We piled into one car and hit the road, arriving at Westport a couple hours later.  The Cove was kinda working and so were the Groins.  We split up.  Mateo and another guy at the Cove and myself and the fourth guy at the Groins.  I guess the cove wasn’t working too well since Mateo and the other bro joined us out in the line up shortly after.  The surf wasn’t bad and we all were enjoying the junky waves we were getting.  Not too many people out either which is rare.

After about a half hour i noticed Mateo paddling in.  Weird, i wonder he’s going, i thought.  Maybe another half hour later i noticed Mateo sitting on the rocks in his street clothes.  We pretty much had just started surfing, there were waves and not a lot of dudes out so why would he be bagging it already?

The three of us that remained surfed about an hour more and then called it.  The tide was high so it made for a bit of a tricky exit on the rocks at the Groins.  Right as i was getting out Mateo came over to me and excitedly said ‘dude, you gotta come check this out!’ and started walking down the rocks a bit.  I was all pumped thinking he found some weird dead sea creature.  When i got to the spot and looked between the rocks all i saw was some weird slimey orange mess.  Like a huge dead jelly fish maybe?  I wasn’t sure but Mateo just started laughing at me.  The hell you laughing at me for?

Feeling kinda sick, sipping orange juice the whole way out to Westport, paddling in early, hanging out on the rocks in street clothes…ok.  I get it now.  Fucker.

I make a serious effort to handle biz before surfing.  It’s probably the one situation where being shitless is directly tied to my happiness.  But im not gonna lie.  I’ve missed the pre-surf shit and had to paddle in to lay cable.  Ever tried to push mush with a wetsuit half off?  Its not fun, and it’s tricky–if you blow it you’re prone to hosing your suit with butt mud.

Mateo blew it.

Here’s the best part of the story.  A month later, myself, Mateo and another friend were out on a pretty small day at the Jetty.  Mateo started recounting the story to the other guy and he started laughing.  Mostly at me for getting tricked into looking at it.  Then he realized who’s wetsuit he was borrowing.

The End.

ps, i have like 6 wetsuits right now.  i have an extra 4/3 hurley, xl, black, used maybe 10 times, if anyone is interested.

The radness lasted only a few days.  After strapping in atop the 5 foot cliff at the top and bomb dropping to a complete stop followed by multiple cartwheels, or attempting to turn once gaining speed only to fall straight to your grill and receive a mouthful of sand, or actually making it down the hill only to hit grass, rocks and sticks at 20 mph to a complete stop followed by multiple cartwheels—we called it.

Picture Central (aka Ski Acres) on the stickiest day last spring.  Like the kind where after an hour your base looks like you rode through an oil slick.  Well sand boarding is stickier than that.  Or at least it was on the Black Snow snowboard from Target.

Nowadays the woods that i grew up playing in have been replaced by apartments, roads, and light industrial buildings.  But if you’ve never experienced the joy of snowboarding in sand don’t sweat it. Oregon has it’s own sandboarding park!  Complete with rails and boxes for all you jibbers out there. Located just north of Florence on the Oregon coast the Sand Master Park has everything you need for sandboarding–sand board rental, rails, boxes and sand.  They even have contests!

Wow.

Thanks to my man Mike C. for forwarding this little gem.

We made it to La Mush by about 8:30pm and were in the water shortly after. It was cloudy that night so the post sunset light went quick–usually this time of year you can surf well after sunset. Water was glassy, waves were waist high and punchy. As the evening went on the waves melded with the horizon and became really hard to see. Luckily a little Quileute firework show helped out with some depth perception. We got out of the water in more or less complete dark. The rest of the gang showed up that night.

The waves Sat. morning were waist high, slight north wind, and the water was a little on the cold side. People who wear gloves wore gloves. Fun morning session. By about 4pm the sun finally came out (though our sunburns would’a told you otherwise). Fueled by hot dogs and cheap beer session #3 kicked off to a bubbly start. Wind was still on–surfed a couple hours and called it. More beer, candy and Easy Cheese back at camp–then naps. Evening session was more of the same but a different tide. The 3 session day pretty much KO’d me that night. After an epic firework show, some tequila, a few beers, chili and a full moon–i was down for the count.

Woke up the next morning to roughly triple the size as the previous day and guh-lass. Stoked! Tide was low but the new swell that had arrived (as forecasted) was pumping through just fine. I paddled out after maybe 4 other dudes. The line up was packed about an hour later. We all got a bunch of fun rides. Hardstab dropped on some huge, well overhead set waves–F-ing berserker. Later that day (session #6) the tide had come in and the waves were slightly bigger. Typical huge outside mush, to reform, to wall-up close out. The best waves were the random little ones that would form decent shoulders. Some really powerful waves though. We all got dealt with–i know i bounced off the bottom a few times. Surfed a short session (#7) that evening and was on the road by 5:30pm.

Stopped at Bushwackers in PA on the way home and mowed down a big steak. The waitresses there are hot which makes the food taste even better. That’s my new favorite restaurant in PA. The dinner pit stop was a good idea cause we ended up missing a 3 hour wait in the ferry line (all the Lavendar people were heading home). We still got screwed by WSF mis-information though. The Kingston ferry had a wait. By the time we’d gotten on, our other friends got off on the Bainbridge ferry. Made it home by 1am. I was too tired to stand up in the shower. Passed out in my bed ripe with La Push.

Awesome weekend.  Check out the photo Gallery.

Hardstab went to the Sub Pop 20th show at Marymoor the previous weekend and mentioned that The Foals were awesome live. The lead singer of the Foals was going ape shit breaking stuff on stage.  Sounded like it was gonna be a great show.

The Foals went on around 10 and the lead singer def showed some onry rockstar traits right off the bat.  Rad.  After about the third song Hardstab yelled out “break your mic!”.  Or something like that.  Dude replied “I’ll break something, where you at”.  Whoa!  Sweet…Hardstab was taunting the rockstar.  The next song, dude jumped off the stage with guitar and started moving through the crowd towards Hardstab.  Uh oh.  Nothing exciting panned out but it was a bit intimidating to see dude moving toward us after a half-assed threat.

Wolf Parade was awesome.  Sound was good, crowd was stoked, Band was rocking.  Stoked i finally got to see them at a small venue before they reach stadium status.  Next time The Foals come to town go see them.

Here’s a vid i took from the show of “Wolf Parade - You are a Runner and I am my Father’s Son”

Below is an email i received from a friend who actually saw the shark.

“Hey man,

I’m not sure what to say on this one as I still don’t know what to think. I have always thought of W-Port as the Shark free zone of the NW. Living and surfing in Oregon for years, I always knew that there might be sharks in the water but I have never even thought about it in Westport.

Thursday before last, a friend and I rallied out early in the AM cause Mag. SeaW. was claiming 4 star surf potential. We got there and it was kind of blown out and crappy, so we surfed for a bit then killed the day hanging out in hopes that the evening session would be better. Sure enough, it started to clean up around 4pm, the sun came out and we headed out in the water. Four of us (myself, YYY and two local kids)sat in the same area, waiting for waves. As I was paddling back out from a short ride, I saw that all 3 of the guys were looking at something and I looked over and caught glimpses of something between waves. I got closer, sat up on my board and heard one of the local kids say “holy shit, it is a shark!”. I thought there was no way, so I sat there looking at a big ass fin (about 18″), facing us and sticking up out of the water about 20 yds away. I sat there looking at it for a while because I was in disbelief and thought it must be something else. Reality set in when I saw the vertical tail fin breeching the water behind the dorsal. It just hovered there facing out direction, basically motion less. That’s when the panic stroke set in to get in to the sand (about 80 yds away). As soon as we started paddling, when looking over our shoulders, it was gone. When we got to waist deep water YYY and I looked back out and saw the fin again in about the same spot.The local kids came over and said that they surf there all the time and have never seen anything like that.

Here is what didn’t make sense to me, the dorsal had a pretty serious curve to it (like an Orca) but there was a vertical tail fin which whales & dolphins don’t have.

I didn’t want to believe it was a shark and still don’t. Being that I didn’t believe, I didn’t say anything to anybody till we left. After talking to a couple people about it, I realized that I would feel terrible if I didn’t say anything and someone got bit. So I called the W-port authorities, told them the story and asked them to pass the word to whoever might be able to keep an eye out for whatever it might have been.

I don’t know if it was a shark but I do know that it was a big ass fish (at least 10′) with a dorsal and tail fin hovering out of the water. I think I am just going to write it off as a group hallucination and continue to believe that the waters of Westport are shark free.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have any further questions.

Take care,

XXX”