Rich, tagging the small stuff

This weekend warrior was finally about to get his dose of water time. Surf wasn't cooperating, so Diamond Head was once again the call.

I drove out on reconnaissance, but was disturbed to find that the annual Tin Man Triathlon was about to start, with its path running the entire southeastern coast of the island. Since it hadn't started yet, I was able to drive to the lookout, weaving around the line of orange cones marking off the bike path.

The surf was discouragingly small, with only waist-high lappers coming through, mostly created by windswell. I phoned Buddy and told him that I would be heading further east in hopes of something better down the road. Should've known better.

Hitting all the potential spots along the way, the only thing I found was small waves hitting the outer reefs. Worse off was that the police had coned off the whole route all the way through to Hawaii Kai. Even if there was surf, access might be a problem for the rest of the crew.

I eventually turned around at Sandy Beach, where windslop prevailed, and told Buddy that we should target good old Diamond Head.

Unfortunately, by the time I got back, many triathletes were already on their second event, biking right over Diamond Head. The police barred me from entering from either side of the mountain.

Met up with Rich and Buddy at 7-11 to assess the situation. We decided to try again to find a sympathetic cop, but our efforts were fruitless.

My time was quickly burning away, with no solution in sight. Buddy finally decided that we should hit our eastside secret spot just to get away from the madness. With the clock ticking, we powered for a half hour more and found...

...Makani! He was planning to surf there from the very start, and was pulling his board out of his board bag just as we pulled into our not quite legal parking stalls. Stoked that the whole crew was together again.

But better yet, the surf turned out to be pretty darned good, with some shoulder to head-high sets breaking in fairly smooth conditions with just a couple of other out. Buddy guessed my next move correctly when I literally ran down the beach into the surf.

It wasn't all that epic, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. The shortboarders were ripping it up hard, especially Makani. The most profound line was by Rich when he said, as Makani pulled out of a petering wave, "That Makani... he's stylish even when he's not even trying to be stylish."

I had a blast on my longboard. The board worked fairly well, turning nicely and allowing for some nose time over the half reef/half sandbar setup. I had to bail after a couple ofhours, but satiated my wave hunger, for the time being.

Earlier that morn, I seriously thought the Tin Man Triathlon would bar us from even getting wet. In actuality, it forced us to go elsewhere and find better waves and conditions than we would've ever gotten at Diamond Head that day.