Boy am I havin fun! It’s been a perfect week down here. In the water at 7:30 this morning, a shower and now latte and raisin roll and good wi-fi. I wish I had more time to do stuff like this. Idea! I’ll make a little short-run book of the trip. Where’s my clone, anyway?
It’s so easy down here now, and it was so hard 20-30 years ago. My great little Baja bug was under water twice, I had a sketchy relationship with the cunning landlord of the palapa I rented (for $1,000 a year), the place was destroyed in a hurricane of Nov 4 cuatro de Noviembre in the ’90s, and on…
Now there’s a smoothly paved road 12 mi. out to Shipwrecks. Funny, there don’t seem to be many people around at all. Part of that being wealthy people buying (or building) trophy houses that they rarely visit. Summer’s the south-swell surfing season down here and Nov-Dec-Jan are prime times for people fleeing cold climes, but March seems perfect, it’s really comfortable, cool at night and April winds haven’t started. Surprisingly, I found nno mention of the surf online. There’s nothing like checking out the surf in person.
I still love San José del Cabo. Wandering around the quiet streets. Last night at dusk, Chilón and I walked down to the palm grove by the San José river; it was—the perfect Spanish word—tranquillo. Tortillas de nopales in a little roadside shack, with la cocinera patting out fresh tortillas…
My Instagram on the web this morning came out like a poster for the past few days:
https://www.instagram.com/lloyd.kahn/?hl=es
At the yacht harbor in Playita, just east of San José del Cabo. How about the hull design of the top one—I’ll bet that baby moves.
From Bob Kahn
Same kind of guy as Bruno Atkey (see Builders of the Pacific Coast)
“…Wanna see our pictures on the cover
Wanna buy five copies for our mothers
Wanna see my smilin face
On the cover of the Rollin Stone”
People of a certain, um, age will remember the song from the early ’70s by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.
Well, I finally made it on a cover, 61 (ulp!) years later in the just-out copy of The Surfer’s Journal. I was wearing a shorty wetsuit from the Dive ‘N Surf shop in La Jolla (pre-O’Neill). You sent them your measurements and they sent you the cut-out pieces and a bottle of Black Magic glue and some tape. You’d glue together pieces, glue tape over seams. Early wetsuits didn’t have nylon lining so you’d rub cornstarch on your body so as to be able to slip the suit on. Underneath it I was wearing on old-fashioned wool bathing suit. A 9′ Velzy balsa wood board (this was just before foam.)
This was about a 6-8′ drop to the water (at Steamer Lane), there was a ledge, and we did this when the tide was right in order to stay dry. We’d wait for a wave to hit the cliff, then jump as the backwash flowed outward.
Before wetsuits there wasn’t much of a crowd problem. I remember a foggy morning, 6-8’ at the Lane, 4 of us out. Ah, me.
There’s a line in Hank Williams’s “Why Don’t You make Up Your mind,” where he says “The hide’s gettin’ scace” (pronounced “skayce”), meaning scarce. I don’t know why, but it’s stuck in my mind for years. In the song he’s moaning about difficulties with his girlfriend, but I’ve always thought of the phrase as having to do with the body getting hurt.
My latest was tearing some shoulder muscles last week. No, not again! My body feels so battered from a lifetime of activity. — sports, carpentry, adventures. Thank god I wasn’t the football star I wanted to be. Yet still — operations on both knees, right shoulder, right wrist (carpal tunnel) and the capper, a bad broken arm a year ago–all since turning 70.
OK so I’m whining here, but I’m on an up-note. After moping and gimping around for a week, dreading another operation, visiting the doc, dealing with pain, suddenly it turned a corner. Must have been the red wine in the evenings (plus big doses of Ibuprofen). But all of a sudden I could raise my arm halfway. Yeah! I’m gonna get better. Two things to convey here:
1. You always get better. Pretty much. So no matter how deeply depressed you are when injured, it’s gonna get better if you do the right stuff.
2. Don’t give up. Get right back out there on that bike, surfboard, trail, slope — maybe with more caution and care. Because you’re gonna lose it if you don’t use it.
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Last night I was heading home after visiting friends in Mill Valley and saw a couple trying to flag down cars on Panoramic Highway, without success. I asked if they needed help; they were visitors from France, had a dead battery. I didn’t have jumper cables. I spotted a car full of guys and surfboards and waved them down. One of them looked at mer and said, “Hey, are you Lloyd?” Sure enough they had cables and got the car started.
My brother Bob sent me this link, a film made by his friend Dick Ryerson. I didn’t know there was such an activity.
I had to share some of the driftwood shacks my daughter and I found at Moolack Beach in Newport, OR recently. All of your books have brought me so much joy. Thank you!
Joyce Welsh
Portland, OR
