======== Newsgroups: alt.surfing Subject: The D.J.Files...bits of a surfing life #13 Pain... - djpain.13 [1/1] From: dp025@seqeb.gov.au (DAVID PRITCHARD) Date: 7 Oct 1996 12:47:00 GMT Disclaimer: Any similarity between 'Bear' mentioned in any 'Files story and the author is purely 'literary licence' and is merely a way to economise on the number of characters appearing. :-) The D.J.Files #13 A certain 2nd-rate point break. Gawdknowswhen. Somewhat uneven lines are wrapping around the part-natural, part human-made headland. OK, so it's not Rincon or Burleigh, but shit, you can ride for a hundred'n'odd yards if you get a good one. The otherwise onshore Westerly is a cross-wind here and the wave-after-wave windswell is flattening the chop in here. So all things considered, it's a good day. Out in the dozen-or-so lineup someone is paddling for a wave. Inside a kombi, D.J. and 2 others are pulling on wetsuits to join in the fun. "Hey, there goes Orville!" says Bear...but he doesn't have his spex on "Nah, it's Wilbur!" says D.J. and all three stop in half-dressed mode to watch whichever of the difficult-to-tell-apart twins is taking the drop. He cranks off the bottom and for a second is out of sight behind a wave already peeling in front of it. Then he emerges climbing back up the face and resetting the body language for a carve off the top. "Woohoooo!, it must be ten foot!" adds Sean and for once he's not exaggerating. Probably one foot, Hawaiian...what is it with those guys? Everyone has been warmly (it's er..cool) and dryly (it's been drizzling) esconced in the kombi, along with their boards. Now, like a leading astronaut, it's time for D.J. to perform the ceremony-of-the- sliding door and the three neoprene aliens emerge into the real world. The boards flap in the wind, until the guys are running down the concrete runway (for the lifeguards to launch the rubber duckie) and get within the shelter of the low headland. This has to be the next best thing to a ski- lift for getting out at a rocky point break. Dive over a breaking wave... and they're not very big at all, after wrapping in this far...duck thru one more, and that's it. Longish paddle in a big V across and then out. Someone usually tries to cut it a bit fine tho and gets a smacking on the way out. This time it's Bear. How unusual. The others watch him get sucked over the falls...shit, and he nearly made it over, as D.J. said with a grin. 'Byeee...see ya in ten, Bear. D.J. always looks totally at ease when he drops in, no matter how big or mean it looks. He admits on times he feels like a jibbering idiot, but no-one's ever seen any evidence out there. He takes one now. Just a couple of strokes, a no-time transition between lying and standing. He glides down 3metres of sucking face like a bored shopper on an escalator. At the bottom he leans casually into the face. You can't get tubed at this spot, it just collapses in a heap and then peels in a steep, but crumbling wall. Just as he's about to get swallowed in the initial collapse, he accelerates out onto the wall. Some subtle body language has him carving off the top and slamming a further bottom turn. This bloke's surfing is as flowing as a pub tap. Smooth as velvet speedos. He glides over the back and melts back into a prone position, paddles back out. Two waves later as he pulls out...hey, here's Bear, finally outside again. Have a nice paddle? D.J. takes another drop-in and carves away. Two waves later Bear's heading down the face. He's backhand here....he wonders why God made all pointbreaks rights. It was D.J. who first showed him how to do a backhand bottom turn. "You just try and sit on the water" He makes it out of the initial collapsing section and gets one of those wonderful upside-down-feeling carves off the top. But after the next bottom turn, he eats it. Bad. Over-the-falls...he just catches a glimpse of D.J. as he does...and wham! Gurgle. Ommph! The board's gone. For a few seconds he's in a maelstrom. Everything goes really calm then. Weird. He's held in a crouch, like he was sitting on a low stool. Can't go up, can't fall back. It's just like he had been cast in bronze. He tries to stay cool. He waits. Tries again. Nope. Some sort of silent, maybe sub-liminal, thumping tells him it is still breaking above him. The water's murky here tho, nothing to see. So crouched there on the rocks, lungs bursting, he tries to let the air out slowly. He starts to feel funny in the head. Images come...is this the life-flashing-in-front-of-you you get before you die? He's letting water in and starting to pass out, when he suddenly feels loose and is floating up. D.J. is sitting there on his board. He has Bear's along side. He's as close to the break as he dares be. Where the hell _is_ Bear? He'd seen him go down. Seen the board pop up and had managed to grab it. But shit, that was a whole set ago. It seemed like minutes. "PFwhuuuuuuhhh!!!" Bear sucks in as he surfaces. D.J. shoves the board back to him. He grabs it and just falls over it. D.J. looks outside and back at Bear. Aw fuck! He paddles over quickly and just about hauls Bear out of the impact zone. Whoomph, karrumpfphh, the lull is over. They just squeaked over the first two, Bear back to paddling now. They head across, rather than out, just away from the watery hands snatching at them. Later back in the kombi, Sean says "You look worried D.J." "yeah. I think I've got..you know...the big C" "Shit man, like where?" says Sean "Here..." and D.J. drops wettie and boardshorts in one go to reveal the 'brown eye' and points "..see these lumps?" "Yeeeeuuuchhhh, purrit away D.J.!" they chorus "But.." "It's haemorrhoids D.J., you know...piles??" And everyone breaks up with laughter Funny how life can go from drama to farce eh? ***