy is the best known means for protecting the rights of all people to form worldviews and live out their commitments in a free and mutually respectful way. Governments should promote open societies, ensure universal human rights, and be secular, having no bias against any religious or non-religious group.
* We should strive to bring about a genuine world community and nourish an appreciation for global ethics and our planetary interdependence.
* Secular humanism aims to bring out the best in people so that all can achieve fullness in life. Thus we must strive to realize personal potential, maximize creative talents and artistic expression, and choose joy and hope over despair, guilt, and sin."

Boring Easter

The dorms are empty, no one is here. Im so frickin bored...I think I will do some homework. BTW...the dead roach is still there.-SnarkyShark

Jason The Mexican

shoeman - jason manages small business operations in the dorm.

Spring Break

SnarkyShark-In case you were wondering what unattended girlfriends look like......well they look like this.

So now I'm a Blogger.

Whats up with that? Sort of feeling the need for self-flaggregation, I thought I would try it. My partner in crime is the shoe man. If we piss anybody off, then I will feel it is all worth it. Who are we...? We are the guys who will steal your girlfriend if you leave her unattended. Live with it. We have no plans to add to the civil discourse in any meaningfull way. Just snarky observations and a veiw from the heart of the beast.-SnarkyShark

My Pimp Daddy Ride

I miss her so.