Lost Boys & Co.

Lost Boys & Co...   To say that China is extraordinary would be an understatement of the highest magnitude.  We have had very little time to correspond since we have been moving around trying to take in as much as possible in two weeks.  Suffice to say, things are not as all as we imagined!  A few observations:   Shanghai:  An international city of the first magnitude.  If you want it, you can get it here.  25 years ago they had 200 cars here.  Today there are three million and they are all on the road at once!  No old clunkers, they are all new or relatively so.  Some classic motorbikes though and bicycles that would make your eyes pop.  Went to the top of the 2nd highest building in the world - just a skosh taller than the Topaz International Trump Tower Suites.   Yangtze River:  Three Gorges Dam marked the begining of our trip.  We missed the bore by two days!  Up the river all the way to Chiang, the bigget city in China at 33million!  You have never seen the ind

Lost Boys & Co... T he sun comes up this morning and it's not quite sure what it's going to find.  Like it might be worried that everything blew away during the night.  So about 8:25am, when it's just about 27° above the eastern horizon, it throws out a couple of sun dogs just to show who's boss.  Very hot, yet very cool... U nlimited visibility under partly cloudy skies, with little or no haze (that has all been blown away.)  Winds at checkout were out of the north at 3.3kts and the sea surface has a pronounced bump.  The air temperature was a chilly 45.2° and the water is (hold your breath, before diving in!) 52.3°.  We don't ever remember it being that cold, but we have frozen some of those memory neurons over the years.  High tide is at 8:06am +5.2' and low tide will be at 2:37pm -0.3'.  We have a west swell out of 281° at a respectable 5.6' (down from from 10.2' yesterday.)  We're calling it 5' to 7' and looking good at some spo

Lost Boys & Co... B amboo. L ateral visibility is good, like 15 miles, but the sky is heavily overcast and looks like rain.  For once the weatherman might be right, but not until the pm.  Winds have been light on shore all morning, 2.3kts at checkout and the sea surface was rolling glassy.  The air temp was 55.7° and the water is 54.7° and still feels like a tall mojito.  High tide is at 5:11am +4.9' and low tide follows at 12:33pm -0.3'.  The buoy is reading a SSW swell out of 195° and miraculously, even though the swell direction is so steep, we still have a 3.6' swell.  Hermosa was bumped and out of sorts, but Sapphire and Topaz had waves in the 3' to 4' range.  Depending almost entirely on the wind, take a look at things for next few days.  The forecast is for good sized surf on Sunday, but look before you leap... T he Pheasant Pluckers tonight at Keegan's to get you ready for tomorrow's Hibernian festivities!  7 to 10pm and Keegan's is newly re

Lost Boys & Co... H onestly, it has been a trying day for us here in Lotus Land.  We were rudely awakened at o'dark thirty, by LoLa whirling around the room in dervish fashion, cursing under and over her breath about how the cat had just pissed on the rug.  The Professor was flung from his warm crib and pressed into carrying the pissed on Persian-rug-knockoff-really-from-India-or-maybe-even-China rug outside to dry and be chemically treated.  This is the latest in a series of wanton pissings by our psycho-cat.  He has, in no particular order, pissed on the bookcase, the curtains, the wall and a cabinet in the dining room, necessitating the refinishing of said cabinet and the disinfecting of the entire area.  We were told that the cat was feeling threatened by something in it's environment.  We hied the neighbor's cat to Boomfwappa's house, so that Andy (this is the pissers nom d' urine) could relax and not have to incessantly, mark his territory.  This did not

Lost Boys & Co... P retty damned gray this morning.  As a joke we were going to run this first photo in B&W, but it didn't seem like it needed any enhancement, or whatever the opposite of enhancement is... S o we're thinking it's about 7 miles visibility and the sky is heavily overcast.  Winds have already turned on by 1.5kts and the sea surface has a slight chip to it.  (We measure this phenomena as: chip (slightest chop), chap (a little more than chip) and chop (short, abrupt wave activity.))  The air temperature is a chilly 53.1° and the water isn't helping at 54.3°.  Low tide is at 8:31am +0.1' and high tide is at 2:59pm +3.0'.  Buoy #46221 is reading a WSW swell out of 241° at 3.3' and we're calling the surf at 2' to 3'.  Maybe it will be a bit more peaky as the tide rises and we shorten up the current block long walls that are slicing the avenues and points south.  We'll check Hermosa later... F inally, we suggested yesterday t

Lost Boys & Co... W e spend a lot of time describing the surf for you and, admittedly, seem to be a bit weak in the culture department, at times.  But this morning we'd like to lead off with our current favorite project.  It involves everything boys and men need:  heavy equipment, digging holes, building stuff, club houses, wine, secret escape hatches, you know, like that.  This is all the brain child of none other than Italo "Bud" Insalata (our current hero!)  Go ahead, you put in a wine cellar.  Bud puts in a man-cave.  Extraordinary in it's depth, width and breadth, it attracts the curious and beautiful.  Recently, he had a few folks over to christen the project and temper the wine gods.  First, there were words of introduction, then James McGarry, Sr. was appointed to pour a symbolic libation to the four cardinal points.  This being done, there were additional tributes and the pouring of spirits to the elect, assembled on the rim of the maw.  Bud then desc

Lost Boys & Co... E very once in a while an underdog comes along and upsets the heavy favorite.  It happens so rarely that they make movies about stuff like that.  You might recall that when we were in El Salvador, we went to a Metapan (El Salvador) Vs the Honduran national team.  Metapan won.  That got them into the Champions League of North America.  So last night they played Mexico City D.F. Pumas and E.S. was the big underdog.  Even the El Salvadorians were hoping they would make a decent showing and not get waxed too badly.  The game started out tentatively, but then all of a sudden Metapan started to press and when covered by FIVE (count'em), 5 defenders, the Metapan forward spun around and smacked a line-drive into the net.  No shit!  Whoa - we all went wild!  But there was a lot of game left and the Puma's were pissed.  But they could find any feets and they bumped around fouling themselves uncontrollably.  Suddenly, on a sweet pass and a surprise header, Metapan s

Lost Boys & Co... T he hand is quicker than the eye.  Wheatley makes a patrons money disappear during the grand re-opening at Becker's.  To be perfectly fair, they did have some good deals and everybody there surfs.  No posers!  When you're talking to James, he not only knows about how the board is supposed to work, he might have shaped it! Y ou needed to be sharp this morning to figure out when and how to attack the surf.  20 miles visibility under clear windblown skies.  It was blowing 10 to 12ktsw out of the NNW, then out of the N, then almost off.  Chances are you could'a been in the right place, then not, then yes...  Kinda bumped, but some nice peaking swells.  The air was a chilly 48.0° and the water was 54.5 bone chillingly refreshing degrees.  Coldest this year!  High tide is at 8:08am +5.9' and low tide will be at 2:36pm -0.6'.  The buoy has a west swell out of 264° at 5.6', but it was blown over to about 3' to 4' with some surprisingly go

Lost Boys & Co... M r. Spicy Monkey, sitting in the snow, on the railing, in McCall, freezing his ass off.  To his credit he's never complained.  Let's see how he feels about China... C loudy this morning with 10 miles visibility and even a light shower to make things interesting.  Winds were variable this morning out of the ESE by 3.2kts and the sea surface had a bit of a bump to it.  The air temperature was 53.3° and the water was 56.1°.  High tide was at 7:27am +5.7' and low tide will be at 2:06pm -0.7'.  The buoy was reading a SW swell out of 240° at 2.3'.  The tide was floating it early so it looked like 2', but the swell has been building throughout the day and it could have some size mañana...  Look at'em... R egarding yesterday's photo of the Professor: Pic #3 is questionable.  WTF is in the Prof's hand???   o_O Heather Grottke Linguica? Big Daddy (Upon closer inspection we have determined that the object(s) in the Professor's han

Lost Boys & Co... S o, when the surf is down, we hit the slopes!  Here we have LoLa, JRS, Russell (in the dog suit) and Anaconda Burke.  This is Brundage Mountain in central Idaho and we are having a PBJ break... W e have some information from the buoys this morning:  High tide is at 6:58am +5.5' and low tide will be at 1:50pm -0.5', just dandy for some sea glass reconnoitering.  The water temperature is 55.6°, so you might brave it up to your knees on that sea glass hunt.   We have a WSW swell out of 245° at 2.0' and you're gonna have to look extra hard for some good surf...  By the way, to keep you abreast on the procession of the equinoxes, we have sunrise at 6:16am and sunset at 5:54pm.  Watch the moon rise at 3:23pm (at 84% of it's fullness) and set at 4:12am.  In a few days it should make for some excellent photos of moon over the water in the west... P hoto #2 is how they make a hot chocolate in McCall, Idaho.  You add peppermint schnapps to this and you

Lost Boys & Co... A s we walked down to check out Topaz and Sapphire something caught our eye down the beach.  It was Ruby St. and it was breaking just south of the rocks and out about 50 yards.  Thick walled rights slicing down the beach.  The first set we saw was almost head-high and this one pictured was about shoulder high.  Of course this is exactly where the Army Corps of Engineers is planning to dump tons of sediment from Ballona Creek sometime in the near future...  There goes that ...  U nlimited visibility this morning with mostly clear skies and clean air - take a big breath!  See!  Winds are already onshore by 3.7kts and will mostly kick up to 10 to 15kts by noon.  Sea surface is lightly chopped.  The air temp was a relatively warmer 49.3° and the water is 55.8°.  Low tide is late at 11:13am +0.8' and high tide is even later at 6:49pm +2.9'.  The good news is that the buoy is reading a west swell out of 274° at 4.6' and it's 4' to 6'.  The bad ne