El Morro

Our little community by the sea has been demolished and mostly forgotten. However those of our who spent our formative years there still think of it as home. - like the mothership we always come back to. It's a bond we all share. When I venture back to the sand and to the water (that's all that's really left) I'm always hoping to run into, by chance, some of my old neighbors. When the surf gets large those chances grow greater.

Friday was a classic day for the surf at El Morro. It was also bit of a homecoming for a small group of us. I went out bodysurfing in the evening - over matched and delightfully terrified - and I'm still trying to drain the water out of my ear. Unfortunately my "bar of soap" camera couldn't quite capture the size and strength of the swell. The above photo is of one of the moderate size sets. Not bad and certainly big for any other day.

On Saturday morning I witnessed the other side of the "big swell" equation. I went surfing at Doheny and paddled into a floating mass of humanity. A flotilla of foam and fiberglass. There were perhaps 150 people in the water - one-third of them surfing, two-thirds of them just floating bobbing around like an aquatic obstacle course. Oh to live in Southern California.