The Most Important Book on my Shelf

More prominently placed than Bukowski, Marcus Aurelius and the word of God.

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Saturday morning I ventured out into the wild to experience “opening day” at the beach in Southern California. High pressure, heat and fun south swell greeted Saturday morning and the hoards of humanity followed. I joined right in.

I smartly left nice and early, forcing my wife and daughter to borderline dawn patrol through the patchy morning fog to find the place to drop our umbrella. We arrived at our “usual” summertime beach only to be shut out by a marathon of some sort that completely closed down the parking lot. We never even had a chance. Classic summer.

My already high blood pressure rose even higher and I nearly panicked. Stay calm. I don’t like looking like an amateur in my own backyard in front of my family and we were already behind, fumbling for back up plans. We stumbled our way into a nearby lot and rolled the dice, walking down a relatively random trail that I’d maybe walked down once or twice before. I had abandoned hope and was even slightly embarrassed at bringing my board down as I wasn’t positive there was even a wave where we were going. We were spit out onto an empty beach with a super fun little peak breaking on a tiny little finger of reef. All I needed. Score.

As I extinguish the Monday doldrums with memories of my playful Saturday and its fun waves, sand crab digging and beachside bubbly light beers, I wondered where it was that I surfed. It had to have a cool name, right?

I scoured the internet for a bit and got a pretty depressing glimpse into what that might look like. Then I grabbed it. The most useful book I own. It’s torn, shredded and sandy cover tell the story.