If I had to live one day on repeat a la Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, I think this past Saturday would be a serious contender for one that’d I’d actually want to do over… and over… and over again.

I started early and hit the beach by about 8:30. I was supposed to swim around 10:30 with Susan from the Central Valley and figured I’d show up early to watch the water, take a walk and shoot some pictures. Right now I’m down to just my iPhone so I brought that and my Owle Bubo to try and get some fun shots. The weather was overcast, the air cool, and the water glassy. I walked down the pier and spent some time on the landing underneath it checking out the sea life clinging to the pilings. There were a lot of star fish down there!

When I walked back to the base of the pier I went ahead and got all my stuff out of the truck and set up camp on the sand. I sat in my chair for a while messing with my pictures until Susan showed up. She was pretty early as well and we talked for a while about races she had been to recently. After making guesses at the water temp for a while I went down to measure and it was only 57. Normally that’d be good but we’ve been a little spoiled recently.

Up on the beach we decided to get in early since best I could tell no one else was going to show. I posted this bonus swim on Facebook and didn’t get any takers so I figures we were it. Getting in took me a minute, but a set of bigger waves helped speed up the process.

Susan and I just did the regular triangle route with short pauses at each corner since there were only two of us that needed to regroup. Out at the tip of the pier we stopped for a little longer than everywhere else because we had a crowd up on the pier. There were maybe 10 people leaning against the railing looking out at us. Susan waved and said hi. They immediately had to bring up the “s word.” “You guys have seen the news right? There’s sharks out there!” I said “yup, they kinda live here… can’t do much about it.” The people on the pier laughed a little bit and just wrote us off as crazy people :) After that we swam out to the creek buoy and then under the pier and home. It was a 1600m swim and felt good all the way around.

After our swim I put board shorts on and marched back out to sea with my bodyboard. I’m still getting a feel for it and wanted to surf a few waves. Despite a big set rolling through at the beginning of our swim there wasn’t much of anything going on right at that moment. I did a lot of just floating but did catch a few small ones. Susan wandered back out without a wetsuit just to splash in the water a bit to see how cold it would feel sans neoprene casing. My eventual cue to get out was when two seals made a big surprise splash like 2 meters away from me. Scared me half to death! I didn’t see the jump, but I did see them pop up in different spots around me shortly thereafter. I figured I didn’t need to play with the shark bacon and the waves sucked right then anyways so I might as well head back to the beach.

I changed into dry clothes and Susan took off to get on with the rest of her day. I didn’t have anything pressing to do or anywhere to be so I took a nap :) Beach naps are basically the greatest things on earth. When I crashed out it was still overcast, but by the time I woke up again it was really bright and sunny and wonderful. In the midst of my napping I got some text messages and sleep texted back. One of my texters was Dani, she said she was going to go to the beach and wanted to know the sunshine situation. Eventually she came down the stairs and set up shop next to me. We shot the shit for a while and I ate some lunch that I picked up from the Avila Grocery.

Dani brought her board with her and the waves were picking up a bit so we went out and surfed for a little while. I kept moving further and further down the beach looking for enough room to ride without hitting any kids or tourists. I got a system down after a little while. After a big lull that first wave of the new set would come and everyone would scramble after it clearing things out for me. I’d take wave #2 and have all kinds of room to move without running into anybody. I’m really getting the hang of the new board and looking forward to taking it down south soon to try out some more serious waves!

Afterwards we laid out in the sun again and dried off with some solar assistance. When I decided that I’d had as much sunshine as I could handle I packed up and went home for a while. I met back up with some swim friends that night for a drink and some dinner. All told about as good of a day in town as I could hope for :)

I think I managed to construct the best Friday afternoon ever today! I had a client schedule a swim late in the afternoon and I had to split the office around 2:30 to get out there. This was my second swim with Jen and she was coming off a good short race over the weekend. Today was about pushing our oceanic boundaries a bit on our way to getting her ready for a 2.4 miler.

She met me down on the beach and we got ready to go swim. The lifeguards in Avila recognize me and what I’m up to at a distance and one cut us off right before we hit the water. He wanted to know our route and make sure we knew about all the recent shark sightings before we got in. Always what you want to hear right before you get in, but high five to him for doing his job proactively. I let him know where we were going and that if things started to look dicey in the sea creature department we’d bring it back early.

Our route was a half triangle. We stopped at each turn to regroup and talk through the next leg. Jen is coming along really nicely and swimming really well. After we hit the tip of the pier the plan was to swim back to the first buoy where we started and then swim back to shore. Part way there I noticed something shiny in front of me. At first I though it was a paddle boarder or something then I looked harder… WHOOOOAH! I stopped Jen and lined up right in front of us were 4 big ass sea lions shoulder to shoulder with their heads up. We all stared at each other for what seemed like a minute waiting for someone to make a move. It was a little awkward to have a right of way problem with like 5,000 pounds of collective marine mammal. Ultimately our pinneped friends decided to just go under us which is always a spooky feeling since you can’t see them in Avila due to the murky water. After we collected ourselves a bit from such an odd run in we got back to business and probably swam a little faster than the pace we had been holding previous :p

Once we hit the buoy it was just a short swim back to shore through some smallish waves and some kids on boogie boards. About 1300m swam, a 400m increase from last week!

Once Jen was off and on her way I transitioned to phase two of my Friday afternoon… surfing! I had my new bodyboard down on the beach ready to go. I taped up my one chewed up foot, grabbed my fins, and walked down to the water. I looked for some semi open space where I could ride without hitting any kids or tourists. There were big lulls between sets, but there were good waves when they’d show up. Upside was that I could listen to live music drift down from town while waiting. I got in some decent rides and I am really starting to get a feel for the new board. It’s a lot slicker than the old one but a little shorter and not quite as buoyant.

Once I decided it was time to get out I surfed a wave all the way to the beach and then walked back up the beach to my stuff (there was a strong current pushing down towards the point and I had drifted a bit). On the way there an older couple complimented me on my surfing… yay old people think I rip! :p haha

Next order of business was food! Farmer’s Market was underway and I knew what I wanted. I got some indian food and a tri tip sandwich… yum. I ate back down on the beach in my chair and watched the waves a bit. The swells were picking up and I decided to go in for round two. Grabbed all my stuff and marched back out there. The current had died down and the waves were cleaner. I got in 4 or 5 really good rides and then went looking for my camera to snap a few in water pics… my pocket was inside out… uh oh. Apparently the ocean mugged me. At least it took a shitty camera and not one of my expensive ones. That’s a new record for me though… 2 day waterproof camera… damn. Just to add insult to injury, while walking out of the surf before taking my fins off I tripped and totally ate it. Haha. I landed on my side and this old Korean lady was looking right at me. I laughed, gave a victorious fist pump to let her know she could laugh too and then I worked on getting my fins off since I was on the ground now anyways. I guess the camera and the fall balance out my good day karma a bit :)

I’ll be back out in the ocean tomorrow for a 10:30am swim with one of our regular visitors from the Valley, and again for the usual Sunday swim. Bring on the weekend, I’m ready!

Oh how I missed waterproof cameras! So my Pentax went off to warrantyland a pretty long time ago and is yet to return… not cool. In the meantime I broke down and decided to purchase yet another waterproof camera (I think this is number 5), but this time I went the super cheap route. I got a bare bones camera from photojojo.com for $35 plus tax and shipping. So far it works but it’s not a great camera, definitely got what I paid for. The photos are disposable or cell phone camera quality and when wet but above water you get some pretty crazy shots from the water beading on the “lens.” Mix these crazy pics with some Instagram magic on my iPhone and you end up with some pretty interesting stuff! Anyways… this is a swim blog right? Maybe we should talk about that :p

This afternoon I went to a new pool in Santa Maria that my friends have been using as a PNAC refugee camp. A veritable child free oasis of crystal clear water and no crowds on the east edge of town. The pool is pretty nice. They kinda skip putting lane lines in it and there’s no backstroke flags, but there was hardly anyone there and did I mention no kids? Ahhhh lap swimmer heaven.

Finding Pioneer High School wasn’t so hard but it took some doing for me to find the actual pool. I wandered the campus for about 10 minutes before I figured it out. I saw Duke on deck and there was only one other guy there. We got suited up and started on a short taper workout since he’s doing a tri in town this weekend.

Part way through Chad joined us and a little while later Kelly showed up too. We didn’t really get much done in the yardage department, but it felt good to swim a bit and see my pool friends that I haven’t seen so often the last month or so.

My original Thursday night plan involved a little kayaking at Avila Beach, but a FedEx delivery changed all that! My new bodyboard showed up and I totally had to go get it wet and check it out! I ordered a Empire Botha PE Contour board earlier this week with all the bells and whistles on it… I figured it was time to upgrade to a real board and see how that goes.

My test drive almost didn’t happen though. Around 4 my work computer basically exploded. I smelled burning plastic and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. While searching for the source a big crack and a pop came from my computer and my monitors went black… oh crap… I ended up staying an hour late while our support guy came out to see what happened and fix it. Luckily it was just a blown out power supply and he replaced it and got me all put back together and functional… phew! Now I really needed some beach time!

I ran over to Dani’s place to pick her up and I did some surgery on my board in her driveway to install a leash in it. I also duct taped my right foot since I keep putting holes in it. I guess some people do that to protect from additional rubbing so I figured why not? From there we went to Avila to see if we could find something surfable. It was pretty flat but there was an occasional wave of a moderate size to mess with, but nothing too exciting.

The real interesting thing going on was the mass of animals feeding around the pier again. I was a little uneasy about getting in, but there were so many dolphins in the mix that I decided to let it ride. They were all over the place. Most of the people on the beach that saw the dorsal fins flash above the surface were convinced they were seeing sharks. Hmmm… maybe that’s where all our “shark” sightings are coming from? There was another sighting this morning, this time of a little 6 footer. As a follow up the local news followed up with the source of yesterday’s false shark attack story… their response is available over here

After trying to surf a bit the bait ball action moved a little too close for comfort and a big gang of seals came out of nowhere and started swarming the ball. At this point I was pretty much done. No need to push it. I’ll be back at the beach on Friday afternoon for a swim lesson and I’ll probably just stay there for Farmer’s Market and some bonus time in the water :)

I’ve been in the water a little bit since Santa Cruz. I did a 1 miler in Avila on Sunday and some decent boogie boarding on Monday. Today was supposed to be our usual Wednesday night swim but unfortunately that was a no go but not for the reasons you’d think if you’re local to me and were paying attention to the news.

Around lunchtime there were reports of a shark attack in Pismo! Big news right? Apparently it was the Chamber of Commerce that broke that story on Twitter which is a weird place to start… especially when it never actually happened. That tweet was deleted although it was retweeted by some other folks a bit before that happened.

The next version I heard via a news station on Facebook was that there was a major sighting that was going to result in an up to 5 day beach closure. That wasn’t 100% right either.

Ultimately it sounds like an 80% chance someone really saw a shark going about its business out in the ocean (a random grey fin could just as easily belong to a dolphin), and local officials are calling it a credible sighting. In response they’re putting up warning signs for a few days and that’s about it.

I find it interesting the hysteria that the thought of a shark living in the ocean can bring out in people, and the speed at which the situation can spiral out of control with a little help from social media. And I mean, you really can’t beat the timing, it is Shark Week after all!

Despite all this excitement me and my friends were still planning on swimming. If there was a shark in Pismo at lunch it could be in Santa Barbara by dinner time so it’s kind of meaningless to get bent out of shape over it. What did slow us down however was the presence of a fairly healthy bait ball at the tip of the pier. Niel had been watching it for about half and hour and we didn’t really like the looks of it. A bait ball is a much more credible sign of potential trouble than someone seeing a fin or a dark shape underwater. You just have to follow the food chain to see why… fish, birds, seals, sharks… there’s no reason for us to interject ourselves into that lineup. We watched the birds diving for about half an hour and decided to call it and not swim today.

I’ll be back out there for sure on Friday and probably twice across the weekend.