The Sound of Silence

You’re sick of the crowds. The fucking relentless, frothing, grom-laced, pop-out, vertra covered crowds. Fifty guys taxing two peaks. You’re in the middle of it. You’ve been paddling in circles for two hours, desperately scratching to get something to yourself, coming up short every time, when the John-John look-alike drops in on you. It’s like this 90 percent of the time. It’s either; flat, crowded, blown-out, shark infested or black-balled ... or, its all of those. Fortunately, today, it’s only crowded. You tell yourself it’s the penance paid for days you’ve had it alone …
Woken up early by the ungodly ringing of your alarm. Rolling out of bed using pure hope to thrust yourself into the world of darkness. Your wetsuit is holding true to its name, still dripping with yesterday’s session. You drape a sweatshirt over yourself, and pull jeans over sandy feet. Tripping over the dog, you stumble to your car and head to the haven of am/pm. The clerk mumbles good morning as you make your way to the coffee. It comes out to a buck-seven. You only have a dollar. Seven cents owed to Am/Pm, making a mental note as you slouch back into the wax-stained seats of your car.
The sun starts to win the fight against the night, peeking around the moon as if looking to see if it’s safe. The parking lot is empty sans the old man putting bait fish into a pail. In between the walls, and through the alley you spy a lone knee-boarder duck-dive a clean, head high wall of ocean. It feathers and peels like a wave from Surfer Magazine. Wondering what was in the coffee, you realize that this isn’t a mirage. There is only one guy out. It’s glassy. It’s perfect.
You suit up, and scrub wax on the deck. Amping from the caffeine, it takes you half a minute to make your way out into the line-up. Then you hear it ... The sound that comes when you are alone in a normally crowded place. Hearing nothing when there is normally, abundant noise. The approaching set only whispers as it rolls and breaks into a perfect A-frame. The other soul occupying the perfection has since gone in, leaving you to abuse every wave that comes. Going as vertical as your simple talent allows, you don’t even fall. Endless walls of water catering to every whim and impulse. Getting covered for a moment, traveling back into the womb of the ocean. For five hours, you make yourself a whore to the sea. Alone. It’s quiet. Only the thoughts of your mind interrupt the tranquility.
For two days, the perfect day repeated itself. The swell nor the tide, the wind nor the crowd, changed. Time stood still, with a fiberglass and foam time machine as your vessel. Those moments make up for the days when it’s so crowded you feel worse after a session, than before. The times when all you want to do is hit the lip so hard it rattles the earth, and you’re stuck with ankle high swell. The times when the only thing that matters is being alone, and you are sharing waves with the entire world. We do it for that 10 percent. That’s why we endure the 90.

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