2020 started off with a bang!
January had several weeks of consistent surf rolling onto our beaches.
Fair warning- this page is gonna have a lot of pictures of people surfing…
If you know any of them, contact me and we’ll tag them.
Once again we were amazed at how many people can just drop everything and go surfing,
7 days a week.
Perhaps many of them don’t have anything to drop….
Everybody was pretty darn happy about it, and they all knew it wouldn’t last forever.
Surfers of all ages were bragging about how many days in a row they had surfed.
It’s not often we can brag about that in this neck of the woods.
Local boy Mike Hamer was one of the lucky guys that scored multiple days.
This guy snuck in a zippy little tube when nobody was looking…
For pretty much the whole month there was something to surf, From knee high to overhead…
From glassy to cheesy…
Paul Leonelli got his share.
As mentioned, most days the spots were pretty crowded, by Goleta standards.
We try to avoid those situations, so you usually won’t see me taking any photos there.
Photos of mobs of people chasing the same wave don’t really do it for us.
But take my word for it, (if you’re bothering to read my words), it got crowded.
What can happen when a good stretch of swell hits our coast, is the local guys, the guys that surf
here year round and grovel through long stretches of meager wind swells and long flat spells, they
start to get a little tired of all these out of town visitors showing up every day and turning a
normally peaceful little break into a circus….
And they might start to get a little grumpy….
Especially when he’s being polite and playing by the rules, and it seems like no one else is….
Sometimes, all these visitors from wherever don’t even seem to know there are rules!
And eventually, the guy that has been surfing the break since he was in junior high,
but today can’t get a single wave, has to say, “Bullshit, I’m going!”
And then, when the only guy that was surfing with respect and courtesy gives up,
there’s nothing left but a bunch of rats fighting over a hunk of cheese.
And so it goes….
Sadly, some of Goleta’s best surfers choose not to surf Goleta’s best waves
during the best swells.
Because this is not what the Goleta surfing experience is about.
This is what that “100 Miles Away” sticker is all about.
Between the big Surfline banner days, we were able to find some solitude and some surf.
And being in the water with Bobby Morris is always a treat, no matter the wave size.
Like the rest of us, he’s getting older….
Unlike the rest of us, he’s surfing better than ever!
Makes no sense…
But it makes for fun photo ops.
Especially when he grabs the camera….
So January 2020 is in the books, and she was a beauty.
Viva Goleta!
