WHY I DON'T DAWN PATROL

4-11-07
By Corky Carroll

Many zillions of centuries ago in a far away galaxy, way far from this one, it used to be a cool thing to do to go “dawn patrolling.”   This, for those of you who don't know, is getting up before the sun comes up to go surfing.  The idea is to get great un-crowded waves before everyone else gets out there.  It used to be like that too.  When I was a kid I used to get up and surf before school and I was always the only one out.  Of course I was lucky that our house was right on the beach and I could surf for an hour, wolf down a bowl of Cheerios, and still make the school bus on time. 

As years went by and the surf got more and more crowded dawn patrolling got less and less attractive as more and more surfers started doing it.  For me it started to become undesirable back in the early 1990's.  I had planned to dawn patrol one morning when I had just got a new board and wanted to try it out at the pier in Huntington Beach without the whole herd of agro menaces out there.  So the day after I picked up my new stick I got up about an hour before sunrise and hit it down to the pier.  I got into my wetsuit, wrapped myself in an extra large beach towel, grabbed an extra large cup of coffee from Java Point and went down to the beach to wait for enough light to paddle out. 

As I was sitting there freezing my butt off and draining the last drops of my coffee it started to get light.  To my amazement there was a huge flock of birds sitting all over the lineup from the pier north and south for blocks.  I had never seen so many birds sitting on the water before in one place.  But then, to my utter shock, it became clear that these were NOT birds.  They were surfers who had been out there in the dark.  It was the surf teams and classes from all the local high schools.  Hundreds of them.  Hordes of screaming young meanies attacking every little bit of a wave that dared to come through en mass.   I put my wetsuit tail between my legs and went home.  

Then a few years later I made the mistake of going dawn patrolling with Bob “the Greek” Bolan one frigid winter morning at “Church.”  This is a spot south of San Clemente on the Marine base.  We drove into the San Onofre Surf Beach and parked the car and then had to walk up the beach about a quarter mile to get there.  It was so cold that the grains of sand on the beach felt like razor blades. The water was full of icebergs with polar bears on them sticking their tongues out at us.  It was absolutely an insane thing to be doing.  And, on top of that, the waves were only about one to two feet and the tide was way too high.  I sat there frozen solid for about an hour until one nice little wet wave came my way.  I was in the perfect spot for it and took off.  Unfortunately my good pal Bob, who was paddling out and saw this good wave come through, could not resist the urge to drop in on me.  And he did.  

That was just about it for me and early morning surfing.  It seems like today the most crowded time of day is dawn and it is also the most nasty and aggressive crowds.  Everybody is out there to beat everybody else out there and it didn't work.  And you have all these people who have to be somewhere; school, work, whatever.   They are in a wave feeding frenzy.  

And I have also found out that whenever I still make an attempt at a dawn patrol I jinx the surf.  It will have all the signs of being fantastic the night before but if I risk the rare dawn patrol it goes flat or the wind blows or a storm comes in or something not good.   The surf gods have made it clear to me that I belong out there somewhere around the crack of nine or ten.  And besides that I need all the beauty sleep I can get these days.  At my age every little bit helps.

WHY I AM NOT RICH IN MONEY

The Wave ~ 4-11-07
By Corky Carroll

I have a sort of morning ritual everyday.  I wake up just before sunrise.  The first thing I do is turn on my computer.  Then I make myself my morning cup of coffee.  It is my one addiction in life other than my wife, the muy bonita Karlita.  I love that first cup of coffee.  Normally about the time I get it made the sun is starting to come up.  If I am at home in Huntington Beach I head back to my computer and log on to check out the surf.  I remember one morning I logged onto the surf cam at the pier and saw my pal George Lambert get fully barreled on the south side.   Just goes to show that no matter where you are and what you are doing somebody could be watching.  With Google Earth getting so good it won't be long before you can sign on and hit Google Me and see what YOU are doing.  Just in case you weren't sure about it. 

Anyway, I normally plan out the morning according to how the surf is looking.  If I am at my house in Mexico I just look out the window and can check it myself, it's right there.  And an extra-added benefit is that we get fantastic sunrises just about every single morning.  So my routine is to drink my coffee watching the sunrise and checking the surf at the same time.  It's a really tranquil way to start the day.
 
After the surf check is when I do my email.  I get lots of email and I like it.  It is sort of my link to the real world. Most of the time I am totally absorbed in my own little fantasy island kinda existence where I am Mr. Rourke and my pal Blue Dog is like a giant version of “Tattoo” pointing and squealing “The plane, the plane.”  

The thing about email is anybody in the world can send you a message about anything.   I get so much loco mail, as I call it.  Like I get these letters from some Miss Gahunduru Magandhi, or something like that, that claims to be the daughter of the late great Doctor Kahunamus Barnamundo who has left five hundred gazillion Dollars in an account in Nigeria and she needs my help in getting it out of the country and will gladly share it with me if I don't tell anybody.  It makes me think that the Doctors over there really make a lot of money.  How come some many people are sick?

Then there are the ones that tell me that I have won sixty-five million dollars in some European lottery.  One time I fell for that one and tried to collect my winnings.  It turned out that in order to collect my prize I had to send them two thousand dollars to cover a fee to process my claim.  And it all had to be done in secret.  They ask for your discretion to not tell anybody.  Kinda reminds me of the ads in the Yellow Pages for massages where they claim to be “discreet.”  Not that I really know what they mean by that or anything.

Anyway, I didn't want to risk sending what little money that I had to the Euro Lottery people in order to collect my millions of dollars so I guess that is one of the reasons that I am not rich.  And the funny thing is every week I seem to win again and again but I still just trash the emails along with the ones from Africa and the ads to grow little Corky at least three inches longer and the offers for Vicodin and Viagra to be “discreetly” delivered and the ones that say that I have missed dates with “these hot young girls.”  Geeze, if all these were true I could be a rich pain free stud dating a bunch of hot babes named Monique and Lolita.  

The good part about all this is that along with all this loco mail I also get great messages and stories from people I have never met from all over the world.  I love this part of the Internet and email.  I may not be a rich pain free stud but I do get my share of beautiful sunrises and waves and have the muy bonita Karlita next to me and that makes me as happy as I ever could need to be.