Lah-dee-dah-dee

This weekend I was privileged to receive a visit from two good friends from up North, Mike and Jay. Mike's getting married in about two weeks and wanted to go out on one more (last) adventure. He's recently got hooked on surfing and decided that for his last hoo-rah he'd come down this way and surf for the weekend.

We got some slightly better than typical, LA, early morning surf on Friday down at El Porto. The main objective however, was to surf San Onofre on Saturday. I managed to put together a small crew to go down for the day. Mike and Jay were in of course; Mike's buddy Sam who lives down here in Gundo (El Segundo); my friend Leanne and; her out of town friend Jess. We got to Old Man's at about 7:30, only to find that there was a huge line of cars waiting to get down to the beach. Rather than wait, we continued on down south to Trails. We got in the water by about 8:00 and stayed out for a long time. With the exception of a few breaks, we stayed out till about 1:00. The surf was just about perfect for some of these guys who had never gone before, or had only surfed a handful of times. We all had a blast. It was a great crew, positive attitudes, down to have a good time, everybody getting along, etc.... We swapped boards around, giving the girls a chance to try different longboards, funboards, and whatever, to see what they liked best. They were such champs. Despite pearling 9 out of 10 waves, they never gave up.

The best part of the day was the realization that it was the group of friends I'd brought along that made this so fun. A lot of times you get a group where some one is easily discouraged, or has a defeat-us attitude / dooms day mentality. Someone who would have been really upset at the fact that Old Man's had a line and we couldn't get down at our original spot. Could have had someone get all down and bummed that it was overcast to start the day (the sun eventually came out). It almost seems expected that one of the girls trying it out for the first time might have gotten discouraged because she kept falling, but they didn't. It was as if all aspects of the day had been taken into account before hand and a group of people who's personalities were perfectly hardwired to optimize happiness for that experience were hand selected and the entire day was orchestrated by a divinely omnipotent maestro. The crew we brought along was perfect for the day. It made for a perfect day.

Good friends are hard to come by. I believe I've been blessed to have many. I hope to have many more. I hope to have many more perfect crews for perfect days.