5 posts tagged “surfing”
It's flu season, and everyone near me at the office seems to have some sort of ailment. I avoided it for a long time, but last week I woke up with a funny tickle in the back of my throat. It's a feeling I've come to know as a precursor to a full-blown "can't climb out of bed" type of illness. (side note: getting older is cool because you totally pick up on the warning sign of things like this way earlier). Karen's due date is Monday and if I'm sick I wouldn't be allowed in the delivery room and there is no way I can let that happen. So what do I do?
- Run to Walgreens to buy Airborne and Cold-EEZE
- Add echinacea to my morning vitamin dose
- Start doing gentle yoga stretches before bed.
- Make sure I'm getting at least 7 hours of sleep.
- Cancel my regular Sunday surf outing.
Those that know me, know that #5 is a biggie. There's no where I'd rather be then in a wetsuit in 55 degree water, checking out the dolphins, smiling at the seals, and braving the waves.
I call my surf and crazy motorcycle buddy Ian to suggest a change of plans. They weather is great so why not go for a mc ride to Mt. Diablo? I fire up the beast, setting off every car alarm in northern California, and roar over to Ian's. This is where the fun begins.
Ian bought a severely beat to hell Katana for $100, put a little work into it and got it running. Part of that work involved bypassing the ignition and installing a hotwire switch. Not a big deal. I mean it works and is a heck of a lot cheaper then installing a new key set. Anyway, when I arrive he's bummed because the battery in the Katana won't hold a charge. He charges it up to about 11V so we decide to push the bike up a hill, run down with it and kickstart. We try this a couple of time. No dice.
Being the crazy motorcycle guy that he is, Ian's got a pile of bikes and bike parts laying around his back yard, including a bucket of 12 volt batteries. We slap the multimeter on a few old dusties and find one that's almost fully charged. Cool! Of course it's not the right battery for the Katana, but does that stop us? Hell naw. It's 12V right? A little re-routing of the battery leads to reach the contacts and the beast and the battered Katana are off; flying down Geary towards the bridge.
Until... I hit Scott St. and the beast just ..... turns.... off. I push it to the side of the road and wait for Ian to notice and come back for me. A few minutes later we make cell phone contact and I tell him what happened. He's only a few block away and turns around to come get me.
Minutes pass. Longer then it would normally take for a crazy motorcycle guy to travel six blocks.
Then he calls me again.
"Dude, I'm blowing fuses left and right and my bike won't stay on"
As it turns out he wasn't blowing fuses, but his hotwire switch melted. No problem, just bypass the switch and tape the wires together - never mind the smoking and melted plastic smell. A few minutes later, he scoops me up, we grab tools from my house (metric doesn't work on Harleys), and return to the beast. And, of course it fires right up. As near as I can tell, something must have jiggled loose, killing the electrical system.
We cruise back, garage the beast, shelf the Katana for the day and play Halo 2 instead.
It was probably one of the funnest, if not shortest, motorcycle adventures I've had.
This morning I took the Harley down to the ocean to snap a few pictures. It's time to get serious about selling it so I wanted some decent pictures to post to Craigslist. Of course, once I got to the ocean I was completely distracted by the waves. I took a couple of quick pictures of the bike and then cruised down to Sloat to check out the action.
It was killer. Double-overhead sets with a slight offshore breeze. The conditions at Sloat were a bit out of my league but I saw some amazing rides and ended up snapping some pictures.
I spent just about all weekend at the beach. I'm such a bum.
The latest issue of Surfers Path has some stunning photography of one of San Francisco's favorite playgrounds. Board in one hand, wetsuit in another, I'm heading out the door now.
The summer months are generally pretty blah when it comes to nor cal surf. Most of the excitement is in the spring and fall when the storms come through. The surf was so cruddy over the holiday weekend it wasn't even worth getting wet. After missing last weekend I was jonesing pretty hard for a good ride. My normal buddies were AWOL so I was riding solo. Wind was up and tide was high which doesn't always bode well, but the north swell was clocking in at 8ft so there was hope.
Ocean Beach was mushy.
Rockaway was a little too limited, with too many guys jockying for position on too few waves.
But trusty old Linda Mar was firing pretty regularly. The lineup is always packed, but 80 - 90% are beginners. I took the 7'4" Pearson and paddled out deeper then most to wait. I got lucky when an outside set fired and caught wave after wave after wave with little to no competition. Paddling in after about an hour I noticed half a dozen kids totally shredding the inside. Nice. :)
