Mid July Stream of Conscience

Don't mean to bum anyone out unnecessarily, but the light is already changing.  The days of the 4:30 AM sunrise are long behind us.  The slow, inexorable march to winter doom has begun.  Despair readies its pugnacious reign.  Just kidding.  It's sunny and hot.  Don't even think of the dead of winter and how cold it will be.  The waves this morning were funky out in Long Beach.  At least from five to seven.  They seemed to be righting themselves just as I got out of the water, but until that point, they would throw a little then back off then throw a little again.  Or, they'd just throw.  Not to say that I were thrown.  Not like I was later in the morning while looking for my floppy hat to protect the brow from a highly in-form sun.  My wife has the talent of putting my things where I would not put them. When I ask her where they are she replies that she put them away where the go.  Where they go I snort. Then she shows me where they went.  Yep, that is certainly one place they might go.  And probably a better place than I'd left it.  I also went back to the original Bill Hamilton fin this morning. Over the years I'd tried the long blue Greenough fin and that massive black Yater keel-like number, each adding something different to the mix.  But today I plugged back in the much shorter black scribbly one and moved it way up the box.  In California recently I rode a number of different boards.  A squishy old sixsomething blue foamy, a ridiculously squat green fish, a ten plus yellow tanker and a nine six white toothpick. I was really liking that toothpick.  Got into waves easy, trimmed great, turned on a dime.  You know, in that mold of the much-maligned "performance longboard" of the late nineties.  I feel dirty even admitting I like to ride it.  The Bad Wax Hamilton turned a bit more like that this morning.  Mid nineties shame. I used to ride that Hamilton with just the pop-out skegs in it, twin fin style. A bit of an experiment of riding a twin fin 9-8 but I liked the way it sorta slipped around.  Made the ride interesting, but only interesting in clean waves.  Jamie B. said something similar a few days ago surfing one of Cyrus' boards at Cardiff.  It looked like a seven foot twin fin with a kind of double concave bottom and a boxish tail.  I dunno maybe it wasn't that at all, I didn't get a great look, but he said he liked the way it slipped.  I know that feeling.  I like it too sometimes. But only in clean waves.  And by the by if you get the chance to surf with Jamie, make a mental note of how long the interval is between getting out of the car to when he's snug in his wetsuit.  I swear to the Great Creator he is the fastest wetsuit-putter-onner I've ever been around.  Prolly all those years worried some jerky grom competitor would yank his towel. The monotone dirge of darkness awaits.  Enjoy yourself.