The Confluence of Lees

A near spontaneous gathering of family members happened on Saturday. My middle brother had planned on flying in this weekend from Houston this weekend for a wedding. My youngest brother informed me two weeks ago he'd be flying in from Boston for an interview at USC. Then this week my mother called from Phoenix to tell me my father had gone crazy. He'd missed out on purchasing a Buddha's Hand Citron Tree for his garden and he'd spent the week searching the web for a nursery that had one. He found one in San Diego, so they'd be driving down there and then spending the night with me before driving back to Phoenix this weekend. It was a Confluence of Lees.

After I drove my doctor brother to USC for his interview at 8am, I was able to get to the home break as a second shifter on Saturday. Saw Sister Surf and barely recognized her, it's been so long! My day started out slow in the water, because it seems I'm still chasing unicorns, but it was sunny and people were happy and chatty so I was fine for the first half hour. Then I started getting a little antsy with my inability to catch a higher percentage of the waves I was a paddling for, so I moved off a little from the pack and stewed in my own frustration... which was stewing in a sea of what looked like unstirred miso soup, by the way. The lull let me look around and I saw brown flurries of something floating in the water. (Mental note: bathe in peroxide when you get home.)

Eventually, the tide started dropping and I started getting a higher wave to paddle ratio. Wave after wave was totally fun, but I was too out of shape for the ocean to decide to get good during the second hour of my session. My best wave of the day was one where I went left for a while, was disappointed when I saw it start to close out ahead of me, but glanced back to see a a nice right shoulder behind me so I cranked Doc around and turned the left into a right!

PS. Whistling tune: "Promenade" theme from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition"