dateline OB

Let’s see, quick here, left just after noon from here up on the hill and rolled down Broadway to the harbor, you cling along the edge by all numbers of ultra-fancy yachts and other nautical means of transport and fun, directly past the airport on your right, then a jigsaw directional to the top of Point Loma and another point down, this one crazy steep, wait, see straight out there, the biggest of big blue waters and the famed Ocean Beach pier and I know the way and hang a right and a left and park on Brighton and hoof it with boogie board under arm, me and the board buffeted by fairly wicked winds.

Then I arrive at the beach – they plowed up a berm since I was last there and dragged all the life-guard stations into a little no-one’s-home community – and the only kids in the water have wet suits and surf boards and I’m happy and maybe the teensiest of proud to say your blogging story-teller dragged off running shoes and tank top and hat and walked right out there into the Pacific. It was not the level of frigid I worried over – not much worry, to keep it real, I think I’ve gone around a corner on all that and landed squarely in “just be here now”, but to keep these facts accurate the sand bar bottom had shifted and my feet kept dropping into holes which kind of weirded me out, never self-described as much of a swimmer, so I hung back and took a number of ‘weak-ass’ rides and after maybe 17 minutes decided to cool it, and this journalistic exercise in filling this space happily reports my final ride was the best, long and quick and me yahoo-ing.

Then I walked back to the Camry, stowed the board in the trunk and the towel over the driver’s seat and took a long bathing-suit drying walk into what you could call the ‘downtown’ of OB and out on the pier and walked by Hodad’s without going in, mostly to show me I could do it, got primarily naked back in the car – bathing suit off, cargo shorts on – and did all that driving stuff nearly in reverse with the exception of a detour to a Trader Joe’s my ex-Susan and I had discovered on one of our five-night OB stays, and I shopped and drove on back and strolled into my small and ever-so-sweet little room and hit the space bar and the screen asked, “You forgetting something?” And I like to answer “Nah” whenever I get the chance,

So, nah.