February 9, 2009 Monday

Bolinas	Groin and Channel
8:50 am to 10:00 am	3' to 4'
High upcoming tide	Cold offshore wind
Sunny and cold	Frustrating session

After our session, Marty and I were sitting on a stone bench in front of Smiley’s Saloon in downtown Bolinas that was sheltered from the cold NW winds and heated by the sun, enjoying a coffee, sharing a day old quiche, a bargain from the coffee stand next to the Coast Café, and discussing the issues of the day. The door of the weather weary camper parked next to us swung open and out stepped the resurrection of Janis Joplin with straggly dreadlocks, bleary-eyes, baggy tied-dyed shirt and shorts. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a packet of Zigzag papers, a small bag of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. Man, I hadn’t seen this since the sixties. Like the bald tires of her vehicle this woman had seen some mileage. With enthusiasm she began telling us of the concert/happening that she was promoting. We would love it she ensured us; she stepped back into the camper and emerged with brightly colored promotional postcards for us, one is pictured above. Two days and nights of rock music, food, camping and God knows what else. The show was:

Layton Ville Area 101 – Festival of Love, Valentine’s Day 2009.

Staring several up and coming bands, such as: Free Peoples, Stiff Dead Cat (porch stomping BBQ music), Peace Warrior and Pots & Pans (the juggling band). Her favorites were taking the stage at midnight both Friday and Saturday. For us sixty-year olds, beginning performances at midnight is not appealing. Local eateries would be there practically giving away food. She praised the guy who was backing the event, a person interested in people, not profit. Twenty times she touted that he wasn’t doing this for the money. The “happening” was his motivation. An absolute bargain; bring the children, only $15 for one night and $25 for both nights. You won’t want to miss this one she insisted. She moved with us for several yards as Marty and I tried to politely walk away from her aggressive sales pitch before giving up on us. We wished her good luck and moved on. Can you imagine two days and nights of mind-mushing hedonism? Woodstock lives on, forty-eight hours of ingesting mind altering chemicals, numbing consciousness and bobbing one’s head up and down to endless thumping of electric guitars, sounded boring to me.

Marty and I had selected this sunny spot to get out of the cold. Too much cold wind, current and the high tide was the theme of this morning’s session. As I entered the water, Professor Steve was exiting. He warned me about the strong current pushing into the lagoon. I paddled out to join Marty and Dexter. Marty commented on the exercise he was getting battling the current. Sitting there a few minutes I drifted from north of the Groin pole to mid-channel. A strong in-coming tide was pushing us over and into the mouth of the lagoon. According to the Tidelog, a 6.8 ft high tide would peak at 10:30 am. We had a good hour to go, the flood tide was fierce and the waves were barely breaking due to the deep water. This morning’s buoy report had the swell at 6 ft every 14 seconds. The set waves looked promising, they would peak in the Channel, break and quickly die in the deep water. I caught one good left, dropped down a shoulder high face, straightened out and concentrated on merely staying in the swell until the momentum disappeared inside the Groin pole. The paddled back out was challenging due to the incoming current. A couple more of these and we gave up fighting the elements and went in after an hour.

Back at our cars while changing in the cold, Barry pulled up in his white van. I had not seen him in months. He was recovering from a cracked rib that he injured falling off a ladder doing a house project. He gave us all the gory details of how he was very lucky that the injury was not worst. He missed the water and after a couple of weeks went out surfing and immediately injured it again causing him to miss several more weeks of surfing. Today he was going out for the first time in two months. He was anxious to get back into the water and was going out regardless of conditions. He still felt a pain in the ribs whenever he stretched his arm above his head, and thus he will feel it when paddling. He stated there was a positive side to his injury. The tenderness of his rib cage has become a “stress-o-meter” for him. Whenever he tenses up, the injured rib begins to pulsate. When stress hits the rib lets him know about it. The other day while driving, traffic was getting to him, he began to tense up and his rib began to throb. He quickly slipped into a meditative state, relaxed his body, his stress subsided and the pain in the rib disappeared. Due to his sensitive rib, he was doing a much better job at controlling his stress. Marty and I were glad to see him back in action and wished him the best.