I am going to catch up on posts this weekend! So the last post was actually three weekends ago...time goes by fast when you are busy. This time will actually be about two weekends ago. Happy four day weekend. That was very hectic and ended with me getting sick.
Friday, I had been waiting for a chance to get to surf since about Wednesday. I slept in because bodyboarding when I am exhausted just don't work that well. It was one of those days though where the surf would probably glass off in the afternoon. The swell was going to hit up north much bigger than the LA area (like usual) so I took off to find waves! First I checked the coast south because everyone was telling me how great it was. I even paddled out, against my better judgement. Some crazy surfer tried to kill me twice by running over my head. I have no clue why and nobody else in the lineup did either. Once the session was over, I had such a bad feeling from it I knew I had to go find my kind of waves (or at least as close to it as I can around here). After a long drive north, I was rewarded with OFFSHORE waves! Actual offshore, in California! Ha ha as I was paddling out I was actually confused when I felt the spray hit me because this does not happen on the left coast. The earlier session was totally irrelevant as I surfed 1/4mi+ (yes really), super fast overhead waves. I could connect all the sections if I took my fins out of the water and just flew. Yaaaaaay! Here's the only pic I got of the waves:
Really good sessions like that...not scary, just fun...are worth the hundreds of miles of driving it can take to find them. Each set wave felt like some kind of gift. Although they also required the long jog back up the beach and the road to get to the point in order to do it all over. Talk about exhaustion. But very worth it. :) While I was putting stuff into my car, I realized the breaking waves were glowing in that unique pattern of bioluminescence. Its almost magical. Yay for a bad surf day turning into a good one! Plus, I got to eat at Nature's Garden for the second week in a row.
Saturday, I promised Josh we'd go climbing. The forecast for Sunday and Monday was a ton of rain...they were saying 20" at the time. Socal can't handle that. So to make sure Josh got to climb we went to Joshua Tree. The crucial first stop was at Crossroads for breakfast/lunch. Its expensive but amazing healthy food. Eating before climbing is the key to me (and therefore Josh) having fun. The goal was to do some easy stuff on the Dairy Queen wall before bouldering, but the DQ wall was very full with climbers already. The only other guidebook pages we had were for the Playhouse wall, so we began our quest to find the wall that we didn't know. It was a beautiful day and I was stoked to be hiking around the park.
At first we were pretty unsuccessful finding the wall, mostly because we were looking in the wrong area. Josh really wanted to get on the rock and I was tired so he just started climbing on the nearest rock, sans rope.
Well, until he saw people with cell phones watching nearby. I guess there is a risk of people reporting rope-less climbers. It was time to continue on our quest for the Playhouse wall. We did a little bit more wandering before we found it. We just picked a route and started up the wall. The routes were easy and fun, although it took awhile to find the rap anchors, plus some creativity to get to them. Josh lead the first route and we rapped down so he could quickly top rope another.
We had spent a lot of time walking (we parked 4 parking lots away from where you normally would for that wall), so we started back to the car in order to go bouldering.
By time time we started bouldering at the Bachar Boulders it was already dark. The problems there are really technical so we had fun finding tiny holds in the dark. It was getting colder and colder so eventually we gave up and drove back to Los Angeles.
The waves were mostly gone (ish, at least compared to what I had been riding) so Josh and I headed out to Malibu Creek State Park to climb again on Sunday. Or at least try to. We knew it would start raining so we brought all our of rain gear. That ended up being a really good idea since it started raining before we even got there. On the hike into the park, we passed a ton of people leaving as fast as they could to escape the rain. We enjoyed our wet walk in and found the overhung area of the wall we were going to climb. Josh braved the rain and set up a top rope on one of the harder routes. We had a dry area under the rock about 25ft wide where we could enjoy climbing and watch the rain. It was a beautiful setup!
I traversed the base of the wall (or tried to) while Josh rested between tries. He was climbing really strong but didn't quite have the endurance to finish the route. Next time! Another group was climbing in the rain next to us, so the park ranger showed up and basically told them they were done. They were also kind of overly casual about the risks of climbing in the rain. It took them quite awhile to pack up and leave. The ranger then came over and said we were the last people in the park, so we should walk out with him so that they could close it. I guess the rain was raising water levels pretty high.
I walked out barefoot, in the cold rain, because my shoes were getting stuck in the clay/mud that makes up malibu creek dirt roads. In hindsight, this probably wasn't the best plan, because by the next day (fortunately a day off)...
I got sick. I guess you can only do so much in a given amount of time. I knew I was pushing it, especially with all the bodyboarding and driving on Friday plus the rain sunday. Oh well, such is life. Monday became a rest day and I didn't even run. Its good to do laundry every once in awhile though. :)
Last weekend, I didn't manage to get any photos. Saturday, I went and watch very cool waves breaking in Orange County. By that point I was actually sick and also very tired so I decided not to paddle it. It was a really hard decision though. I couldn't make myself actually decide so I ended up hanging around for maybe 5 hours before I committed to not surfing. Waves only show up like that in socal once in a long while and they are the kind that actually motivate me. It was fun to watch everyone catch their waves though and I got some most excellent New York style pizza for lunch. The next day, I did end up paddling out. My resolve only lasts for so long. The problem was, the waves were a lot smaller and the water just as polluted. I mean, I was BROWN. I was going to skip it but was convinced otherwise, so I did go in. If I had known how bad it really was I wouldn't have though. I can't even figure out how to describe it. Maybe like bodyboarding in a garbage can. Ick. I did get one really nice barrel that made it not a waste to paddle out. It was makeable and deep...rare around here. The price was me ending up at the doctor on Tuesday with a really not good sinus infection even though I rinsed my sinuses twice, took a shower as soon as I could after getting out of the water, cleaned every single cut I could find with alcohol, and then put tea tree oil on the most likely to get staph scrapes. Yay socal surfing.
Ok that is all for now. Super long entry but now I am finally finally caught up!
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