In Reply to: Re: Inshore Hyperion Outfall posted by Chris on November 28, 2006 at 10:44:18:

I concur, Chris.

When I think back to the dawn of time, before they built the MdR breakwater, and of all the time I spent surfing the bitch’n left break that was right in the mouth of Ballona Creek , I almost gag. I shudder to think of what we were immersed in back then… But with a moderate swell, I could ride my old 9’6” Jacobs or 9’0” Weber clear to the bridge. Then it was just a matter of crawling out, up the rocks without slicing your feet on the mussels or broken beer bottles or dinging your board too badly, walking out to the end of the jetty and doing it again.

Back then they still had the steel 55-gallon drums as beach waste containers. We’d usually drag one out on the jetty, and either bring wood or use beach drift stuff (dried seaweed is a bit smoky but burns rather well) and get a blaze going in the barrel to warm up by. Bad behavior amongst the group was often punished by adding the offender’s street clothes, tennis-shoes, and sometimes even a wetsuit or board into the burning barrel. We were a self-regulating group.

Looking back I’m surprised so many of us survived, but at the time it didn’t seen like any big deal.

Stay wet.