Tuesday, October 2, 2007

A Solid Morning

The day didn't start out too great.

I woke at 5:20 to get to my buddy's house at 5:45 so we could carpool to the beach. When I got there, all was dark. I peered over their backyard gate and saw his wetsuit in a wet ball and his surfboard laying on the wet grass, covered by a towel as if it had died.

In a stage whisper I called over the gate, "Shithead! Wake up! It's me!" and listened for bedsheet rustling for the upstairs windows... nothing. I crunched through the gravel, got back in my car, and drove off into the dark morning.

I don't particularly like paddling out alone. Especially with the swell coming up, but when I got to the beach I was the first surfer there. I pulled my cold wetsuit on and walked towards the sand where there was a group of 4 old men surfcasting.

"Anything biting?" I asked.

An old guy wearing a baseball cap stuck full of pins and fishing lures turned towards me and joked, "Things were great out there until that one large shark showed up and scared all the fish away." His other 3 buddies snickered and twittered. That's when I reached down and pulled a large rock out of the sand and walked towards them.

"Are you guys going to laugh when I take this rock and bash your old-men-skulls to pieces?" I said, menacing them with the rock.

I shook my head at them and walked into the water.

I surfed for about 3 hours yesterday afternoon and upon chesting my board in the water I realized that my arms were not fully recovered. They were tired and aching. With no other surfers in the water as a reference point and the sun not yet risen, it was lonely out there getting to the spot where the waves were breaking. The swell had come up more since yesterday afternoon. I estimated it to be between 2.5 and 3.5 feet but the winds were gusting easterly and really making it sloppy.

I caught a few waves but didn't really have any great rides. The waves were closing out and sloppy. I put my chin down on my board and paddled back to shore.

The old men gave me wide berth.

A couple of surfers had shown up and were watching the waves while sipping coffee and sitting on benches.

"Kind of crappy out there, eh?" one offered.

"Yeah, a real slop and chop," I replied.

And that was it for surfing.

As for trading, I made some good money with shorts in EXM, X, LDK, TSL and AZO. I also caught MOS off the bottom for some quick money.

Basically, I'm done until the afternoon. Maybe today is the day where I should be bagging 10 grand again, I don't know. But whatever, I like walking away. I have some shorts in, some have already squeezed me out of about $400 in profits but for now, I'm out of here.

2 comments:

artha said...

DT,

Did you really threaten those old men at the beach? I thought you were a well mannered young man!

Dinosaur Trader said...

Nah, of course not. I just wanted to see if anyone was reading... :)

Instead, I nervously walked into the water while they laughed at me.

-DT