Malibu - it was a dark and stormy night...

5:30am is DARK.

6:00am is still dark, but you can kind of see enough to understand why a couple people were driving up, looking, and pulling away.

Weird onshores were blowing out Malibu. Oh. Goodie. I'd only surfed Malibu once before -- a sunset session at second point when it was overhead. Last night, I'd decided that I wanted to surf SOMETHING of this south swell and since it was closing out my beach breaks and I'd already lost my performance longboard. If I wanted to surf, I'd either have to crack out the weirdo board (which I haven't surfed in a year) and go to Porto or lug out the Cooperfish and try to do some walking at a point.

Malibu was the choice. The junky conditions de-crowded the break, so I was only surfing with a dozen other people who were all quite nice. Mellow. It's a nice introduction for me because I have such psychological hang-ups when I get to a point break that I find myself choking because of all the mental pressure to prove that I can surf... and I should probably take the note that nobody REALLY cares how well you can surf.

Still, though, I don't understand the point break wave. I understand how the wave curls around the back of the board to hold you in when you're walking to the nose... It just doesn't happen to me. I'm just not very adept at getting the board in that trim position all the time. I feel like I need two solid hours with no one around to just mess up and be a goof and figure it out.