March 30, 2009 Monday

Torrance Beach	Base of the north ramp
9:00 am to 10:30 am	3' to 4', sets head high
Low tide - at the turning point	Offshore breeze
High cloud cover, patchy sun	Frustrating session

Walls, closeouts and crunchers were today’s theme.

Gray overcast skies, slight offshore breeze, perfectly smooth surface with three to four-foot walls stretching from one end of the beach to the other and only one person out. Where were the Riviera Waveriders? Did they know about the low tide and the end-to-end walls? For exercise, to kill time and since the waves were beautiful I decided to go out.

While suiting up I said hello to Alex, one of the Waveriders, who was heading out to the break. He was about my age, a longboarder and good shape. Rocky, another Riviera Waverider, was stretching on the sand as I came by.

“Where’s the spot?” I asked him.

“Right here,” he said pointing to the entire length of the break. Rocky was 55 years old, in great shape and an excellent surfer. “The trick is to find a shoulder,” he added.

Alex, Rocky and I tried to locate an edge to the walls without success. The swells would build and build and then would come over in a curtain of white water. My first wave was my best ride. In came a cresting swell with a definite left shoulder, I paddled hard, pushed over the edge, dropped to the bottom, lost some momentum, turned into the swell and managed to shoot through a good section before the curtain collapsed on me. I had difficulty paddling back out. The water was deep even though the waves acted like they were breaking in shallow water. A set came through and I was ducking under one wave after another. Finally the set let up and I scratched outside.

The waves were also difficult to catch. I had to wait until they were feathering at the top before I could get into them. My strategy was to catch the waves early to get an extra instance to position myself in the wave before dropping down the face. I only managed to do this on a couple of waves, which turned out to be good rides. Most of the time I paddled hard only to miss them.

Slowly other Riviera Waveriders arrived. Mike calmly paddled out on his knees, Karen 7.0 showed up wearing her orange baseball cap, and five others soon joined us. Mike dropped into some head-high walls. He always managed to get into them early, would swing right, scream down the faces and bailout by diving into the waves. Karen amazed me. I thought she was a novice but she took care of herself in the water. She paddled for everything, including waves that to me were obvious closeouts. She would skillfully drop down the faces, straighten out at the bottom, ride the soup all the way to the shore and would turn around, fight her way through the white water and do it all again.

For an hour we paddled around connecting on these walls. Frustrated that I didn’t make more of them, I kept things in perspective: the blue-gray walls were beautiful, the crowd was friendly and mellow, I was in the water and the exercise felt good. What more could a retiree ask for.

Check out all my photos of my two weeks in Southern California -

http://gallery.me.com/lorenlmoore1#100050