Ode to Texas Surfing

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
surf

Return to Main Page

Comments

Comment That is Port A I think. Very nice barrel.

Wed Mar 30, 2005 6:55 pm MST by SnarkyShark

Add Comment




On This Site

  • About this site
  • Main Page
  • Most Recent Comments
  • Complete Article List
  • Sponsors

Search This Site


Syndicate this blog site

Powered by BlogEasy


Free Blog Hosting