BUGGED INTO BRINGING BACK A CLASSIC
2-20-08
By Corky Carroll

This week I am bringing back a column I did five years ago in the Huntington Beach Wave. It is dedicated to Dale “bugman” Christian, who hates bugs. I found him napping on my deck last week wearing shoes, all his clothes and a towel over his head. I hadn’t seen a bug in months, but he was not taking any chances.

TROPICAL SIESTAS FOR EXPERTS....
I think that I was Mexican in a former life cause I can totally relate to the lifestyle. Slow it down and be happy. And especially the custom of the afternoon siesta. It is kinda like a nap but with a party atmosphere. Fiesta, siesta.......see what I mean? It's a good thing. When you get to be anywhere near my age a bit of extra sleep is always a nice addition to the day, especially after surfing your brains out all morning and having to woof down a major lunch, usually involving tortillas and beans, in some way or another, to refuel.

There are a number of ways to approach the afternoon siesta. I've found that right after porkin' on lunch it's best to hang out for a bit, maybe talkin' story or just relaxing. Let the meal digest a bit. A short walk is nice to sort of settle your tummy, like maybe back to wherever it is that you like to take your siesta. One of my favorite siesta spots is in a hammock somewhere that the nice breeze can keep you cool and where you can be lulled to a blissful dreamlike state by the sounds of the surf. This is a siesta at its finest.

The secret is to find the right spot where nobody is gonna come along and bug ya right in the middle of that afternoon dream where you are screaming along the face of a perfect eight foot wall while beauteous native babes wearing nothing but a leaf, or not, are adoring you from the beach and eagerly awaiting the glorious finish to your shreddingly skillful ride so that they can whisk you away to their native hut and caress you with sweet smelling coconut oils and pop chilled mango chunks into your mouth, and other stuff that need not be mentioned here. No, you do NOT want anybody wakin' you up in the middle of that to ask you where the wax stash is. Nabbas.

Some people like to use music to set them off into dreamland. Maybe a Walkman with some mellow "take me somewhere soft and fuzzy" sounds in it. I sometimes like a nice set of bamboo wind chimes. They set a nice mood. If I listen to music that has too much energy in it my nap is not as restful as I like. Just the birds and breeze and the sounds of the waves are a pretty good soundscape to drift off to.
I have seen those who aren't quite as advanced in their siesta quest go for a back seat of a car or soft spot in the back of a van. This is O.K. but tends to get stuffy and makes you sweat. Then ya stink and wake up sort of surly and rank. The hammock thing is much more professional as the breeze keeps ya nice and ventilated. You usually wake up much more refreshed and still smelling at least as good as you did when you went down. This can have a serious effect on how you do with the aforementioned exotic native babes.
Then there are those who prefer to curl up in their hotel rooms or houses or wherever it is that they are staying. One word of advice here, go easy on the air-conditioning. I have fallen victim to the temptation of "crankin' it up to the max" many times and the result is almost always catching a hideous cold.

Beginners will sometimes go for the beach siesta. Finding a shady spot under a swaying palm in the nice soft sand sounds like a cool deal and many have fallen for this seemingly flawless allure. But I can tell you from having experience here that this is really not the best siesta spot.
First off you have a cornucopia of creatures that like to come visiting while you are snoozing. The sand fleas and fire ants are bad enough, but you also have a whole family of Mexican scorpions to deal with. The big black dudes that look like lobsters, the common red ones that can ruin your day and the nasty little white ghosty lookin' ones that can ruin your week.

And then you have your Mexican beach dog. My buddy Bluedog Metcalf can testify about this one. They like to sneak up right in the middle of that great dream just when you are finishing the great ride and the native babes are about ready to adore ya. A number of things can happen here, the least likely being that the dude will just sniff ya and go away. More than likely he will first stick his wet snotty dog nose right into your butt. Then, depending on how much he likes what he sniffs, one of four things will happen. Best case scenario is that he just trots away. Probably he will lick your face right across your mouth. He could bite ya, but they hardly ever do that. Worse case scenario, and this does happen often, is that the dude will lift his leg on ya. You just gotta hope it is on your feet and not your head. You do not want a Mexican beach dog lifting his leg on your head.

So, you can see what I mean when I say that beach siestas are normally novice mistakes. I hope this little guide to better napping in the tropics helps you on your next trip.


HOW AGRO CAN YOU GO?
The Wave ~ 2-20-08
BY CORKY CARROLL

This morning while surfing at one of my favorite spots, which will need to go unnamed in hopes of saving the occasional wave that I get to myself from the clutches of even more over aggressive nasty surf meanies, we conducted a little experiment. We called it the “How agro can you go, plan A.”

I was sitting in the lineup with my pals Blue Dog Metcalf and the infamous “Iguana.” The waves were pretty good and it was a nice day so there was a solid crowd out there and the vibe was on the more aggressive mode than not. There were a lot of wave hungry people who were working really hard at the normal “snake” moves and out positioning each other. As an example: Blue Dog was sitting in perfect position for a set that was coming. He had been sitting there waiting for a wave for about twenty minutes and had given up a number of good waves to guys that paddled past him at the last minute and turned around and took off. This is the typical agro crowd kinda move.

As the wave approached the Dog turned to take off. He is in the spot and it was more than his turn. But some dude who had just ridden a wave and blew it came paddling as fast as he could right in front of the Blueboy and managed to slip himself just to the inside of him. The dude then turned around and took off and starting yelling “hey, hey, hey!” as Blue Dog was taking off. He backed off and let the guy go but was pretty angry about it. It was clearly his turn and his wave. But in this day of over aggressive crowd surfing it is totally dog eat Dog and all manners have been tossed out the window.

So we are sitting there talking about it and that dude paddles back out and naturally moves just past us to the inside position. And then another guy who had also just ridden a wave did the same to him. That is when the “How agro can you go, plan A” went into effect.

I moved over just to the inside of both of those guys. Then another guy who had just come out moved to the inside of me. Slowly the other two guys moved over to the inside of all of us. And then I did the same thing. And then each of the guys in turn did the same thing. Pretty soon the whole group had moved about a hundred yards too far out and too far over. And the pack had picked up a few more along the way. That is when I saw a set coming way outside. I made it a point of taking a big look and starting to paddle out. Everyone in the group took off to get past me. I let them. When they were all outside of me I stopped and turned around. While they were all racing each other for the horizon I paddled back to the normal lineup. The set came and Blue Dog and the Iguana were in perfect pole position and both got the first two unmolested set waves to themselves. I was able to paddle fast enough to snag the third one and had the only wave I had caught all that day without some sort of aggressive positioning thing going on. We all wound up on the inside laughing and checking to see just how far the pack had gone before they figured out that they were half way to China. They were way, way out there.

So this became our little ‘over aggressive surf butthead’ control plan. A little while later the Iguana became the mover while the dog and I stayed inside. It worked twice today. The third time they had it figured out. But it was sweet for the few waves we did get with a tad bit of tranquility.

The problem is that the whole pecking order thing is sort of grey. It is not always the “guy on the inside has the right of way” as is commonly believed. There has to be a little bit of sharing and respect for each other out there. Would you go into a supermarket and just crash into the front of the checkout line each and every time? Not unless you were the biggest jerk (the mellowest term I can use in this forum) in the world. Unfortunately I think that some of the people that surf these days fall into that category. At least it sure seems that way.