Waking, not quite fully stretched out and not fully rested, in the back of the car as daylight creeps into the sky. It’s doubly dim, as I’ve covered most of the car windows with sheets of plastic to hide myself from the early morning joggers and dog walkers as they pass through the beachside car-park on their way to the sand. The front wind-screen, which I’d left clear the night before as I wriggled into my sleeping-bag, is now fogged with my night’s breath despite the small gaps I’d left at the top of the driver’s and passenger’s side windows – hoping to let in a whistle of evening sea-breeze but exclude the whine of midnight mosquitoes.
I’d hoped to be better refreshed after the enforced early night. The August evening had descended quickly after a short winter twilight and I’d not been prepared to linger any longer at the local pub after finishing my chicken Caesar salad and two, very slowly sipped, schooners of Carlton Black. I’d felt pretty conspicuous and not altogether welcome, in a bar filled with chatting couples and laughing groups of friends, sitting quietly in a corner by myself – eking out the beer and reading my book. But despite my improvised mattress of lounge cushions wrapped in an old painter’s drop-cloth and my favourite feather pillow, the car was never going to be as comfortable or restful as the bed at home. Still, though not really needing an excuse as I’m an habitual early riser anyway, it prompts me to wriggle back out of the sleeping-bag, into my jeans and T shirt, and clamber out the back door to greet the day. Day four of my week-long surf-trip.
How lucky am I? A week’s respite from the office limbo, my partner generously holding the home front, the freedom of the car to explore every cove and promontory of the coast, and sun drenched, clear skied, cool breezed, clear watered, south swelled hours of idleness stretching ahead of me with each new dawn. The day is yet young and the warm gleam of the sun sparks blindingly from every ripple of sea from beach to horizon, making me linger under the raised hatch-back – bum on bumper, feet in the sand, eyes half shut, mind still hazy and nostrils flared for deep draughts of crisp sea air. Five minutes, ten, twenty? Does it matter? I rouse myself enough to dawdle to the Surf Club toilets and empty my swollen bladder in a steaming cadmium stream that splatters against the stainless steel expanse, warm droplets spattering the tops of my bare feet, cold on the concrete floor.
Back at the car, the same headland, rising behind me, that’s sheltering the beach from the fullness of the sea-breeze is sheltering also the bay from the best of the swell. But I want to savour more of the morning’s sun-drenched languor before I go looking for waves, so I sit back down on the rear bumper and rummage for the makings of breakfast amongst the various bags, buckets and bins stashed under seats and behind my boards, waxed and stacked beside the mattress, hungry for the taste of the cool water as my stomach is for the taste of muesli, milk, juice and coffee. The more civilised morning beachgoers are heading to the Club’s café for their caffeine hit, glancing enquiringly at my improvised fare and the ‘Wicked Campers’ ambience of the car’s contents.
Soon enough a local with clearly all day at his disposal ambles along and greets me with a warm curiosity and we start a rambling exchange as the sun slowly climbs, the tide slowly falls and the waves continue their inoxerable rush and hiss, up and down the softly banked sand of the foreshore. Rush and hiss. Rushhhhh and hissssss. Forming the white noise background to everyone’s greetings, conversations, musings and calls to dogs, gambolling on the beach – despite the signs: Dogs not permitted.
My new acquaintance is called away by an insistent ring from his mobile and reluctantly excuses himself with a pining last look to the water – he won’t be paddling out for a while yet after all – and with a roll of his eyes heads back to home and work and commitments and longing and life away from the beach.
His loss is my gain and I take his departure as a prompt to pack my bits and pieces away again, tidying the few loose items – socks, bowl, juice box, straw hat, map – remaining unsecured in the back of the car and with a final consultation of the road map, splayed provocatively across the passenger seat, I start the engine and crawl at a lazy pace up the slope and over the speed bumps and away from the sheltered refuge of the sun-soaked drowzy bay to crest the hill, feeling for the first time today the full flow of the breeze, cool and salt and damp as it worries its way around the imposition of the car, through the open window and with boisterous familiarity ruffles and musses my hair. Now I’m awake.
It’s a very short drive, barely worth the effort but for the want of having the warmth and convenience of the car and dry towel close and comfortable, should I in fact find some waves to ride – and the odds are looking good. Sure enough, rounding a corner, descending again into the next bay south on my stop-start solitary surf safari, wending my way slowly home again along the coastal fringe, as the hardy, gnarled and windswept trees and shrubs obscuring my view are left behind and I’m greeted by the open blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean receding to the sharp, clear line of the distant horizon from where long, slow, regular undulations of ground swell, fetched by the wind from who knows how many miles of open expansive fields of water – grazed by the slowly recovering herds of cows and solitary bulls of the azure deep; the humpbacks; the southern rights; the pilots and killers; the sperms; the truly majestic blues; lords of the oceans – sweep toward the beach below me, cresting the rock reef as they approach the shore and forming a clean ‘A’ frame peak with long, steep left and right curls of liquid joy, astoundingly free of riders, that rush and roll and faom and spray toward the sand. I can already smell the fresh coat of wax I’ll need to rub onto the deck of my board and almost feel its sticky bumps under my toes as I take my first drop of the day into a lazy, cruisy, winding, wending, run along the glassy, bright face of the wave. Oh yeah, it’s going to be a great day.
