- Time Capsule -
MacLaren's 1970's Hawaii Photos
from the North Shore of Oahu
Page 3: The Waimea Photos - Image 3
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Yours truly, eating shit, at Waimea.
That's me, over there on the far right, spinning out of the sky, board sideways underneath me.
With maybe the very tip end of one or two toes still just barely in contact with it.This wave just thrashed me.
Just beat the holy living fuck out of me.
Any time you manage to hit the bottom at Waimea, all the way out there at the takeoff point, you can rest assured that you've had the shit well and truly and properly beaten out of you.
In the four complete winters I surfed the North Shore, managing to ride Waimea almost every single time it broke during that entire period, I only managed to hit the bottom out there twice.
And what you're seeing here is what caused me to hit it, one of those two times.
The person who took this photograph (not the same one who took the previous pair, who wanted to paddle out and catch a few for himself, and had entrusted his camera to the person who took this image for the duration) had issues, and I parted company with him forever not all too very much later, but at the time was still on good-enough terms with him, and I very distinctly remember him telling me afterwards that the image is blurred because the camera shook as he was laughing when he hit the shutter release.
Give that one some consideration, perhaps.
I got smarter as I got older, but it took a while, and before I really started to get good at reading people, I managed to get mixed up with more than just a few prize specimens.
Real winners.
But, as with the one who cut some of these images up, and who did quite a bit more than that, I wound up with something from it that turned out to be pretty cool. From ex-wife number one, I got the Best Son in the World. They don't come any better than Kai MacLaren.
And from this individual, I got this image.
Which is quite dramatic, don't you think?
Laugh-induced blur and all.
Hitting the bottom on this wave (which was the second of the two events) was not as bad as that first event, but I suppose it was bad enough, all the same.
The first time, I managed to get myself a couple of scars, just above the kneecap on my left leg, but on this wave, despite taking a pretty good whack from the basalt down there deep beneath the surface, no permanent external record of the event was created on my person.
Let's return to our image once again, but this time, as we did on page 1, let's back out away from the close crop in the version up above, and see about getting a wider view of things.
And now we can see the fullness of what turns out to be a pretty substantial lip up there above me, ahead of me and behind me, and we can also see that I have fallen down from underneath the exact center of the apex of things where the wave is converging together against itself, shoving the water farther upward and outward with maximal force and velocity.
I've already said Waimea's not a peak, but there are times when it evidences some of the convergence that causes waves to peak up in the center, anyway.
Gives it just that little bit more "oomph" to really cause it to come over with quite a bang.
Shortly after it first breaks, the wave at Waimea backs off into the deep water of the channel, but the initial throw, the initial pitch of that lip, is anything but backed off.
When it first comes over, it's the Real Deal.
Here's my best attempt at describing things, in greater detail, using the largest day I ever surfed it as the setting for my attempt. But this is stuff that can never truly be put into mere words, so be advised, ok? These are some pretty lame words, and they utterly fail to convey things.
In our photograph on this page, we can see that the water is dark and kind of green, which is a very common look for the place from this angle under similar lighting conditions, but from the point of view I was seeing it from, it was a gorgeous pale powder-blue. Almost pastel-looking. Delicate-looking. Sparkling like a handful of diamonds tossed on top of a powder-blue satin cushion.
And off in the distance, the other side of the bay was clearly visible, and the whole effect was one of post-card beauty and serenity.
And it came lumbering in from out there in the deep blue water as a large member of the set which contained it, low and fat, and as it arrived at the takeoff zone, as it began standing up, with its bottom starting to drop away and go square, down there below me and in front of me, as it was transforming itself, I started paddling like hell, and I had a pretty good entry into it, and I got in cleanly, and I came to my feet where I could see all the pretty pastel colors and diamond sparkles... and in the next instant the bottom had completely dropped out from underneath my surfboard and I was no longer supported by... anything.
And it did this abruptly, without warning, and the next thing I knew, the board was falling downward into thin air away from my outstretched toes, and it started getting sideways down there, and who knows, maybe I can pull this one off if I just stretch my feet out a little further and try to keep them centered directly above it, and then everything came apart, and now I'm completely off and away from the board, skipping and tumbling down the face of this thing, and then the lights went out with one of the most violent crashes I've ever endured in my life.
KaBOOOOOOOM!!!!
And then the thrashing began in earnest, and as it was trying to pull me in every direction at once, violently, I just kind of did what you do, and what you do is to block it out, find a calm center, and roll with it.
Deep beneath a watery surface that you very sincerely hope to get back up to before your air runs out.
And it was bad enough, but it didn't finish me off, and of course I'm sitting here telling you all about it, so we both know that it ended well-enough.
But sometimes down there in the airless depths, in the grip of murderous forces which will not let go of you, while it's going on, you find yourself questioning things, and the thought of not making it hovers in your mind over there off to the side a little ways, and you try not to give it too much of your attention, but you also don't want to get foolhardy about things, and so, as you're being thrashed around every whichaway with a resolute ferocity that defies belief, and shaken in all directions hard, and spun, and snatched-at, and tumbled, and bent, and flipped, and shoved, and twisted, and beaten, and all the rest of it, all at the same time, terrorizingly, demoniacally, insanely, through the, by turns, sinister dark green, and opaque black, shades of the living and purposeful water which is working furiously to take you apart, you kind of keep two or three, or even more, minds about it, and all of a sudden down there in the pitch-black BANG! off the goddamned fucking lava-rock bottom, and hey, that's just a little deeper than we'd like to be going here, but there's nothing in the world you can do except keep holding your breath, and keep trying to maintain that calm center, and the thrashing keeps right on going, fully, and vigorously, and violently, and godDAMN but this has been going on far too long already, and godDAMN I'm running out of air and this needs to stop already, and... but wait a minute, oh look, the color is getting much lighter now, and the thrashing isn't quite over, but it's coming way down, and now it's getting even better, and ok, I guess I'm allowed to burn some of the very last drops of my remaining oxygen by taking some swimming strokes up toward the source of the light, where the air is, and from one world to the next you go, and take that first deep and lifegiving breath of air, shake the water out of your eyes, look around to see what's coming your way, and maybe swim back down just a little ways right before the next churning wall of whitewater reaches you, and get tossed around through the darkness some more, but of course this time it's not nearly as bad, even though it too is an airless nightmare, and back up to the world of light and breathing once again, and finally the waves quit coming, and pretty soon you're stroking easily toward the distant shoreline, and mind your timing with the sets as you enter the shorebreak from behind on your way to the beach lest it take one final violent go at you, and there, that wasn't so bad, was it?
Let's do it again real soon.
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