Lost Boys & Co.

Lost Boys & Co... I t was so overcast and cool this morning that we thought we'd reprise the Alaska gambit with one last shot of some truly cold gray weather.  This is the Marjorie Glacier at the very northern tip of Glacier Bay.  The Captain got us to within about a quarter of a mile of this 150' wall of ice.  We could only imagine if a chunk large enough had calved that we would have had some serious rolling to contend with.  As it was, we saw some pretty sizable chunks (Volkswagen size) come sliding down.  These glaciers are also noisy.  We're talking sounds like shotgun blasts, pops, creaking, moaning and squeaky hinge (magnified considerably) noises.  Of course being faced with that much ice it was colder than your average freezer.  Actually, it was perfect for martinis... T he cloud cover doesn't look as thick as yesterday, but it's still pretty gray and there's 5 miles visibility.  Winds are onshore (to our great chagrin) and th...

Lost Boys & Co... W e had heard from several sources that the surf had been pretty good in Seal Beach and Huntington.  What they didn't tell us was how great the weather is down there compared to the South Bay.  It was sunny and warm, right from the get-go and the winds were calm and held off for the longest while.  Before we headed back out of town we needed a little coffee and w e saw this place on Ocean St. named after one of our favorite Lost Boys.  Since they didn't have a lot of Keithal memorabilia they had a bunch of Humphrey stuff.  We understand... V isibility in the South Bay was 1 mile with low overcast and haze/fog.  Winds at 7am were onshore by 5.7kts and the sea surface was tacked up.  The air temperature was 60.3° and the water is 64.8°.  It can get warmer anytime it wants now...  Low tide is at 9:20am +1.0' and high tide will be at 4:20pm +5.2'.  There's a swell out of 208° running at 2.6'.  We're calling it 2'...

Lost Boys & Co. . O kay, when you think of lost boys, like LOST BOYS with all caps, you gotta think of Michael Jackson.  Even the whole Neverland, Peter Pan theme!  He was obviously one of the most stellar personalities of our time, however, it remains that he never got to play that one gig that he really wanted.  Boomfwappa, told us in an exclusive interview this morning, that the Portagees had finally asked Michael to sing at their Festa in Paramount.  When they called him yesterday morning they said he said he was, "Thrilled!" He was obviously excited and then the phone mysteriously disconnected.  Later they heard that he had been rushed to the hospital.  Taking his place as headliners will be "Herminio Silva and the Silva-tones." U nder overcast skies this morning we have 10 miles visibility.  Looks like it will probably break up mid-morning.  Winds are out of the SW by 1.9kts and the sea surface was smooth to a light tack.  The air...

Lost Boys & Co... O ne of the first things we noticed on our cruise to Alaska was the kitschy decor on  the boat.  You might have thought they'd have some totem poles and various cool native American art.  Nope.  They seemed to be ready to bring back some classic Greek ideals.  Our first shot is of a set of caryatids holding up one of the stairwells.  No doubt they were doing a bang-up job holding things up, but they just seemed a bit much. L ots of gray today.  12 miles visibility and heavy overcast.  Looks like it might not break up for a while this morning.  Winds were onshore from the get-go by 3.9kts getting things fairly rough and tacky early.  The air temp was 60.1° and the water was 64.8°.  Low tide this morning was at 6:15am -1.4' and high tide will follow at 12:54pm +4.3'.  The swell is coming out of 187° at 2' and it's not making it all the way to the beach.  It's 1' and poor. O ur second photo is an idylli...

Lost Boys & Co... S o we made it to Juneau and looked up the Governor to see how things were going.  Photo number one is her digs in the classy section of Juneau.  Now that's not saying a hell of a whole lot.  Juneau is built on a rather steep hillside and the Governor's Mansion is flung right up there among the rest of the citizens and their dwellings.  We did talk to a couple of locals and they were kinda cool about the Gov.  Apparently there is a lot of local pride in Alaska, so if you're from Juneau, you're all about Juneau and Sitka ain't shucks.  Since the Guv is from Wasilla, the Juneau-kees don't think she's all that hot.  Nice pad though.  Looked like Tara... A n overcast morning with 7 miles visibility.  Winds were out of the SW by 3.9kts and there was a bit of a bump on the water.  The air temperature was 61.7° and the water was a tolerable 64.8°  Low tide starts out the morning at 5:29am -1.7' and high tide is at 12...

Lost Boys & Co... W ell, since this is a Totem Pole Tuesday, we thought we'd start out with a totemic section that we scoped somewhere near Sitka.  This is a depiction of an orca and we really liked the fin.  One of those things you could see incorporating into a future board design.  We were impressed with how exacting the designs are.  All of the line work is spot on, with no sloppy edges.  A lot like Tikis in general, but specifically different in execution considering the harder woods and different tools. O vercast this morning with 10 miles visibility.  Winds kicked up first thing out of the SSW by 5.6kts and the sea surface has a bit of a light chop going on.  The air temperature was 60.7° at 7am and the water was 64.9°.  High tide was at 11:20am +4.0' and low tide will be at 3:53pm +2..0'.  The buoy is reading a swell out of the SW at 200° at 3.3'.  We're calling it 2' to 4' and we surfed the Hermosa Pier this morning.  ...

Lost Boys & Co... O kay!  We got back into town   yesterday afternoon from our cruise to explore the Alaskan hinterlands and have pretty much been enjoying our return to terra firma.  Our first photo is of our floating hotel the Westerdam out of Rotterdam, along with her sister ships the Veendam, New Amsterdam, Zuiderdam, Friantdam, Hooverdam and several other dam ships.  And "YES" they had the t-shirts that said "DAM SHIPS" with the entire list. S ome really good waves this morning!  Partly cloudy skies with 12 miles visibility.  Winds were offshore by 5.6kts and smooth conditions until the wind switched about 10:30am.  The air temperature was 60.5° and the water was a hopeful 63.3°, with some warm spots on the outside.  High tide was at 10:35am +3.8' and low tide is at 3:00pm +2.1' with some minus lows later in the week.  The buoy was reporting a 3.9' swell out of 192° and we're calling it 3' to a solid 4' with some even bigger outsid...

Lost Boys & Co... W e surfed Hermosa this morning based on the waves we saw on the back of Scotty's.  It turns out the waves were painted and the door was real. U nder overcast skies this morning we have 7 miles visibility.  Winds are out of the WSW by 1.9kts and the sea surface is glassy.  The air temp is 61.5° and the water is 62.8°.  Low tide was at 7:15am +0.0' and high tide will follow at 2:17pm +3.6'.  Buoy #46221 is reading a 2.6' swell out of the SW at 225°.  We're calling it 2' and poor.  Some of the outsides were a bit bigger, but everything got walled up on the inside.  T onight Boomfwappa and the Boomtown Bombers will be playing at Keegan's Pub in Old Torrance.  It's on Marcellena across from the old post office.  The action starts at 7pm, but the rumor is that there will be an happy hour at the Buffalo Fire Dept. (where the old Aoli used to be.)  Yeah, we know BFD... O ur second photo this morning turns out to be o...

Lost Boys & Co... O ur photo today is of one of a series of drawings that commemorates some of the early skaters in the So. Bay.  This happens to be the Professor at Riviera School skating for Magic Arrow with Steve Takata, Glenn Hiramatsu and Fred Grabert.  They had just put up barricades on the "Riviera Bowl" culvert on the south side of the school so they were exploring the other side of the campus.  He's riding a Magic Arrow "Elf Shoe."  It's an okay drawing, but we're wondering about the right great toe...  It's like really great! M ore than overcast, barging into cloudy as the morning progressed.  10 miles visibility and the wind was kicking up out of the SSW by 10.9kts, turning things to a pretty choppy mess.  The air temp was 61.2°and the water was 62.2° at the buoy.  Low tide was at 6:38am -0.2' and high tide followed at 1:32pm +3.5'.  The buoy read a swell out of 230° at 3..3' and we were calling it 3' and a bit mush...

Lost Boys & Co... T wo birds with one e-mail:  The following e-mail was copied to us.  Originally sent from Mike McKinney to Mike Murphy it contains a couple of nuggets you might be interested in.  The first is the beach event that Mike Murphy is putting on, on Sunday.  If you can help out, give him a call.  He needs beach personnel and big beefy security guys (like you) to keep the rabble away from the tanning team.  The second item is the grill at Torrance Beach.  They have new management and sound like they cater to an appetite like yours, so you can maintain your beefiness! Mike. I'm looking forward to a fun day.  As a heads up and possibly you may want to get an email out, friends of mine, Mike and Anne Giltner, recently were awarded the concession to run the "Surfside Grill" at the bottom of the Torrance Beach ramp.  They just opened this last week.  The will be open year round but important to us they will have breakfast burri...

Lost Boys & Co.. . W e just bought an older car.  So we had to get it smogged.  We went to the smog barons and they tested it.  Just as we were walking in we saw that sign in the photo - GROSS POLLUTER CERTIFICATION.  It brought  back a flood of memories of the Isuzu Gross Polluter and our many adventures.  Alas this new beater passed with flying colors.  So we said to Mr. Smog Tester, "Uh, what do we do now?" Him:  "Anything you want.  It passed." Us:  "You mean we can drive it around like a regular car?" Him:  "Yeah, pretty much.  But if you go too fast or don't stop at red lights, you'll get a ticket." Us:  "Dude, that's really cool!" Him:  "You don't do this very often do you?" Us:  "You could tell, couldn't you..." S o under cloudy overcast skies we had about 5 miles visibility.  Even got a bit of rain/drizzle around 9am in Redondo.  Winds were calm and the sea surface was smooth.  The a...

Lost Boys & Co... O kay, so we had to go back and see what the sign really said.  There are 7 forbidden activities and in reverse order they are:  No Scooters.  That's ok, we wore our flip flops with the wheels in the back.  No Skateboards.  Dammit, skateboarding is NOT a crime - can't they read the bumper stickers?  No Bikes.  That's just wrong.  No Overhead Casting.  This is our fave because of the cool icon they have.  With just a little manipulation you could have the guy hooking the back of his pants and casting himself into the water.  No animals (on or off leash.)  Remember that when you're taking the ferret for a stroll.  No Alcohol.  This must be because you might do one of the other things if you have too much to drink.  And the number ONE prohibition:  NO DIVING.  This is why the guy can't be overhead casting himself into the water.  Come on, how many people really want to dive off ...

Lost Boys & Co... T he day started out with a bit of grayness in the vault of the sky.  We took our accompanying shot of the Hermosa Pier to emphasize the grayness of the morning.  If you look on the wall, you see the list of prohibitions that the city of Hermosa has posted to advise the citizenry that none of this behavior will be tolerated.  Now, if you zoom in on the list of no-no's you will see it gets increasingly fuzzy the closer you get.  That's the way it's always looked to us!  Amazing... A bit of precipitation this morning, but nothing that could be called rain.  Sun is breaking through in some quarters and it looks like it might be a rather gorgeous spring day.  Visibility is 12 miles and there are some puffy clouds motoring about the blue.  Winds started out on to side shore from the south at 9.7kts and the sea surface has a light chop just short of whitecaps.  The air temp is 60.1° and the water is 62.8°.  High tide is...

Lost Boys & Co... R unnin' around the So. Bay looking for surf.  Almost happening in Manhattan.  Our first shot is from Bruce's Beach (27th St.) and there were actually a few bumps.  The second shot is a nice tandem number at the Tim Kelly Memorial at the foot of the Hermosa Pier.  The little girl didn't know who Tim Kelly was (understandable,) didn't know if she was regular or goofy foot (curious) and wouldn't hang five (unreasonable.)  On to the stats... C loudy and overcast this morning with 10 miles visibility.  Winds are onshore by 1.9kts and the sea surface still is pretty glassy.  The air tem is 61.0° and the water is 62.6°.  High tide is at 8:42am +3.5' and low tide will follow at 1:21pm +1.9'.  The swell is coming out of 201° at 2.3' and that's barely enough to make it 1' to 2' and poor. "When the surf breaks, we'll fix it..."  The Professor!!

Lost Boys & Co... D amn!  We're late again tonight!  We'll try and do better in the morning.  Speaking of mornings, this morning was a little unusual in that it rained.  Not just a little bit, but quite a healthy downpour with occasional lightning and thunder.  Our photos show a couple of views of the weather as it decided to pour a bit of liquid sunshine on us.  The weatherman says that it's not exactly over yet and that we might get a couple of more days of the same kind of unstable weather.  We thought about this a while and decided our seasons are all mixed up.  Yeah, we decided that summer is July, August and September.  Fall is October, November and December.  Spring is January, February, March and April and last but not least, Winter is May and June.  We base this on our wardrobe and whether or not the sun is out.. T hree miles visibility under heavily clouded skies this morning.  Rain light to heavy throughout the ...

Lost Boys & Co... I t's good to be back in Southern California!  We had a great time visiting with the cowboys and Idahoans, but the beach is more to our taste.  We did get to make it to a branding which was pretty interesting.  In fact the branding was pretty much like you'd expect..  What we didn't exactly expect was the castrating that goes along with the branding.  Don't worry, it was only on the cows!  But damn, if we couldn't walk straight for a couple of hours.  When you ask for a bucket of balls on the range, you don't get golf balls! O vercast this morning with about 12 miles visibility and some drizzlations.  Winds were straight out of the north by 1.9kts and the sea surface was smooth.  The air temperature is 58.5° and the water is 60.6°.  High tide was at 5:07am +3.7' and low tide will be at 11:10am +0.8'.  The surf is coming out of the SSW at 208° at 2.3' and we're calling it a barely rideable 1' to 2'. W e saw Eas...