Down some mirrored vortex, perhaps…
…as days unto weeks go by without a drizzle from el weakening Niño
but with record highs all around.
On it goes; despite my deep sorrow at having missed Thursday’s live webcast of negotiations with David Fry, the last Malheur holdout so ramblingly fried he may well have been an FBI ringer [I tend not to credit the Feds with that much subtlety], life colorfully continues.
But then along came “mahv-a-licks”; fortunately the predicted Friday swell showed up as scheduled though kinda ironic that an event put on by an outfit calling itself “Cartel Management” would require a drug test to qualify for a competition celebrating a niche obsession at whose inception a drug test would more likely have been on the order of “How much acid did YOU take before Big Waimea?” it is, of course, another world. Or maybe how much acid SHOULD you have taken before paddling into Big Waimea [at night]; people did, it’s said, but nothing is certain. What is certain is any mention of performance-deranging drugs is something the current corporate climate could never countenance; gotta stay clean or the cartel will lean on your sponsors at the behest of their advertisers…
The present iteration, in addition to forcing every non-vetted person out of the water and away from the beach for a day, did betray a certain commercial tinge, but that’s America fer ya’; $120,000.00 in prize money alone. Branding being the all we now get “Titans of Mavericks” with twenty-four lucky dudes anointed “Titans” by the cult-like “Committee5”.
To qualify for a Titanic invitation, beyond passing the piss-test and not cracking up at being called a “Titan,” the criteria included participation in some sort of community service, preferably not as a condition of probation. Then there were the more slippery-at-best peer, or Committee5, evaluations of surfing ability coupled with the ability to keep a straight face while hyping the honor and sincerity of it all in staged interviews between sets which were generally too painful to watch. There was also the danger that even a Titan might annoy C5 in some way and be dropped forthwith, as happened in the case of a previous champion. A risky business…and we’re not even in the water yet…
Once out there the action was certainly legit and genuinely risky…
Had the swell held anyone who stuck around would have had good crazy fun once the circus left town, but apparently it didn’t, and anyway the week before was considerably better, no contest, as my brother [http://www.wmkirkmoore.com/] was able to record from the bluff;
Size, form, slight offshore…no contest, the best Maverick’s ever! I do have to wonder how that left worked out, though.
Meanwhile, here in the Homeland the weather continues balmy…foghorns in the night, rivers running soil to the sea and greenness unbelievable for the immediate futurity…
Some mornings almost painfully clear;
Spring has, apparently, sprung, albeit a few dozen weeks ahead of time. Pretty sweet…
M