Slackin off

I've been on break from school since the 11th and loving it. For the first time in a long time, we don't have to travel anywhere or are required to do anything, so we're enjoying our time not planning anything and playing it all by ear. Emily wants to throw a birthday party for me down at my parent's but we can't even work up the motivation to commit to that. We've been spending lots of time as a family and I'm enjoying some exercise outside of my daily to-school bike rides.

The 4 of us just got back from Baker Beach, Grace and I are watching Sleeping Beauty, I'm starting studying for the NBDE (dental student board exams) that I'll probably take early December, I've gone for a few bike rides and short swims down at the aquatic park, and this morning I braved it up to try surfing Ocean Beach again. After 40 minutes of paddling my arms off, I still hadn't made it to line up. Almost did once, just coming up on the last green glassy shoulder-high breakers after spending 30 minutes in the water, when a nice big one builds right in front of me and a surfer I didn't even know was in the water (didn't have my glasses on) zooms right down its face in front of me (Show Off) and the wave breaks pushing me back into the foamy water. I tried a little longer before giving up. Still the weather and the water was nice and that's the closest I've been to truly surfing Ocean Beach the few times I've tried. Maybe with some more strength and swimming I can get my arms up to the task when there's actual waves (there's way too much mush most the time). Surfline's "Bicep Burn" rating for surf spots defines a 10 as 15' Ocean Beach

Here's what else Surfline has to say about Ocean Beach:

It's a nice drive from Fort Point to Ocean Beach: along Baker Beach (no surf), past the ritzy Seacliff neighborhood (Robin Williams lives in here somewhere) through the Presidio, along a nice golf course with a million-dollar view of the Golden Gate and the Marin Headlands, left at the Palace of the Legion of Honor and out into the civilized world. Down Geary Street to Cliff House, the civilized world ends and the natural world begins, dramatically. Turn a corner and -- pow! -- there's the Pacific Ocean in all its glory.

That turn at Ocean Beach is always dramatic because, to steal a phrase from Forrest Gump, Ocean Beach is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. Ocean Beach is the most emotional stretch of beach in all of California, and perhaps the world, because it's located dead center in the middle of California, and it's open to every burble and bellow from the north and the south. The winds are dynamic, but the real factor is the tide. All that water moving in and out of the Golden Gate sweeps up and down Ocean Beach with enough force to dislocate swell and shift sandbars from hour to hour. Ocean Beach has many, many moods, from the manic ecstasy of clear, blue offshore fall days to the gloom and doom of stormy winter, windy spring and gray summer. There is no stretch of ocean in California that changes as much from hour to hour, day to day and season to season as Ocean Beach.

When Ocean Beach is on, you will see three miles of shifting, meaty, dark-green offshore peaks, from head-high to triple-overhead, cannonading the surf zone from south, west and north. A perfect day at Ocean Beach can be a mind-boggling sight, a mile after mile of perfect surf, with scattered humans doing their best to paddle through the impact zone, make it out the back and catch one of the buggers.

On a lot of days at Ocean Beach, just getting out can be a major accomplishment. Depending on swell and tide and sandbar, on many days there is a 200-yard "zone of death" in between the beach and the lineup. It can be as hard to get off the beach and out to sea for a surfer as it was for a marine to get from sea to shore on the beaches of Normandy. It takes knowledge, skill, strength and courage, but the deciding factor on a lot of days is still dumb luck.

Make it outside, and there are rewards, but your troubles aren't necessarily over. A good day at Ocean Beach is as good as any beachbreak in the world, but the good peaks here have a maddening quality of always being 50 yards away from where you're sitting. Even good surfers who surf the place all the time will get skunked, catching maybe one or two waves an hour, while paddling back and forth, trying to hunt down the big, shifting beasts.

Ocean Beach is bordered by Kelly's Cove on the north end and Sloat Street on the south end. In between are three miles of beachbreaks, which become emptier and lonelier from north to south. There is lots parking from Kelly's Cove down to VFW's in front of Golden Gate Park. At Lincoln Avenue, the parking lot ends, the dunes begin and the streets become alphabetical, beginning at Irving and running all the way to Wawona. You have to park along La Playa or Great Highway the Lesser to walk across Great Highway the Greater to get to the beach. Remember to look both ways as you cross Great Highway because traffic goes by fast. -- Ben Marcus


When my brother and his family came to visit last fall we saw one of those amazing days. It was perfect, forever. There is one spot along the 3 miles that seems to be consistently better than the rest and now that we've figured it out, that's gonna be my new spot to keep trying. Last time I tried at Kelly's Cove and would drift 2 city blocks in 10 minutes. In the 40 minutes of pounding and floundering today, I didn't drift an inch. Weird.