I lost my grease pencil

A few weeks ago someone in my club proposed a trip along the coast of Big Sur. My time on the coast is pretty limited and so, as much as I wanted to go, I decided not to go. A few days later I discovered that the trip was going to be led by one Roger Schumann. Roger is a sea kayaking fixture here in NorCal and there is little doubt he is about as experienced on the California coast as they come. I sent out a few feelers to make sure my serious lack of coastal experience wouldn't slow the rest of the participants down and I was happy to be informed me being there would be fine.

There are not too many things I like more than planning a trip. Even when I'm not planning the trip I like to plan as much of the trip as I can. So while I had no real idea about where we were going except stuff like, you know, put in here, take out there, I dove into planning my menu, checking all of my gear, reading about the natural history of the place (really interesting it turns out), stuff like that.

As the day to depart got closer various details finalized. Things like who was going, and how we were going to organize the shuttle since this was a one way trip. In the who was going department there were to be, all told, 8 of us. Roger, his wife Sandy, Bryan the co-instructor/leader, Patrick, Peter, Dick, Doug, and myself. I had paddled with or at least met everyone except Sand, Bryan and Doug, or so I thought. It turns out I had met Doug very briefly on Orcas Island when he had come into the Body Boat Blade store while I was in charge of it while Leon and Shawna were out somewhere. Small world.

The plan, roughly, was this; We'd meet at a place we call Monastery Beach on a Saturday at 7AM. 4 of us would drive about 55 miles south and drop our cars off and get driven back by Patrick's wife (to whom major props and huge thanks). Then we'd all put in and spend the next 7 days paddling down the coast finding stuff to do. We'd spend each night at a different beach except for the second and third nights, when we'd stay at one place that had a large number of very accessible play spots.

This was of course a fine plan. For myself (and Peter I think) the 7AM meeting time was a pain in the ass. I live about 2 hours away from the meeting place so, adding an oh-shit factor to account for accidents, construction or other vehicular interference, I had to get up at 4:15AM. Sleeping is not something I'm actually very good at and sleeping the night before some cool adventure type thing is about to happen is something I'm flat out horrible at. In the end the last time I recall looking at the clock was 1:00AM. 4:15AM rolled around, the alarm on my phone played Marimba for me and I was on my way. Still asleep but energized by the forthcoming adventure.

I won't bore you with the details of the drive down, or setting up the shuttle or any of that crap. Rather let me just jump to it was a spectacular day. Here's a picture of Monastery Beach, our launch point:

Now this is a pretty remarkable sight actually. Monastery is a really (really) dumpy beach so having such absolutely easy put in conditions was a great surprise and a treat. The weather was fantastic too. Here look:

That's right after we put in. The peninsula thing in the background is Pt. Lobos which evidently is famous as a sight seeing destination.

Here's a picture of the very first tunnel I ever paddle through. It's not much to look at and of course the conditions are very tame, but it was damned cool.

This is the beach we had lunch on the first day. We're waiting for someone to finish up on shore there.

Some houses right on Highway 1 somewhere south of Carmel. They went on for a mile or two like this. The houses seemed mostly empty and mostly souless. Like a sad enclave for lonely rich people. It was kind of a downer. Nice houses of course, but I think I'd have preferred the rocks instead.

The place we camped the first night was actually pretty small...

...but the view was pretty excellent. 

This picture doesn't do it any justice. It was here though that I started to realize that I had made different choices than some of my colleagues. Without going into it very deeply, a few years ago I was out on a multiday with some folks from Mt. Vernon, WA. On the fourth night they made sushi. No, really, sushi. They had the rolling matt thing, the rice, sea weed and all the other stuff you shove into sushi. They rolled up sushi things, cut them and ate them. A seriously bad night years ago in Okinawa that involved a bottle of Suntory and some slimy things wrapped up in slightly less slimy things has left me anti-sushi, but the effort was impressive. Since then I've tried to be a little more adventurous cooking wise when I'm out.

So dinner on the first night was spaghetti and meat sauce. I'd put a thing of frozen meat sauce in the bottom of my boat in the morning and it was of course defrosted by the time dinner rolled around. The inevitable "what's for dinner?" conversations started and when it came to me I got the whole "meat sauce?!?". Surrounded by Jet Boils and dehydrated food wrappers and singe pot dinners of various sorts I suddenly had the feeling of being a little out of place. Sort of like declaring support for extraordinary rendition during an Amnesty International meeting. Just out of place. But nobody said anything and the night concluded passing around a bottle of rum Bryan had brought. Crisis of segregation averted. For now.

The next morning was overcast with a light fog as we usually get along the NorCal coast, but it cleared and by about 11AM it was obviously going to be another glorious day. Our schedule was incredibly leisurely. I made coffee of course. I used a filter (#4 cone) with Peets Major Dickasons. It's good but it was observed in passing that some others were drinking "cowboy" coffee. I gather you just put coffee in a boiling water or something and drink it. Boiled eggs were on tap this morning for me. I'm not sure what others were having. I just sort of kept my head down drinking my evidently fancy-for-the-moment coffee. I think we got off the beach around 11:30AM or so. Not having currents to deal with is pretty great. We did have a rescue right off the bat, here's a picture

but it was a simple affair and, after discussing strategies for getting folks back in their boat while also dealing with rocks in close proximity, we headed down the coast. Distance for the day was to be about 5 miles down the coast but that translated into about 10. miles after going in and out and around stuff along the shore. Doug, who had been identified as the "wave magnet" the day before by Roger, got caught inside and was swept up onto a rocky shore. No damage to Doug but his boat was a little bent up. It was along this portion of the coast that I learned perhaps the most important and valuable lesson of the whole trip.

Around 12:30 or so Roger pulled his boat up on a really small and rocky pocket beach for lunch. It was as simple as can be to land on. He was voted down though, with everyone saying to continue for an hour or so. After a little over an hour Sandy declared she had to get to shore for a pee break, and someone else said they really needed to eat. The problem was that our easy pocket beach was too far behind us to get to quickly. The beach available to us however was pretty rocky, quite exposed and periodically some 3-4 foot dumpers were hitting the beach. Long story short, Dick and I elected to stay on the water. While I carry a repair kit that has sufficient stuff to allow me to (temporarily) fix big holes in my boat, I didn't want to risk it. As well my experience landing in dumping waves like this is very, very minimal and I didn't want to risk injury. Neither did Dick. Bryan, the co-instructor, came out to hang out with us while the rest of the crew ate and peed.

Back underway we played a little bit on the way down to our next campsite which was a meer 2 miles down the coast now under one of the iconic bridges built in the 1930s along highway one. Here are a few pictures of what the landing conditions were like:

(keep these in mind. It's important for later.) And here are some pictures of the spot we camped at:

Once we landed I broke out a much needed lunch having eaten only PFD pocket snacks waiting on the water. One of my (much anticipated) lunch items was a Coke. Understand we'd out for a grand total of about 30 hours at this point so it's not like it was having a Coke after, say, a week or more. But still, I think most Coke drinkers would agree, the enjoyment of a Coke can be a very situational thing. This was one of those situations. When that luxuriously snappy crack of the top being popped resounded around the beach one of my paddling partners noted, "I'd really like a Coke right now" with that oh so gentle tinge of "hey, what are you doing here with that?". As I walked down to the water with my Coke to admire the view I couldn't help feel just a little further away from the Coke wisher than I had before the pop of the can. And maybe, just maybe, that feeling of eyes boring into the back of my head. But I didn't turn around. It's safer that way.

Roger and Patrick decided to head out again after a brief respite, but the rest of us were done. It was a truly pleasant day on a beach with no humans. Sitting there was a pleasure derived from the work of getting there and I for one was quite happy to reap the rewards of my meager efforts.

Dinner that night for me was thankfully simple. Red beans and rice with andouille sausage. Everything in one pot. Easy. And it kept me, logistically speaking, much closer to the rest of the crew. Nobody seemed to notice that it took about 25 minutes for mine to be finished. I did manage to attract a what-gourmet-dish-is-on-the-menu-tonight type comment, but other than that I think I fit right in that night, gastronomically speaking that is.

Morning broke a little grayer than it had been, but that was consistent with the forecast. It called for a "chance of rain" today and "rain" the following day. Or something like that. Anyway, it was grayish out. This was our layover day. We were going to go out and play around in empty boats. The rough plan was to head north, futz around in whatever we found, eat lunch, head back south past the campsite and find some more stuff to play in. Finally we'd ride the freshening southerly back to camp. A southerly wind here, by the way, often means a storm is coming.

There were to be two firsts for me on this day. My first cave and my first pour over. Here's pictures of the very first cave I've ever paddled into

Clearly not as challenging as it was awesomely cool but it was, well, awesomely cool.

Here's a picture of the pour over between waves. That's not me there by the way.

Just around the corner from these two features were some more caves and tunnels. This is the second cave I've ever been in

This was actually pretty big. It quickly became too dark for me to see, although some of the others did go further back and in fact found a different exit.

It's probably worth mentioning that at this point we're probably, oh, something less than a mile from our campsite. Play spots abound.

Lunch was at a beach just a little past all of these caves and things. It was a wide, sandy beach. Getting in was incredibly simple. One of the reasons I went on this trip with Roger was to try to learn a bit about sizing up surf from the outside. It's one thing to launch and play in the surf. You can look at it from the outside but in your heart you know it's X feet tall. Landing having not seen the waves from shore is a little more daunting, at least for me. Roger asked if folks wanted help timing their landing and I accepted. After a couple paddle-wait-paddle's I looked back and realized I was in conditions I'd been in many times before. Now I have a little better idea of how to gauge surf size from the outside.

Here's a picture of some of the crew in that surf

Lunch was uneventful. I had another Coke, but I drank it fast and sort of kept my eyes down. If anyone noticed they didn't say anything.

I think I was like the second person off the beach after lunch. The surf had come up a bit, as had the southerly winds. I mis-timed a wave on the way out and got absolutely smacked square in the chest. I know I should have put my head down, blade forward, all of that, but I didn't and, as I say, got smacked. Hard. It was actually uncomfortable. Water blew up into my nose, snot fell out. It was pretty spectacular.

We started back for the campsite and there was some playing on features. The swell was bigger and the tide was up so some of the things that had been accessible on the way out no longer were. We did a few practice rescues in calm conditions and that was the end of our day on the water.

It had started to rain while we were out. Not too hard, but it was raining. After we'd landed and rinsed off in the creek that ran down the beach it started to come down pretty good. Here's Roger and Bryan looking as happy as a day in a place like this can make you, rain be damned

We had, the night before, killed the bottle of rum Bryan had brought so I broke out a small flask of tequila. For warmth. As a safety measure. You know. To be honest a small flask is really not my style. I'd actually only brought 2 liters of wine and this (small) flask of tequila. I'm not a person fond of rationing but, not knowing the drinking habits of my companions, I decided to be not just discreet but restrained when it came to alcohol. I won't make that mistake again. Anyway it was a small flask but I think it helped those who imbibed fight off impending hypothermia.

By about 5PM it was coming down pretty good. Not a hard driving rain at all, just a thorough, well designed and implemented, soaking rain. My rain jacket, a Marmot Precip, essentially failed and I was pretty wet at this point. It was sort of tacitly agreed amongst those still out in the rain that it was time to retreat to shelter and we did. Dinner that night was pizza cooked in my vestibule with wine and a movie.

Right. Movies. I should probably mention the movies.

I am a firm believer that when one heads into the outdoors the pleasures of simple things become enhanced. And, for myself, there is nothing simpler than crawling into my sleeping bag, tired from a great day on the water, hooking up some earbuds and watching a movie. Heretofore I'd brought a portable DVD player but the batteries on those things generally suck to the tune of perhaps 1.5 to 2 movies per charge. On this trip I brought an iPad and it had plenty of battery. I can't bring as many movies so my choice versus mood matrix is smaller but it's a sacrifice I can live with. I guess I should also probably mention that if my cooking habits were considered, umm, unusual by some of my companions, watching a movie in my tent was regarded as decidedly eccentric behavior by most of my companions.

It rained pretty much the entire night. I was awakened a couple times by a clack-clack-clack sound I don't think I'd heard before. The surf was loud and, I'm pretty sure, it shook the ground a couple of times. I did get out of my tent to pee twice (wet sand and rain at night in a tent. Pain in the ass.) but basically I was in my tent from about 5PM until I heard voices in the morning around 6:45. It was still raining but if folks in this crew were up at 6:45 it was probably a good idea to go check things out. Here's what I saw

I think the first word out of my mouth was "wow". Rogers first words to me were "did you pack your hiking shoes?" Those were pretty big waves. I'm not good estimating wave heights but I heard things like "sevens" and "eights". They were all dumpy and although a window would pop up now and again it was a relatively short window to get a fairly long way out.

Remember that sandy beach we landed on? Here's what it looked like that morning

Evidently that clack-clack-clack were fair sized rocks being deposited on our previously safe and sandy beach. So, to recap, we had about 10 feet of non-rocky beach available to launch into a dumpy surf zone with multiple impact zones comprised of waves from 3 to 8 feet, and 8 people to launch. Roger, I think it was, called it a bunch of "must make" moments.

After the usual harumph-harumph sort of things people do when they're making a decision they don't really want to make Roger, Peter and Sandy set off to talk to people in some houses we knew were up the canyon a bit. Relatively quickly Roger was back sans Peter and Sandy who had been given a ride to her car by a most accommodating home owner. It was left to us to pack our kit up and carry it and our boats about, I dunno, 3/4 of a mile to the end of a dirt road. After Sandy and Peter got back with their cars 4 of us the drove with Peter down to pick up our cars. Back we went to the end of the dirt road, threw our stuff in and on our cars and headed out. End of trip. My first tunnel, cave, and pour over. First time camping on a beach on the coast. The company was good and, ignoring some discrepancies in camp cookery preferences, we all got along well I though.

It was a good trip. I lost my grease pencil though. That part was a bummer.

Serious. Fun.

I was spelunking the web a couple days ago and ran across a blog talking about dogma. I didn't really understand what the author was trying to say. Sure I get the dogma is bad thing, I just didn't grok how his examples had much to do with dogma. In any case I was talking to a friend of mine about it and we got into an interesting discussion. Or at least I thought it was interesting.

We were chatting about the blog, what it might mean, the idea of situational appropriate responses and like that and we were sort of going in different directions. The crux of the conversation ended up resting on this statement I made.

If someone unintentionally goes over and has to swim, that's a serious situation.

My friend took exception to this and talked about how paddle sports are supposed to be fun and falling over is a part of the sport and, you know, if someone fell in soccer you'd grab their hand and help them up and no big deal 'cause that's part of it and like that. To which I explained that well, yes, paddling is supposed to be fun, falling over and out is pretty normal, as is helping folks back into their boat and like that. But it's still a serious circumstance. To which he explained that people fall out all the time, that we need to attract people to the sport and that saying something so common is a serious circumstance doesn't help in that regard and like that. So I got off the phone because obviously he was wrong (heh) and we weren't going to get anywhere.

Despite my conviction my friend was wrong I decided I better make sure he was wrong so I could rub it in later or avoid the conversation and acceptance of fault in the future. He'd go "hey, remember when you said it was serious when..." and I'd go, "Squirrel!". So I went to the internet and looked up serious. And I got this:

concerned with work or important matters rather than play or trivialities

Which I sent to my friend because he was wrong and I wanted to make sure that was clear. Because, face it, if someone needs a rescue that's what you do. You stop playing in the race, or talking about the relative merits of unit versus integration testing (I run with a sometimes odd crowd) and commence to rescuing. No "hang on Joe, I'll get you in a couple minutes" or "to the pub gents!". Nope, it's pretty much "hang on to your boat", "flip your boat", etc. You might laugh or take the piss a bit because, damnit, they're in the water and they have to take whatever you dish out just then. But still, serious. Right?

I think perhaps my friend got serious mixed up with dire. Here's the internet definition of dire:

desperate: fraught with extreme danger; nearly hopeless

I don't think I've ever been in a dire circumstance on the water. I ran out of wine once when I was camping on an island by myself and that was pretty desperate, but nothing that I can recall on the water.

It seems to me that things can be serious and fun. I'm pretty sure dire and fun don't go together. Not having any wine to go with a most excellent red beans and rice (with andouille!) was the opposite of fun.