New York Ether

Ok, so granted, during the push and go winter months we are a little slow on the uptake.  Even the most cursory glance at EBNY online content shows a gaping hole of initiative in the darkest months.  There are many reasons for this, most have to do with the burden of work, family and general light-starved malaise.  But the days are long now and our depression is lifting and having not glanced around too much lately we stumbled upon this little gem penned by none other than Mollusk Mike, our neighborhood ripper.  If you haven't read it and are looking for a little perspective, do.  Click on the blog title...

Mollusk BK Board Exchange (!)

Rebecca Olive's sea-bound view reminds me of late spring into early summer 1997, Hendry's Beach in Santa Barbara, afternoon swim.  A scant two months later and that moment turned itself into a small, no-invite-everyone-welcome ceremony in the garden behind the SB courthouse.  Nice.
-Toddy

The previous picture, borrowed from Salt Stained Eyes, tells a million healthy tales.  The following movie, borrowed from Hulu, tells one interesting tale.  Somehow, one reminds me of the other.

A quick perusal of the historians to the right lands me on the Pushingtide blog, a regular spot for the concise and thoughtful.  We are a species full of memories.  This, as everything, is both good and bad.  One must always remind oneself that the past no longer exists.  It is simply not there except in our imagination.  On the flip side, there is this wonderful quality to certain memories, the ones that are not necessarily specific, but exist through repeated experience and conjure themselves up magically sometimes.  One of the most cherished feelings in my arsenal is the feeling of ascending and descending on mountain roads.  It seems as if the whole of my youthful life was spent doing just that.  Whether up into the Cascades or down from the Santa Ynez Mountains, I can readily conjure the vistas and the changes of smell, warmth and pressure of the air.  It is joyful.
-Todd

All good thing comes through Grant. And he says he is switching brands tout suite.
This might be one of those ones that everyone has seen, and I just haven't sen yet. 
If so, someone MUST have figured out who the surfer is...can I get a clue?

Sitting in an office in Midtown, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It's 80 degrees outside, my room is dark. I have a little cold.
And then there's this.

Happy Easter Egg Day from Adam

The Happy Easter Egg Day series brought to you by a cursory perusal of my Facebook "News Feed" this afternoon. Once upon a time, Easter Sunday meant a sunrise service and a paddle-out. Both these things were far away from me today, but each of these photos brought a smile to my face. -Toddy

Happy Easter Egg Day from Ryan

Happy Easter Egg Day from Ray Knives

Happy Easter Egg Day from Cory

Happy Easter Egg Day from Vivi

Happy Easter Egg Day from Jordan

Beer Can Beach & Osio in Blue

Where did these guys go?
Two of our favorite check-ins, like those spots you check when nothing else is breaking, or everything else is breaking, and you want a little small time paddle privacy. My own blogy Miramars.
Gone into the darkness.

I know retarded is a loaded word. There is a big campaign about not using the word retarded in a pejorative sense, or in any sense for that matter, except perhaps the fire extinguishing sense, much like, say, the use of the word gay to denote anything other than, well, gay. And run on sentences with lots of commas. People hate that. But what if we used the words retarded and gay to mean something really almost great. Like so great simply because it is so gay and retarded? Really positive! This might fit into that category for me.  But I didn't just say that.  It was all hypothetical philosophical linguistical.  A conversation starter from one PC person to another PC person; between gay loving, retard loving, public radio listening PC people.  This clip is so retarded and gay it's great.  And the surfing is neat.
We got it off the Surfer's Journal site.