Local surfer? Oh yeah.

So, yesterday, I wanted to get out of the house, and decided that I could use some time at a coffee shop. Rather than go to my usual spot down the street, I ended up making my way to a cute little area I discovered some weeks back while exploring. Well, I found myself at a Starbucks on this little street full of shops, and enjoyed sitting outside with the ocean winds blowing, and people walking by - it actually felt small town to me. Anyway, I knew I was close to the ocean, so I started to walk around, to see what I could see. I found a little alleyway that led to the ocean, so I walked to the end of it, and reached a railing. Like any good rule-follower, I climbed over the railing and found a spot on the edge of a cliff where I sat to enjoy the view.

I noticed pretty quickly that there was a pocket of about 30 surfers in the ocean, and as I looked around, no one else could be seen - no swimmers, no boats, no one. Clearly, this was not a place that the tourists came, and as I continued to look around, I figured out why. There didn't seem to be any way to get to the water. There was no beach, and as far as I could tell, the cliff that I was sitting on went several hundred yards in either direction. I watched as these clearly experienced surfers caught wave after wave, and wondered how the heck they got down there.

Well, what could interrupt my musings, but a weather-worn, barefoot, leathery man in a wetsuit, carrying a surfboard? Yes, he climbed right over the aforementioned railing, and proceeded right past me down what I thought was a crevice made by water drainage, but which was apparently actually the path by which these local surfers get to this secluded spot. He disappeared over the cliff and I didn't see him again until he was paddling out to join the others. A few minutes later, lo and behold, another surfer passed by me, gave me a little nod, and went over the cliff.

THREE surfers came by in the 30 minutes that I sat there. They all kind of looked at me a bit curiously, but didn't seem to mind that I was there.

It just might be my new favorite spot in San Diego.