Beeg! Twelve and a half feet at Fifteen secs.

On the road again.......

Rain or snow for the entire drive south, loads of traffic. Got in the water at a spot, an off the beaten path reef break. Lotsa punch, head and a half on the sets. Grey and sharky just like home complete with sketchy cliff climb back. Just a few people out though a good vibe, empty waters north and south of us as far as the mist would let you see.


Today the sun came out and surf town was packed everywhere. We surfed with 70 of our closest friends. Hope you had fun......

Clay imitates Rock.

Inset or alongside.....? Artwork by Clayfin. Gift from my sweets.

Cutting edge tech......

I left the North Shore and instead of ending up in Alaska I found myself surfing the north-west in 1979.... the water was cold, the air was colder and I being a warm water surfer up till then, was horribly uncomfortable. Seattle and the coast was a surfing wasteland in that there were no surf shops to be found. Coastals headed south to buy gear and I had picked up a wetsuit maybe in Portland I can't remember where, a White Stag. A diver's suit really thicker and stiffer than usual seams untaped and it leaked through every stitch hole like a sieve, what a disaster that was.

Before getting another wetsuit I started looking into dry suits. Windsurfing was starting to take off and Helly Hansen made one, paper thin, all white a great adjunct to the all black wetsuits required north of the Golden Gate bridge, nothing to it....... that's what's I had to have and only $200 in 1981 dollars!
(Whidbey Island 1982)

I figured with some decent polypropylene underneath I should be warm as toast and extra flexible as I was not being wrapped in a 5mm wetsuit...... these are the sorts of things dreams are made of. For once I was spearheading a new trend not just part of the masses. I envisioned a possible sponsorship from HH as their sales in the north-west skyrocketed amongst surfers!

Damn was I wrong! That thin latex gave very little thermal value (i.e. I was colder than ever!)..... and I sweated now and the sweat got cold, this was going badly! If I got a pinhole leak, I was drenched and instantly cold. And a constant flush came through if the leak was in the water. A rip and it could be serious, like sinking to the bottom serious. There was no way it was possible to get out of the suit in an emergency of that sort anyway, it was not well thought this plan of mine....... And I had all kinds of issues with getting gloves to work too and ended up wearing dish washing gloves the most because they worked with the wrist gussets best, but my hands froze!
(Wetspot)

I also had to "burp" the suit whenever I zipped up, the gussets were tight enough to keep all the air inside and it made duck diving impossible! But the fear of a fin cut and the clammy underclothes after each session that defeated the word "dry" inherent in the suit, forced me to return to old ways. I gave it a decent shot, surfed that suit in some good conditions, averting any catastrophes along the way, but after a few months I returned to rubber. No sponsorship and no revolution.....

(unknown spot)

Merry Christmas!

A nice cold empty one.......


Santa dropped off a couple this year....

Darwinian......

Sometimes a go out shouldn't happen, like today for instance.......



Rolling logs in the shorie breaking up against the sand dune.........



If you have to do this walk at this beach...... you shouldn't be going out.


A high tide of 9.6ft and a swell height of 17ft...............
Another log rang the bell of the dory launch sign at the far end of the beach at the same time these two were getting their surf on.


Surge enough to sweep you off your feet......


Luckily for them there was no rescue today, or worse.......

5 days of good surf.

In a row,in December,in Oregon,is rare.
It has apparently infuriated my rash guard....... because my neck is sporting a lovely red irritated glaze.

Storm's aftermath.

This bar is brand spankin' new, this was shot just past high tide's peak. Low tide just before dark paddled out to get some fun ones as the light faded. The wave was now a full racer on the shallows. One wave ran from the house with 8 eyes, past the sign and kicking out around brown house. Double it's regular length. The peak and pack were a wee bit smaller, where did that freak come from?

(The Amazing Spaghetti Armed Surfer, needs no more describing than his title)

Went in and came out of the round room on the next one. And as I pulled away off the bottom, the lip came down on the deck of the board...voila...... tossed like a Ceaser salad right at the table. Floated like a butterfly(for a second), then got stung like a chump as I hit the water again, where did that freak come from?

God's pool sprung a leak......

Wish he'd build A-frames while he's draining it.


'Cos you aren't going to make the paddle....

Carnage

Something about the perfectly round hole, where a flipper should be......



Late season southern visitor met a bad end.

Monster Storm.

The entire beach for miles has a cliff cut along the edge, it was smooth and tapered 3 days ago.


Moonscaped by the south wind.


Signpost from the 70's?



Nature's sand castles built at 125knots

6 weeks early

(12/1/07)

Lat year we got snow 11 days into the new year, quite a bit of it and it hung around for awhile. This winter it's the first day of December,but it's just a dusting so far, hmmmmm.......... wonder what's in store for us.


(1/11/07)

Moon Float...

(pic:nm)
A great week of surf, nothing to sneeze at 2x overhead sets. Six broken boards for the last 4 days. Lotta gas taken. People riding the boulder field on the inside, either feeling the rocks or hearing their boards feel the rocks, oh joy! The morning moon hung a floater over the rock......

(pic:nm)

Yesterday the low tide pull over the bar and exposed a loveable little runner for a few hours, a lot smaller than the Turkey Day mayhem or even the GC death pits down the beach. Some old fart landing a floater of his own.

(pic:nm)

Winter's windows.

This one is now closed.............

Nano

Bailey relaxing at his mom's house with Nano, his Toy Chihuahua. Doing very well, going out to Goodwill and doing some deal hunting there getting clam strips at Pier 101, a local seafood restaurant. Rehab a couple of times a week, we head to the hospital tomorrow for a check up future plans will gel off of what the doc's decisions are.

Good To Go!

One more day and we are out of here................! You can now uncross your fingers and such!

Thank you all for your support and positivity for the past two and a half months. Family and friends who visited, called, emailed or left comments here, thank you. And especially NM who put up with me through all this and even let me play unofficial roommate for the duration.

It was great to run into people in the water or the coffee shop and to know they were praying for Bailey, he has a fair bit of rehab in his future as well as one more surgery. And challenges that will take adjustments, but for all intents and purposes he is the same B-monster he's ever been. Looking forward to him getting back to school in the near future.

See you in the water!

Close enough to smell freedom baby!

We can feel it.

The 2:00pm(PST) meeting will in all likelihood get us to set a release date for this week......

Cross your fingers, pull them out of your bums, pray to the Great Ringworm In The Sky, or any prescence you deem worthy of your pleas.....let's get this party started!

Update either way later on.

"Hot Steppin'".....

Or "These boots are made for walking"........ would work.

Shooting for Halloween.

Not leaving today, there are a few more goals to be met. Looks like we'll be home for Halloween, B's favourite celebration.......... come on baby!

Jackass!!

About 2 and a half months in and he's had enough..... When you hit the wall and can't take it any longer. A shot in the arm just might turn your world in the right direction. B took a spill over the weekend and since then everything has been a struggle, definitely having a tough week as a result. B even took the time between tears, to tell Doc Steve that ...."I hate this place!" Not one of the highlights of our stay so far, yet completely understandable.


A couple of weeks ago I was talking to some friends at the beach, between sessions. Small town stuff and getting the word out on the kid kind of thing. And one of them asked if he could visit the Bman, turns out he had broken his neck at the age of 18 and rehabbed at the same hospital we are in now. We talked about how important he had found visitors and especially a visit from someone who had gone through a similar life experience. How even months later the memory of that visit would be good for the psyche.........



So today Ehren came by to let the Bman know that you do eventually get out of the hospital and they bonded over wheelchairs and neck braces. Oh and they talked about the movie that makes me cringe and B laugh, and Ehren's great advice.... "I do this stuff so you don't have to!" Very cool of him to drop by and spice up the kid's day, I don't think he'll lose that smile for a looong time. He can't wait to show Andrew from school his autographed PS2 game either!



Many thanks brother.........

Missed it by this much!

Great reports from the last two days had me frothing, so I hit the road last night and got up early hoping that the surf's evening bump had dropped, but nooooo! Still got a few clean ones and sprinted back for the weekly conference refreshed.

Missed DTL by 24 hours, I know you got it better dude!

Wii-hab.

I'm not coining a new word, somebody else did. But this is gaining widespread usage in rehab. Hand eye co-ordination and general body movement, the boxing game takes two hands and a little body english helps too.




We have a tentative release date of the 26th of October, but there are some goals to be met before it will happen, cross your fingers.......

What would happen...........

If we got in and out of OHSU without a problem? We'll never know will we?


B and I took a trip back to there for another check up and we just can't time our visits any worse it seems. Last time we were almost ON the cat scan table before they pulled us out of the room and back into the holding pattern. They were inundated with 6 traumas and we were instantly at the back of the queue as they took care of more serious cases.

This time it was a terror drill, P-town being one of three cities involved. So as we waited for the docs to show up, all sorts of victims of a bombing started coming in. Latex special effects substituting for real burns, down to a Starbucks cup in the hair.



Then the staff donning face shields as they treated patients, soon a geiger counter was employed and the ER split into a "dirty" and a "clean" side. I snapped a couple pics. It got crowded and confused before settling down....



In an odd coincidence I worked for a winemaker who was in the WTC the day before 9/11 and another friend was in Paddy's the night before it was blown to bits. Some things feel a lot more than dress rehearsals.

Here's hoping it stays a drill.

Getting there!

!SWEEEEEEET!