Malibu

One thing you won't be hearing from us is the lame apology most small-time bloggers give when they haven't been blogging for a while. As if they weren't giving this stuff away for free anyway. We've been home for three weeks now, which puts the blog 6 or 7 weeks behind, and you can eat it grunge-bag. We haven't FELT like blogging. Here's your GD next post. :)

We were finally on our way out of the black hole of over-saturated California-ness that is the LA area, though we wouldn't get too far that day. I wanted to stop in Malibu to, of course, surf. There wasn't much swell when we got there in the late afternoon, so I convinced Michelle that we had to sleep in the area that night so I could try in the early morning.




We stood on a cliff and took these shots. We did a crappy job, though, 'cause it was much nicer being up there than it is to look at these photos. I asked Michelle to pose for one of our "I stand on the right side of the frame, she stands on the left, I hold the camera, she buries her face in my shoulder so as to hide her face, and I try to not make my neck look fat" pictures, but she said she was feeling too ugly and vehemently refused. It had been a rough couple nights.


Duke Kahanamoku is credited with bringing the sport of surfing to the mainstream. It's tough to beat old pictures of him. Whoever's in charge of his licensing agreements, though, could be doing a better job. That night we ate at "Duke's Barefoot Bar" in the 'Bu - annoying nickname which Michelle and I made fun of quite a bit. It's a pretty crummy but not terrible chain of restaurants in California and Hawaii. We ate a giant pile of nachos, drank some Hawaiian beer (Primo, it was watery piss beer, terrible) and got a tip from the bartender (he was from New Hampshire! We got free dessert!) on where to park the van that night to sleep. It was a nice dark side road next to a park. Not a bad night's sleep.


I got up early the next day and drove the van down to the pier to check the surf, with Michelle and Freddie still sprawled out on the bed. It was foggy and a bit yucks out in the water so we parked and went back to sleep, waiting for the sun to get up a little higher. We awoke to a Japanese man puking on our van. Yep. Puking right on our van. The tire, to be fair, and he did actually come back with a bottle of water to wash it off. Asians. Bad things happen when you hide in a car so well that it occurs to no one that there might actually be someone in there.


The picture above is Surfrider Beach. I mean, I guess that's what it's called. I never actually heard anyone use that name. Or maybe I did but forgot 'cause it's a pretty stupid name. You can see how the waves rather famously break at three different points. Super long rides. A little piece of surf history there. Cool. I went out and surfed terribly. It was intimidating being there and all the guys were pretty aggro. Oh well, next time.


Michelle took some pictures of some dying sea life! Apparently she tried to snap a photo of all the surfboards and other surfy looking things accumulating on the beach throughout the morning, but even those dudes were sorta aggro, so no go. Maybe it was just my secret optimism and naiveté, or maybe it was all the beach/surf movies from the 60s and 70s, but I think I imagined Malibu being a little friendlier. Too rich, too cranky. But that's just our passing, one day and a half snap judgment, what do we know?