Whoa! what happened to the surf blog?!?!?

Sessions 1, 2, 3
Jetty, Natural Bridges, Rockaway

Oh how I have neglected you, poor little Jubu surf blog. Recently, I was reminded that I have not posted for nearly 2 weeks now! Shame on me.

However, on a positive note, in those two weeks I have managed to make 3 trips to the ocean. For me, that's pretty good! but not good enough, slacker!! I will highlight each of them below:

session 1: I actually went on a weekday! it was fantastic. and surprisingly easy. will have to do this more in the future. Maybe later this week.

I woke up on Tuesday morning (3/15), sun was barely just starting to come up at 6 am. I had gotten my stuff ready the night before, so gave snoodle a kiss, ate a small PB&J sandwich, grabbed my stuff and headed out to the car, was on the road by 6.20 or so. Headed up 280 and took 92 over to The Jetty, was in the water by 7.15. Not bad at all.

When I got there, there were maybe 7 or so people already out. Conditions were decent, pretty much exactly what I like: not too big, not too powerful, but pretty clean, pretty frequent, and pretty fun. Due to the lack of a huge crowd (which I'm accustomed to surfing only weekends) I was really able to go for a lot of waves, and in the ~2 hours I was out caught an awesome number of waves. Lots of fun. I had some good rides, primarily rights, although I did get one or two very short and not too pretty lefts as well. On what could have been my best wave of the day, I caught the wave, stood up and was making the drop, but just as quickly as I stood up I fell over, going right over the front of my board...bah! Would have been a great ride. oh well, will save that good ride for my next AM weekday session.

Session 2: Pretty typical lazy weekend surf expedition. Was 3/19 or 3/20 -- sat or Sun. Was watching NCAA basketball games with my brother, Mike called and wanted to go out, so we agreed to head over to Santa Cruz. Mike came over and we all drove over in his Explorer. We decided we'd check out Natural Bridges. Hardly anybody ever goes there, and thought it might be working today because there was a pretty good swell at the time. When we got there, we saw that there looked to be some fun waves directly to the right of the natural bridge rock, so we went to check them out. Mike was excited because they were lefts, which is rare to find on the northern CA coast. Joel and Mike caught some good waves, but I honestly didn't really catch a thing. The waves were pretty steep, and kind of tricky at times as they would often close out...needless to say I am not quick enough at standing up to really get anything good this time out. I tried on a few to stand up, but the wave seemed practically vertical so I felt like if i stood, I was just going to go nowhere but down, falling...how are you supposed to do that? Well, obviously, it could be done, as my brother and Mike were doing it plenty...but not by me. I also was feeling a little sick (too much beer the night before?) so I paddled in and sat on the beach for a while, watched them get more waves, and later in the day paddled back out and tried (pretty unsuccessfully) to get something. Well, was still fun. There were some much bigger and more powerful looking waves breaking maybe a half mile further north that some good surfers were on...way too much for me! Even though I didn't get anything at all on this trip, I still had fun.

Session 3: Sunday 3/27. Should probably have stayed at home and watched March Madness...this weekend's games were incredible! and i didn't see any of them! bah. surf was not very good, and weather was even worse! And sadly I think it also made me sick. But was still pretty awesome to be out in the water in the middle of a storm! whoa!

We started the day by convincing my brother to join us. However, in doing so, we had to not go to Santa Cruz (where it would have been a lot more protected and probably much better conditions) and instead going to HMB area, which was a windblown mess! but i'll gladly make that trade to have my bro (my surfing idol) come along. :) we started by driving past Jetty, unsurfable and not a person out there, stopped at Montara State Beach, which was probably the best of all places, but looked a little too big for me. Joel and Mike could've gone out, but I actually want to practice somewhere I can get waves...so we continued driving. Linda Mar had about 1 foot waves at the time and also smelled like poo, so we kept on going to Rockaway, which looked decent. There were about 10 people at the south end of the beach. We actually were going to go out at the north end, but I don't know what we were thinking with that idea...Mike actually did paddle out on the north end, which was no small feat because there were tons of waves, all over the place, and they were pretty good size...but he saw an opportunity and gotta give him credit, he went for it. Joel and I were smart and just hung out on the beach. watched Mike paddle out like a maniac, and we decided to run across the beach over to the much calmer and organized south end...poor mike, he had to paddle out, and then paddle across the beach all the way to where we were at. Nice moves bennett bros!

Once we got out, there were some waves. I had a memorable attempt where I tried to go for a wave, but later found out I was WAY too deep, and just got picked up, rolled over, and tossed around in the sea. yahhoooo! not pretty. After that I was a little skeptical to go for the bigger ones. so i tried paddling further inside to catch some small waves. Sadly, this is where the worst part of the day came...the 10 or so guys that were out, proved to be 10 guys not interested in sharing. They would drop in on my bro every time he was on a wave, and when I was just trying to paddle inside, they would send a couple guys to my spot who would also steal anything I was going to get. sad. :( so I didn't get anything, as I don't care to be aggressive in the water and am also not as good as any of those guys :( (but i think i am nicer). So after a while of this frustration, we all went in. Joel drove up to SF, but Mike and I went back down to Linda Mar.

At LM for the 2nd time, we had some fun in some extreme conditions for maybe an hour or so. I'll write more on that later, but for now, time to go!