Storm’s a brewing outside. The dogs are not pleased. They’ve been cooped up all day and are now rampaging around the livingroom. Nora’s been chasing Taylor around for the past twenty minutes, biting her ankles and jowls.

We had thunder and lightning this morning and have a pretty steady freezing rain right now. I’ve been watching the surf cams and weather reports, waiting for the wind to shift to a W or NW or WNW, whatever, just not an East. Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen before dark. Bummer. That’s okay though, I guess, because tomorrow morning’s wave forecast looks huge and so far is predicted to carry over into Saturday. I’m going to try to get out both days if possible.

Friday
Northwest winds to 30 knots decreasing to 15 to 25 knots in the late morning and afternoon. Mostly cloudy with scattered snow showers. Waves 9 to 13 feet subsiding to 4 to 7 feet in the afternoon. (wunderground.com)

Jordan made it down to Corpus Christi last night, arriving to eighty degree weather. I was jealous enough that I spent about three hours this afternoon applying for jobs in national parks that I have no chance of getting. I could be a forestry technician near San Diego, right?

Surf Report # 12

Location: Grand Haven, MI – North Pier
Time: 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Air Temp: 28° F
Water Temp: 34° F
Wind: From W 10-14 mph
Waves: 3-5 feet
Gear: 5/3 wetsuit, 5 mm boots, 3 mm gloves, .5 mm hood

Holy crow! What a great session! My sources claim that the water was 36 degrees, but as I dodged ice bergs near the shore I’m willing to wager it was a tad colder. The air certainly was under the freezing mark. Ever spent an hour and a half in near freezing water? I have and I can tell you that removing your gloves after this is a might difficult. Especially when you have ice caked on the outside of your fingers. Also had a nice layer of ice on the bill of my hood and a chunk of ice dangling from some exposed bangs. Funny stuff. One of those days that I didn’t mind the feeling of numbness all over though.

Took about ten minutes after I entered the lake to warm up the water inside my wetsuit and after that everything was reasonably toasty other than my fingers (I really need to invest in some nice thick lobster claws). Waves were super fun and I think it had to do with surfing near the pier rather than farther down the beach at North Shore (maybe more trapped water pushing toward shore?). It just felt like the waves had more oompf today. Felt comfortable catching most of the stuff I went for and probably had three of my top five all-time rides this afternoon. Felt good placing my board on the wave and felt good popping up. Even had a few suedo bottom turns. Dan was catching more than his normal share of waves as well so it definitely was a nice power day. A couple fishermen watched us from the pier like we were crazy.

Uploaded a boat load of pictures to Flickr. Check ’em out. I’m in the process of making my pictures more accessible from this site, but thus far WordPress has not been cooperating. Hopefully I can cobble together the right code one of these days.

Trammell was upset this afternoon when I wouldn’t let him outside with the other two dogs. He was sitting by me by the back door while I looked out of the window watching Taylor and Nora run around. He looked up at me and whimpered a few times then did something that made me intensely happy. He reached up his paw and batted at the door knob a couple of times. Smart pooch.

I feel pretty good about my productivity level for the past two days. And by productivity I mean how much fun I had. What else would that mean? Yesterday I took the dogs out for a run in the morning, then played a couple hours of fairly intense full-court basketball, followed up by some light soccer, and later spent a couple hours at the beach surfing and running around in the sand. Finished the evening mellowing out playing video games. Then today I took the dogs out again in the morning, played two hours of raquetball and swam a kilometer at the YMCA, stopped at the library, and took the dogs out again when I got home. Now if I could just find a way to get paid for all of this.

Surf Report # 11

Location: Muskegon, MI – PJ Hoffmaster
Time: 4:30 pm – 5:45 pm
Air Temp: 39° F
Water Temp: 36° F
Wind: From WNW 13 mph
Waves: 2-4 feet
Gear: 5/3 wetsuit, 5 mm boots, 3 mm gloves, .5 mm hood

In a late afternoon scramble Mary and the dogs and I made the trek out to PJ Hoffmaster State Park in separate cars for some February sand and surf. I had Nora, Trammell, and an eight-foot surfboard in my car and Mary took Taylor in hers. I figured we’d have the place to ourselves given the overcast sky and zippy wind gusts and we nearly did. The dogs dashed around the sand while I geared up then acted puzzled and worried when I wandered into the water with my board.

They followed for a second before getting turned back by the waves. Trammell especially seemed bummed and every few minutes would stop and check up on me. My loyal little furball. I like the picture below and to the right a lot. Good shooting Mary!

Couldn’t get much going today by way of extended rides, but have no complaints about the fun I had splashing around. By the time dark started to roll in it made for a very cold and exposed changing session. I was much warmer in the water than out of it.