East Side Surfblog

Rat blog

BlogDog is extraordinarily intelligent. I have him so highly trained. Whenever I fire up the grill, he drools uncontrollably. A pairing of canine intellect and human creativity. A virtual pas de deux of man and animal on par with Siegfried and his tiger.

But since I’ve read about the whole tiger-eating-Roy thing, I make sure to toss BlogDog a piece to keep him from getting any ideas. His favorite being the burnt remains of mahi skin. I guess there is no correlation between intellect and taste.

He’s also pretty adept at joining the ongoing battle Mrs. Blog and I have with rats. For a Great Dane, at least. Not like he’s VinnieDog, who enforces the mammal-free zone that extends in a 100-yard radius around Casa del Vinnie. Au contraire. The human inhabitants of Schloss Blog have been plagued by rats and, finding that the rats in Olde Mounte Pleasante have evolved over the eons to know how to defeat all mechanical weapons, are now engaging in chemical warfare. Which results in half-demented rats staggering across the yard in broad daylight. And of course, naps notwithstanding, BlogDog is more than happy to chase something he can actually catch. Nothing goes quite so well with a nice piece of burnt mahi skin as a freshly demented rat.

And speaking of being eaten, when I got back from my most recent foray into the unknown recesses of deepest inland, everybody seemed eager to tell me about the kid who got bitten by the shark at IOP. Like I’m the next one on the menu. I always get the “aren’t you afraid of sharks” thing from people who don’t surf.

Well, I’m not. Basically because I’m too old and skinny to be much of a treat. I think sharks have all kinds of sensory capabilities we don’t understand and probably place me in the category of ossified flotsam. That’s why I like surfing with Vinnie. I think he would make one heck of a Happy Meal.

I said it was going to be rideable last weekend, and even though Vinnie was MIA, I’ll take a few moments to bask in the warm afterglow of being right for once. I did get to surf with Davo, Ryan and Howard at an unnamed numerical spot on the Westside and was pleasantly surprised to be able to surf with Jane and Hanja at the numerical equivalent on the Eastside the next day. Satisfyingly symmetrical.

Of course, the highlight had to be judging the annual Gromfest contest and watching the nextGen get destroyed in closeout, low-tide, Folly sand-dredgers. Pretty much no-fear, go-for-it all day. No better amusement.

This weekend looks to be less than last, but perhaps you should wax up a longboard and go check it early just in case.

Rideable blog

If you are sitting around watching the swell models and checking the conditions on the cams and waiting for the surf to get good enough to go out, my advice to you is to give up and just paddle out. A couple weeks ago I vowed to stop looking at swell models. So I lied, and it’s your fault because you trusted me.

So here’s the thing. It looks as if we have a decent chance of getting some surf this weekend. As a matter of fact, if you have been dawn patrolling before work, you already have ridden the beginning of it. But this is the East Coast, and more specifically South Carolina we are talking about here, so it never gets really good, like magazine-quality good. So suck it up, face the facts and paddle out in choppy/bumpy/lumpy/windy (or substitute your favorite crappy surf adjective here) substandard closeouts and be grateful for it.

Now, don’t get me wrong: My prediction for the weekend isn’t for Victory at Sea conditions. It’s possible we could have some classic surf. It’s just not that probable. So I’m going to go with rideable. That’s such a good word. It’s like edible. It doesn’t mean that what you’ve just eaten is delicious — only that you won’t die some horrible, purple-tongued, twisted-agony death.

It’s going to be rideable. So go ride it.

Inland blog

So, I usually notify my minders over in the editorial department whenever I travel inland. It isn’t as much about me being a slacker — which of course I am — as it is my desire to spare you, Dear Reader, the shock of what occurs when you go there. But, being your full-service Surfblogger, I feel it is my duty to now report what I believe will come out eventually anyway.

Did you know that if you get in your car and drive inland for a while, if you stop your car, get out, turn around and look back the way you came, THERE IS NO OCEAN.

I know — freaked me out the first time I did it. So, I report this so none of you guys have to go there to find out what happens. There’s basically like rocks and hills and trees and stuff. You could ride a skateboard, but everyone knows it’s just not the same thing, so why bother.

But they do have food and places to sleep and all, so it’s not that bad if you don’t think too much about NOT SURFING.

Other than sparing you the trauma of going inland by doing it for you, the other thing I have done is gone inland. Which means I’ll probably be the designated surf sacrifice and there will actually be something to ride this weekend. I’m not even bothering to look at the swell models. The sheer karmic imbalance I’ve created by leaving the coast is sure to stir up something more than flat. Happens every time. So wax up — this one’s on me.

Octoblog

This was a weird week. andyO tripped over a bull mastiff and broke his arm, and Mrs. Blog had her hopes crushed by an octopus named Paul. I coulda swore all this time that Paul was the walrus. In any event, I’m not going to have any undue discourse with animals for a while and have resolved not to look Blogdog in the eye until next Tuesday.

I’m also going to stop looking at swell models, because they aren’t yielding anything of any use to anybody unless you have a ton of bonus-points and boards stashed strategically in time-zones that involve some degree of jet-lag. I’ve used three hyphenated words in one sentence. So at least someone is showing some initiative beyond King Neptune’s.

Which is less of an achievement than thinking there might actually be surf out there somewhere. That’s according to Mrs. Blog, who said that, according to Mrs. Vinnie, Vinnie refuses to leave the house and has become catatonic and calcified by staring into the computer screen and trying to force surf to come our way by sheer will. As if the magnitude of the injustice of it all will cause a great big ol’ sneaker swell to start rolling in and he’ll be the only one watching.

Makes perfect sense to me. I’m thinking of ordering him up a case of No-Doz on the Internet and having it shipped direct. Maybe a little more concentration will tip the scales in our favor. He’s probably been slacking off on us — goin’ to the bathroom, sleepin’ and eatin’ and stuff just when the systems start cookin’ up in our swell window. Just a little more grit and determination on his part and we’d probably be lying around at night nursing a nice wax rash and a couple of cold, green Heinekens with an octopus named Paul.

Odd blog

I missed whatever surf we had last weekend. Been so plugged in at work that I don’t even know how the ESA contest went. But I’m thinking there will be some ENE swell this weekend. The good thing is that direction usually means we’ll have some cooler temperatures. The downside is that it usually means the wind is blowing pretty good and the surf will be close-outs. But hey, I’ll take anything that’s better than flat.

What’s really got me stumped is this forecast on the charts at www.magicseaweed.com  for a week from now. This look like a hurricane to you?

I write this on Wednesdays, so by the time you read it on Thursday, it could change. So before you freak out and get down the 7’10” pintail gun, run the model and see for yourself. But keep an eye on the charts and stuff to see what’s in store, and this looks like plenty. It’s a week away, so everything can change. But it sure tickles the imagination. If you start at today (Wednesday) and put the maps in motion, you will see this thing forming off of the Bahamas on Monday and within two days winding itself up to what looks to me like a cyclone. I’ve been looking at other weather sites and stuff, but this is the only place I can find that is projecting something like this so far out. Leave it to surfers.

But that wind model looks like things will transcend well beyond the recreational value. And anything beyond recreational moves me into the realm of hassle. So if you decide to evacuate, take a look at Florida. This model is calling for slightly offshore winds at the same time we are taking a beating. You could get a couple of days of killer surf before you have to come home and fire up the chainsaw.

If you look at the actual surf forecasts on the same site, it doesn’t predict much of anything with size. So I could be making much ado about nothing. Odd though, ain’t it?