Playing Hooky
Today, the Regional Water Board agenda looked a little light and Heal the Bay’s water quality director, Kirsten James, and environmental engineer, Susie Santilena, had the issues pretty well covered. I was going to come in at the usual time Thursday to start lobbying on AB 376 (Fong and Huffman’s shark fin sales ban) and SB 568 (Lowenthal’s Stryofoam packaging ban). Instead, after checking out the surf report, I decided to drive down with my son Zack to check out the waves at the Wedge in Newport Beach. As a tourist.
I’m almost 48, and I’ve never been to the Wedge when it was super big. I’ve seen hundreds of photos, but my few times going down there, the surf was pretty pedestrian. Today, I finally got the chance to see the insanity in person.
There were about a thousand people lingering close to shore, standing on top of a six-to-eight foot sand cliff that the surf carved out. Four TV cameras and at least as many professional photographers recorded the action, tracking about a dozen bodyboarders in the water. For the first 15 minutes, there wasn’t a wave bigger than two feet. I felt like I was waiting for the tsunami at Santa Monica’s Palisades Park earlier in the year.
