SURFERMAG.COM FEATURES

A fast left slides over an inside bar just to the south. I search for a channel but there's no such animal at OB. To this day, I don't know why I even bother scanning for an easy path to the waves. Vows of a cooperative paddle, an easy going relationship, are tossed aside with the first cold drubbing...I've been locked out and had to break in. Then again I've made the outside only to be locked in and freaking out. And all the while she's grinning behind her lack of scruples, her bankrupt sense of fair play. Me, I'm too forgiving. I still put up with it all, making excuses for her. If she could just get more sleep, she wouldn't be so mean, so approachable. But she knows no other way. And neither do I. We deserve each other.

Trotting down the seawall stairs, I'm greeted with a four wave set awaking over the outside bars. The first two bulge and misfire, reloading for the inside. The third one hollows out and hits with a massive clean slap that echoes onshore, obliterating the smaller waves in her path. The chill on my spine is no longer from a clammy wetsuit. The last one comes along sucking up the foamy carcass of her sister. Clothed thus, she tears at the inner waters with a vengeance, leaving a frothy tangled mess. Tide's coming up, and so is the swell.

After a couple of futile, quick stretches, out I go. I'm shocked to have an easy time of it. I realize my hair is nearly dry and a darker fear begins to take hold. You frigid bitch...just what do you have in store for me this morning?

The only explanation of course is the inexplicable Ocean Beach Lull...a most evil trick she loves to play. She invites you in, delivering not a single brush-off. You stand there awestruck and thankful, hat in hand. You begin to think happy thoughts. You lean on the kitchen counter and she proffers wine. Of course you'll have a glass. She turns, throwing the glass in your face, sending you diving for cover as waves awaken football fields from shore. She goes Medusa on your ass, throwing everything she has at you. If you're lucky, you'll end up a mile or two down the beach with only a couple rides to your credit.

San Francisco rolls up on her elbows, gaping and blinking at the sea with wonder. A bulge of eastern sky turns red, a glowing egg squeezed from Aurora's tubes. So, the day is here after all. Gulls pull away from the beach en masse, fanning the sand, picking up and putting down again. A blue cargo container ship makes her way out of the Gate to some Hong Kong or Latin American port, sad, rusted, heavy, her crew huddled around a linoleum galley table cradling sour coffee.

Within minutes the pulsing mass of light has been sponged up by another cold gray San Francisco morning...total miscarriage of sun and sky. A hungry fog gobbles at the remains. She lays her head back down. Dawn patrols don't interest her. She'll sleep till noon, letting OB handle things until then.

My first wave is understandably unpredictable. Standing up over the inside, it seems much larger, more severe than the fast left I observed from shore. After watching a couple of warbled freaks roll by, I turn and don't look back. I dig hard. I know if I can just push myself over the ledge, with commitment, with velocity...well then that's the trick...everything else will take care of itself. The clutch will pop and off we'll go! Screw the drop, just make the ledge. Screw the bottom turn, just make the drop. I'm over...over...feeling that push we all know, and down then, turning awkwardly, flailing, then setting rail and flying along familiar gray black-green walls, a surprised expression across my mug. My ability to kook out is high this morning. I surf conservatively, feeling myself along these wet corridors. Premature celebration would be unwise. Still, I can't contain the life welling up within me after each ride and, whether real or imagined, my sinews weave together into one, evenly responsive bolt. My wetsuit finally fits me right. I begin paddling with strength and rhythm. She seems to enjoy this technique as much as I. Or maybe she's just letting me get my confidence up.

A perverse sense of experimentation comes over me and I paddle further out. Way out. The tide is really drawing now, sucking around Seal Rocks, past Land's End, and through the Gate into the polluted workingman bay. The Cliff House looms out of the fog and the dirty sand of Ocean Beach trickles to nothing at the base of the cliffs. The trick is to angle one all the way in and then walk out to victory with nothing more than a scratch.

All too soon, a massive wave breaks on the far outside, a city block long, rolling with bicep glory toward San Francisco. This is my ticket, a wave already lit up, already smashing through the morning. Parasitically, I start a sloppy paddle. The boiling whitewater, as big as a house, tackles me from behind. The force is tremendous but my red hands are already on the deck. I jump to my feet and stagger, leaning against her, blanketed in white, space walking into oblivion. The gun finally feels solid water and I fly forward into the feeble dawn, searching for a line, gathering drops of precious speed.

Ocean Beach strings me along thus, a water puppet hung from the sky. The pulse dies as we hit a valley between the bars. The rocky cliffs leer at me from above. I could reach out and touch them, digging fingernails into sandstone and shale. Miraculously, the wave has just enough force to break both barriers. The chords are cut and I jerk to attention. With catlike precision, I begin the instinctual weaving on a lifting face. As we finally make the inside, it stands up and I turn quickly, dipping right into a long mint wall.

Skating over a shallow bottom on the overhead backbreaker, I pull up and into a fast pocket. The magic of gravity and shove of swell garner a final blast shoreward, where I kick out, gather my board and try to walk in, Ocean Beach still grabbing viciously at my waist.

I lumber out over ripping water and spy a perfect sand dollar under clouds of foam. It flits away and I stagger and kneel, gingerly locking the large white coin in my grasp. The five petals on its back greet me with the nonchalant perfection that only nature can possess.

The downtown skyscrapers rise up over Geary, cold temples of the East, automatons drilling away at the machines in their bellies. The street leads me there, to my desk, to take my place with the rest of the masses.

The polished marbles of Union Square shops roll by. Out the left I see the place where my wife had her engagement ring melted down, to be replaced with something else, something shinier, something that could take this relentless maritime half-light and make it sparkle. She didn't care for the sapphire. Resented the blueness, preferred diamond perfection instead. I thought I was putting the ocean on her finger, an ocean far away from here, azure, warm, friendly.

At a red light, overcoated San Franciscans scurry from corner to corner. Armani suits, cell phones, Cartier watches, polished black shoes. I stare at my sand dollar, now glowing on my dashboard under all that filtered sun, the memories of every wave this morning coming back now, pouring over me, into me...filling me with a richness no sum of money could buy.