In the beginning of August, the residents of the Janky house that work in the CDR decided that a celebration of Lawdog's birthday at the end of August must be in order. It was decided that a weekend of surfing on the Oregon coast would be most appropriate in distracting the aging members from the inevitable grip of Father Time. Being upstanding employees armed with an east coast work ethic, we requested the weekend of the 21 - 23 off in advance, instead of just no-call-no-showing. Brilliant plan, except that it was requested by nearly half of the breakfast/lunch staff. Hopes were further diminished when Laura (bosslady) told me in person that "it's not going to happen." However, when the schedules for that week came out, lawdog, nerd, Jelly Monster, and I all had a three day weekend. That Thursday was full of "bro, it's my Friday" comments.
When Friday rolled around around we promptly left the house at 2 p.m. to start our gnarly weekend of shredding the Pacific.
Our depature was delayed by the relaization that the sun was in fact out, so all sleeves had to be removed. We also made sure to all have matching shades so that we looked totally sponced bro.
As we drew nearer to the Coast we realized, " Holy shit these trees are fuckin huge!"
Gary rolled into the parking lot of Clean Lines Surf Shop at 5p.m., so much for an early start. The guy working the rentals desk noted the hour and immediately assumed that we were snowboarders from Govy, close enough. Our late start turned out to be advantageous as the shop let us rent the boards until closing time the next day while only charging us for a days rental. We strapped our newly rented and extremely long, soft top boards (we're not beaters I swear) onto Gary and were off to Short Sands Beach.
After divvying up all of the shit to carry we walked a half a mile through the forest to the beach.
Short Sands Beach.
Once there we began suiting up for the fridged waters of the Pacific.
Once we all looked like shark bate, we turned our attention to the waves. They were big, up to 8 feet according to the bros at the surf shop. As we stood looking at a particularly large set roll in, we decided that, "well I guess we just go out there right?" And so we did, for about half an hour. Being the experienced surfers that we were, a combined 10 hours on boogie boarding under our belts, we decided to paddle out directly through the heart on the oncoming sets of waves. Once we finally got past the point where the huge waves were breaking directly on our heads, we were able to rest.
It was now time to figure out this surfing thing. The first step in the process was to sit up on our boards. We all perfected this fairly quickly except for Kenny, who fell repeatedly off of his board, making it impossible to make our crew look somewhat legit in the eyes of the local surfer bros.
As we began trying to catch waves we realized that after a summer of eating shit on the shred glitter of Mt. Hood, there was pretty much zero consequence if you got tossed by the waves. This inspired the confidence to go after any wave, even if it was about to break directly on top of us. Much hilarity ensued. Onlookers got to "check the base graphics" repeatedly.
By the end of our sunset session, we had all stood up on our boards (about 20 feet after the wave had broken). Dead tired, shivering, and extremely stoked, we began to turn our attention toward where to spend the night.
Sunset on the cove.
After asking around we determined that there was no beach patrol so, even though there were "no camping" signs everywhere, no one would actually catch us. We found a large driftwood stump already burning on the far side of the beach and set up camp, which consisted of a ground tarp and a bunch of blankets for nesting. At one point during the gathering of fagots for the fire, Lawdog noticed a "seal shaped rock" about 40 feet from our camp. Upon inspection, it was determined that this "seal shaped rock" was in fact a dead seal with no head or fins. Concerns about Slippy the seal, however, took a back seat to the concern that high tide might be joining us next to our fire. But as we ate 89 cent taco bell burritos and roasted marshmallows under the stars our concerns quickly faded.
The next day dawned bright and early with the sound of the morning surf. As the sun rose and began to heat up the sand, we realized that our dead homie Slippy was directly upwind of our campsite as pictured below.
After a morning bratworst and more than enough of Slippy's stench, it was time to hit the waves again.
But first...
We already looked like seals anyway.
Day 2 consisted of further wave slaying. The highlight of the day was when Jelly Monster and Nerd almost high fived while riding the same wave, but then just ate shit onto each others boards.
All in all our trip to the coast with minimal planning ended up a great success. We got the hang of the whole surfing thing and were able to turn into the waves slightly before getting tossed.
Slippy's still chillin hard
Oh yeah and we all had sweet facial hair for the trip too, except for me cause I still can't grow any
Sunset from a beach we camped on toward the end of the trip. These colors spanned our whole field of vision.
Justin's summer job, I contributed for a week to help fund the trip. Its pretty obvious who the true meatman is.
An evening at Annini beach park where we camped for the majority of the trip.
