Today was an insta-holiday. Meaning, I made it a holiday! I could have swore that our company calendar said that we had MLKJ Day off, and all weekend I was like, “Yeah! Three day weekend, three day surf fiesta!” Plus everyone else had the day off so it reinforced the idea in my head. I ran a billion errands that took all morning at places that were open, with the surfboard in the back of the truck the whole time. Stopped by the SDSU box office to see if I could pick up some basketball tix for the rest of the season but all locations were closed because of the holiday. Bummer. Finished up and got to the surf at about 1 p.m., which was glassy, 75 degree air, 55 degree water, blazing Santa Ana light offshore and sunshine. Holding/maybe building swell, 4 to 5 foot with the occasional tad larger two wave volley now and again. No hurry, no rush, brought along the Gobstopper (newest shaped 7-2) and it was a good board choice. Swell still really inconsistent, but a pleasure to be out in the waves and perfect weather. Everyone else thought so too, cars just packed the boulevard from one end to the other. I didn’t sardine into a spot, but when I got out of the water about 4:30 p.m., someone had the audacity to lift my tailgate up (a regular occurrence). I leave it down so that people don’t sardine me in, and if they do, then I can actually put it up and have a little breathing room. Conditions were fantastic for taking photos. Didn’t really get any memorable waves, it was still really inconsistent, about the same size as yesterday I guess, but just epic conditions. Today’s theme besides the epic weather, was “Paddle for a Wave and See How Far You Can Chase Getting Into It And Still Don’t Catch It.” I must have done this like 10 times. See a wave coming, think it’s going to break, then chase it pinwheeling like crazy to catch it, only to have it roll on under. I must have paddled an extra 300 yards just chasing waves – and not getting them. Although I did end up with a very decent wave count after about 3.5 hours. Then I get back to the truck and hang out for a while, and all of a sudden I get a phone call. It’s my boss. “Where were you today?” she says. “We had the day off, what are you talking about?” I say. “Nope.” She says. “It wasn’t a holiday for the company.” I say, “Stop pulling my leg, you’re screwing around!” She says “Nope. Guess you’ll be using vacation time because it was not a holiday.” “But I’m half black!” I say. “Even if you were, you were supposed to be at work today,” she says, and now I realize maybe she wasn’t messing around. I was sure I had the day off. Well, in fact, no matter what, I DID “have” the day off – I just made it my own surf holiday I guess! No matter. It was worth every moment of it. Couldn’t have picked a better day to have a non-holiday holiday!
- Cliff
