I See Wet People

I was sitting on my board at Manhattan Beach Saturday morning looking out at the ocean and watching for the next good swell when I saw a fin emerge from the water about 40 feet away from me. Then another, then another, then another. There must have been six or eight of them slowly surfacing and searching for food, and those of us closest to the dolphins started pointing and swimming a little closer. This older, white-haired guy on an enormous long board and I were chatting about them when a younger guy swam up between us and nervously asked, "How can you guys tell those are dolphins?"

"Because they're travelling in a pack," the older guy responded. "Dolphins are a good sign. You'd never see dolphins if a shark was around." I would think anyone who's seen a dolphin and a shark could tell the difference, but I guess when you're in the water you want to be 100% sure.

Anyway, the scariest part of surfing isn't necessarily what's in the water. Afterwards, I rinse out my wet suit and hang it in the shower to dry, and when you forget it's there and walk in on it suddenly, it kind of looks like a man standing quietly in the shower, which would be a lot more frikkin' disturbing than a shark. This is especially true in the middle of the night, when the house is dark and you're half-asleep. I've been awoken more than a few times by Janet's scream when she's wandered into the bathroom in the dark of the night to see this:

Surfing for Dummies

I bought a surfboard about a month ago and have been going out every weekend since, splitting my time between Manhattan Beach (El Porto, to be precise) and Bolsa Chica, two great beginner spots. I bought my board from Rocker Board Shop on Venice Blvd. The people at Rocker were extremely positive and helpful to me as a beginner and not super intimidating like some of the other shops I'd browsed in before. I ended up settling on a 7'8" funboard shaped by Guy Okazaki in Venice.



Manhattan Beach is a small coastal town just 15 minutes South on the 405, and El Porto is a small stretch of beach with a coin-metered parking lot that usually fills up by noon. The line-up can get pretty crowded, but it's a known beginner break and I haven't encountered any territorial attitude. I end up going here a lot because it's so close and easy. There are also good running and biking trails extending up and down the beach where Janet likes to run while I'm in the water.

Bolsa Chica is a state park a little further South on the 405, and a $10 entry fee gets you a day pass to miles of beach with ample parking, hot showers and a small cafe. Bolsa Chica usually attracts more families and campers on the weekends, so even when the parking lot is crowded, the line-up in the surf is still pretty laid back.

It's been interesting seeing how different the waves can be from place to place and from one week to the next. Manhattan Beach is usually pretty choppy, with waves coming in from both the NW and SW that result in quick close-outs. Last weekend the waves in Bolsa Chica were like slow softball pitches, evenly-spaced, waist-high waves that peeled perfectly to one side.

I'm not quite to the point where meteorology plays a role in whether I go out or not — waves are waves — but I check the surf reports on Surfline and WaveWatch just to get into the spirit. Oh yeah, I caught Point Break on cable the other night, too. If you want the ultimate, you've got to be willing to pay the ultimate price.

Summer Fridays

Before moving to Los Angeles, I had never heard of the concept of "Summer Fridays," but when Janet & I got jobs out here, those two innocuous little words popped up in the HR documentation from both of our respective employers. Summer Fridays are apparently very common in the advertising & creative industries in LA & NY, and are described as such:

In the summer weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day, employees are free to leave the office on Fridays at 2 p.m. (or 1 p.m. in Janet's case), provided they don't have any urgent outstanding work issues.

Of course, these hours are probably made up elsewhere by late night product launches and weekend advertising "emergencies," but it's pretty amazing that employers recognize the immeasurable morale benefit in freeing the drones to enjoy a sunny Friday afternoon drinking beer on a patio somewhere instead of cleaning out their email and re-reading old blog posts in the dim fluorescent flicker of the cubicle farm. That's the way the world is supposed to work. Yeah.

Race Report: San Diego Rock'n'Roll Marathon 2008

Janet & Judy ran the San Diego Rock'n'Roll Marathon this past weekend along with 25,000 other runners, and the weather couldn't have been nicer — low 60s with a marine layer blocking the sun for the first half of the race. When the sun did eventually come out and burn off the cloud covering, there were more than a few running Elvises that had to be regretting the decision to run 26 miles in wigs & polyester pant suits.

Judy's boyfriend Felipe and I played support team, dropping the girls off near the start and catching up with them along the route to heckle and keep their minds off all the terrible bands that were supposed to keep their minds off the running. We also surprised them at notorious mile 20 (where most runners hit "the wall" in a marathon) by joining them for three miles. Afterwards Felipe was pretty proud to point out that we'd just run "the hardest part" of the marathon.

This was Janet's fourth marathon and Judy's first, so congrats to both on the finish!

A Dreaded Sunny Day

One of the things I love when traveling is running in new cities. It's a great way to explore unfamiliar territory on foot. So after sleeping off my jet lag last night (with the help of a few pints in nearby pubs), I awoke this morning to a beautiful, sunny day and went for a run around London.

I'm staying near the London Bridge, so I basically combined 3-4 different walking tours from my Lonely Planet guide book into one 11-mile run past many of the tourist sites, including St. Paul's Cathedral, the Wellington Arch, Buckingham Palace, St. James Park, Hyde Park, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalar Square, the Eye of London and Shakespeare's Globe Theater, among others. The run started and ended with a run along the Thames, which is lined on both sides of the river with a promenade.


Now I'm off to the pub for some fish & chips. The Octopus Project will be arriving later this afternoon — they played a show in Nottingham last night and will play in London tomorrow night.

June Gloom

The general assumption is that it's always sunny and 75 degrees in LA, and for the most part that has not proved to be entirely untrue. This week, however, I learned about a Southern California weather phenomenon known as June Gloom (or May Gray), when a cloud layer blows in from the ocean and effectively creates winter in spring. This entire week has been overcast and relatively chilly (for LA standards), although thankfully without drizzle. I suppose it's a fitting primer for my trip to London tonight.

Catch a Wave

I finally got in the water this weekend. The possibility of surfing becoming a new regular hobby was one of the major lures of California, but I've been nervous to just run out and jump in without knowing what I'm doing outside of a few goofy attempts in Costa Rica. Fortunately, one of my coworkers surfs every weekend and invited me to meet him yesterday at Manhattan Beach, a pretty chill spot with moderate waves and no territorial locals.

After a quick 15-20 minute drive from our apartment, I rented a board and wetsuit and spent about four hours going at it. The water was about 62 degrees, but the wetsuit really does its job and the cold never bothered me much. My rental board was kind of a boat, but it made it easy to catch waves, sometimes unintentionally — there were several occassions when my board decided we were taking this wave, and I had little choice in the matter.

Today I'm sore in places I never knew existed, but the net result would have been fairly easy to predict — I'm hooked. Time to start shopping for a board.

Recent Work

A New Error has been gathering dust lately, partly because I just spent the past three weeks working pretty much around the clock to get a freelance project finished on a very tight development timeline. Once again, I built this website using ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL 2005, and it's entirely tableless except for a fairly complicated scheduling grid (which is tabluar data, mind you). Nearly everything on the site is dynamic and managed by the client via a CMS admin tool I built for them, as well. If you have absolutely nothing going on in your life right now, check it out.

Like a Monkey in a Zoo

Janet & I went to the LA Zoo a few weekends ago. It's a pretty nice zoo located on the northeast end of Griffith Park.


They had a lot of monkeys, lemurs, gibbons and chimps, plus a large gorilla exhibit. A giant Asian elephant exhibit is also currently under construction. It fills most of the center of the zoo and looks like it will be pretty cool once it's completed.


When we saw this koala cozied up napping in the tree, Janet said, "I wish I was all covered in fur." I said that in that event our first date would probably have been pretty weird and awkward.


This guy looked pretty cozy, too, napping in the dirt. I told Janet I wished I was covered in alligator skin. She ignored me.


I don't know what the fuck this is, except it's some kind of deer or antelope that's really small and I believe native to Narnia.


I just like this guy.

DOs & DON'Ts

DO

You made it to the top of Mt. Hollywood. You're awesome, dude. But you know what would be awesomer? Doing some push-ups at the top of Mt. Hollywood. Yeah, you really are a champion.

DON'T

Sure, it's 10am, and I'm walking around on Hollywood Boulevard with a guitar. Of course I am. That's because I'm a fucking musician, just like all these other random dudes walking around Hollywood with guitars at 10am.

DO

I think she's waiting for her friends Paddington the Bear and Sir Digby Chicken Caesar, who are either inside buying cigs or looking for clues. Whatever, I'll stand under your Umbrella ella ella eh eh eh.

DON'T

Age is just a state of mind, man.