Birthday Swell

It was my birthday last Wednesday. Luckily there was swell in the water, so I decided to celebrate by going surfing. With plenty of time on my hands, paddling out at Black’s Beach - San Diego’s best and least accesible spot - seemed like a no-brainer.

Yet as I drove near Torrey Pines, I couldn’t think of a more fitting place to ring in my birthday. The wave quality is no where near as good as Black’s, but it was ground zero for all of my surfing milestones - my first wave, cutback, floater and spin cycle treatment at the hands of a particularly burly wave. 

Torrey Pines is steeped in nostalgia for me, but truth be told, she’s a moody temptress on most occasions. She’s picky about the tides and only takes certain swells. Even if these factors align, which takes some kind of astrological miracle or possibly a unicorn crying into the water, her sandbars have to be just so. On big swells, Torrey Pines normally produces board-breaking waves that make you question why you even bother. Yet occasionally she treats you just right, and you know why you deal with all the abuse. Wednesday was one of those days at Torrey Pines.  

 Thanks to heavily overcast skies reflecting on the water, the line between sea and sky  blurred into shades of grey. From the shore I watched six surfers bob up and down as a series of 6-foot waves rolled in. There was only a hint of wind in the air. I dropped my board into the grey water and paddled out.

An older surfer caught a left-breaking wave 100 yards from me. His longboard carefully trimmed across the face of the wave. He just kept going and going, subtly maneuvering to stay on the face of the wave as I kept paddling. Before I knew it, he’d nearly closed the gap between us. He kicked out of the wave before it collapsed - only five yards from me. A ride that long had to be sign of good things to come. 

I didn’t catch a bad wave that day. The wave peak kept shifting. But Torrey Pines being home, my instincts told me where to sit in the lineup. It’s a kind of six sense that surfers develop by being a regular at a spot, even if it is a shifty beachbreak.

I had been in the water for about an hour when I anticipated some set waves. I lined up 10 yards further out than a few nearby surfers. A 7-foot wave approached and I barely caught it before it crashed down on me. I raced across the steepest part of the wave, gaining speed. Crouching lower, putting pressure on my back foot and torquing my body, I felt the tension ball up in my board as I bottom turned and climbed up the face of a wave. I released the pent-up energy by smashing the top of the wave with my entire board - fins slid and buckets of water flew through the air (reading this part again, this sort of sounds like a sexual metaphor - I may or may not have impregnated a few women with that turn). I descended back down the face of the wave. When I was a few feet out in front of the curl, I pivoted my weight and cut back - a youngster paddling out gave me a few “stoked” hollers. Zipping down the line, I rode the wave all the way to the beach.

Three hours and two dead arms later, I exited the water. Walking to the parking lot, I looked back at the sandstone cliffs and the grey waves, which seemed less and less distinguishable from the grey sky the more time I spent at the beach. When was the last time the waves were that good at Torrey Pines? Last spring? Two years ago?

Best. Birthday present. Ever.