They should have come out wiht me this morning. Just before sunrise, I sat in the edge of a frisky four-foot high surf, waiting patiently for the moment, sliding in the shallows as the breakers flailed and faded around me, always being replaced by new ones. Finally, I had the time right, and I pushed into the face of the next wave, slicing it open and slapping down in the valley behind it. Two or three ugly walls of saltwater tried to slap me around on the way out past the surfline and I got soaked, but they were too late; I was out past the breaking range, into the swells. THen I was out in the morning sun listening to the cries of sea lions, loons, pelicans, and scores of hungry cormorants. They flocked and landed all around me, taking off again across my bows wit the thrupping sound of a bent radiator fan, sawing and swerving as they scanned the nearby waters in a feeding frenzy caused by a large school of alewives or some other small fish. Te wide bosom of the Pacific was calming, brilliant deep blue under a bright sky littered with small puffs of cloud: a perfect kayaker's day.

If only such days could stay as perfect! Coming in a timed the onsets carefully, rode the back of one going in and let it slide under me and break ahead; just as I hit the throttle, a cross breaker came by and slapped my sideways, broaching and rolling me in a blind chaos of sand and water. I almost lost my hat!! It is a normal risk of the business, but I was pissed. For one thing, the seals on the kayaks hatches had apparently dried out from long non-use, and rolling it under a breaker in three feet of water was enough to ship seventy pounds of water. So hauling it up the beach was much more of a trial than it should have been.    To top it all off, after I had wearily gotten it up the beach and gone for the car I discovered the usually sound passager on the boatloading area of the beach was now a deep drift of very soft sand, and my poor front-wheel drive can stalled out, buried up to its front hubs in white sand. It took an hour of digging and pushing with the help of several kind strangers, and finally one very nice pure-dee SoCal dude in a large truck, to get it back to terra firma. Finally home, it took me several hours just to sort all the gear out, get the sand off everything, and wash the boat up and stow it.

But there were a good thirty minutes of sheer bliss in the middle of it all, which made it worth all that woe.

Happy Sunday Mom. I have FOUR working days left at the Orifice!!   How about them apples??