Day 11 -- San Onofre

Tuesday, Aug 21, 2007

Ankle recovering well. Time for another sausage and egg meal at 6 AM, then off to the beach.

Here's the San Onofre parking lot. It extends for about a mile, but on good swell days, people line up two hours before sunrise in order to get a parking space.


This beach is just north of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, making the water a little warm and kind of tingly.




Swell is even bigger today, although there are significant lulls in between sets. Perfect conditions, very little wind. This wide shot, taken during a lull between sets) shows you how many surfers are in the water (click it to count them):


Here's a surfer girl (is it OK to say that?) catching a nice ride on a smaller wave:

This shows a medium set rolling in.

Use this next shot to gauge the size of the waves. The guy riding is probably about six feet, making the wave 5-6 feet. The next wave coming in is larger. There was one guy who would wait for waves much further out than everyone else. He'd have to wait an hour or more for a wave that was big enough to break out there, but when he caught one, it was a great ride, cheered by all.

I surfed for about four hours, then made a PBJ lunch at the car. I violated my rule about never putting things on the roof, because it was either that or the sand.

The contents of that box are now strewn along the San Diego Freeway -- ha ha, just kidding. Note the locked Pelican case holding the laptop in the lower right of this next picture.


There's very little shade here, and it's hot, but I'm getting used to it.

Car was getting pretty dirty at this point in the trip, so I washed it at the self-serve car wash (this is boring, right?).

Before


After

Then it was off to the library, where I'm sitting now. Public libraries are the place to go to access the Internet. No need to buy coffee, and they are are quiet, cool, and many have power outlets for laptops at each table.

Here's where I am now (San Clemente Public Library):


I'll hang around here a while, wait for the air to cool off a bit, then head back to the campsite.

Day 10 -- San Onofre

Monday, Aug 20, 2007

I had a leisurely breakfast at the campground, drove to the surf beach to check out the waves, then went to the library to update the blog. I'd have surfed in the morning, but I wanted to give my ankle some more time to heal.

As I mentioned, I'm on this surf safari because my wife is attending a class reunion, of her grade school, in Luleå, Sweden (pronounced Looly-O). She really enjoyed it, and here's a picture of her grade school classmates, all of whom she remembered (arrow shows wife Lena):

Looks like maybe they're having too much fun:


She won the prize for having traveled the greatest distance (total travel time 42 hours).

Back to me...

Ankle was fine with surfing. It was less fine with walking, so I did a lot of paddling to avoid walking.

Finally some bigger waves (see Day 11 for pictures)! The sets of waves only came in every 20-30 minutes or so, but they were nice 5+ foot swells. It's very different from home. In San-O you'll sit there for 20 minutes with no swell at all, and then a set will roll in. It's much more constant up north.

There are a lot more surfers here -- about 100-200 spread over a wide area -- so frequently, when a good wave comes in there are already three surfers on it. But I got some big rides. I surfed until sunset, with my last ride of the day being the best.

Here are some pictures of the sunset (click to enlarge):





Went back to the campsite and had a late, tasty dinner of hot dogs roasted over a wood fire. I'd eat this meal a lot if it weren't bad for you.

Eating

Speaking of eating -- it's a little harder to eat healthful food on a trip like this than when at home. Luckily, with surfing three or more hours a day I don't think I need to worry about calories. But it's hard to find a picnic table, stop, make a tuna fish sandwich, etc. when it's so quick and cheap to buy a Whopper junior for 99 cents.

The best solution I've found for a cheap, healthful, readily available meal is a Subway Veggie Delite for only $2.89 (price recently reduced). That's my fast food of choice. The sweet onion sauce is recommended. I say "readily available" because every town has at least one Subway.

Note that the "Less than 6 grams of fat" advertisement refers to a sandwich made with no cheese and no condiments. I tried one this way -- I think it was the first time they'd ever made one -- and it wasn't too boring.

Got a good night's sleep.