Welcome to a Day With BA Enjoy Your Surfing In La Jolla, California? Now Go Home!

LJSSA:

"Hey BA, you wanna be the Beach Marshall [BM] for our contest?"

BA:

"Yeah, sure, all I want in return is a t-shirt, donuts and coffee."

LJSSA:

"No problem."

BA:

"Count me in!"

The BM bonus is that I always have a pretty good time running up and down the beach, issuing orders thru a full-volumed loudspeaker.

Usually I have to make sure the contestants understand the rules of the contest - of course - via the loudspeaker:

• How long are the heats?
• How many waves are counted for scoring?
• Is there an interference rule?
• What is interference?
• Is there a wave count?
• Do you know where the judges are?

Historically - Pretty simple -

• I've probably BM'd close to 10,000 contestants into the water over all the years I've been doin' this stuff.
• The hardest part of the job - or at least the way my BM-ing has evolved - is keeping non-competitors out of the competition area.
• The job gets a bit more difficult if there are 2 heats in the water simultaneously, but not killer hard.

I think I used to enjoy yelling at the non-competitors - something like this:

• "Yo bonehead surfers, please move [north - south] out of the competition area!"
• "Yo boat boy, please paddle your kayak out of the competition area!"
• "Yo boogie boarders - this is a surfing area only, plus you're in the contest area, please move out of the area!"
• "Yo swimmers - this is a surfing area only, plus you're in a surfing contest area, please come in and walk [north or south] into a swimming area!"

• "Yo kooks in the surfing area - can't you tell that you're in the middle of a surfing contest - and you ain't wearing a colored jersey - plus you surf so crappy, why would you want anyone to see you surf?"
• Usually I'm so obnoxious, that the idiots finally move out of the area - there is normally a refresh rate of about 4 - 5 trespassers per hour, so once I'm on a roll, it ain't too hard to keep the contest area kook free.

Today - not a lot of fun:

I BM'd from about 6:45 AM 'till 11:00 AM -

The competitors were great, most of them had surfed in contests before - the kids were no problemo - even the parents of the competitors were no problemo -

BUT -

• The invasion of non-contestants into the contest was like a suicidal lemming migration -
• There was a pretty stiff south to north current.
• The surf was a pretty steady 3 - 4 foot faces.
• Typical spring conditions at The Shores.
• The LJSSA gang did a good job in heat assignment by keeping the younger kids at the south end.
• The south end, however, was ground zero for the kooks getting pulled south to north.

• I think that I just fought the kook invasion - and the kooks won - at least this time -
• It just wasn't that much fun BM-ing today - the toothpaste is out of the tube - it ain't possible to reverse the flow?
• The kooks were old - young - male - female - longboard - shortboard - all of them - into the contest area - there ain't no stopping 'em!
• There were kook kids - no older than 12 years of age - who were drifting into the contest zone -
• They would not / could not come in.
• They could not paddle south against the current.
• They were in the way - way in the way!

Here's a lead pipe cinch bet for you:

• I'll bet that these are the same kids whose parents won't let them walk or ride the bikes to school - too dangerous!
• But these kook parents of kooks don't have a problem with simply dropping their kook spawn off at the beach and picking them up two hours later.

Whew - Now that I've blown off some steam - maybe I'll consider being the big BM again??

Later,

BA

BA - Black's - 2000 - Geoff Pastusack Photo

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