Cerca de las once, y yo soy a la restaraunte para desayuno despues de surfeando por la primera vez. Oops, sorry, slipped into Spanish for a second there. It is just after my first marathon session at Nexpa. There were only four or five guys in the water, but they appeared timid and proved to be non-factors. They hung way to the inside and down the point. I got a lot of good, clean, simple faces. It is a very forgiving wave, but I still could not quite connect from section to section all the way through to the inside, despite various exaggerated cutback attempts. I was ruling it, and having so much fun going front side, time after time, in tune with the ocean and my body, long smooth drops, high turns up on the face, work it back to the whitewater, slice back in underneath the section, and down the line until - that seeming barrier middle section where I have to kick out. Well all the fun quickly ended when Mario, one of two brothers who are local Michoacanos that have lived here their whole lives, paddles up to me and shakes his index finger at me, while shaking his head. I am looking around like, me? I make idle conversation in Spanish about the fishing here, and he smiles, and I assume everything is 'all good.' Now I had been catching a lot of waves, mostly because I was confident to surf such a docile wave, one that crumbled, unlike the slicing lips of Puerto Escondido, but I never broke any etiquette or cut anyone off. So I didn't think anything of it and continued to aggressively go after every big set that came through, snatching another ten waves in twenty minutes.


All of a sudden there he is again exclaiming in Spanish, he paddles up and says: "No paddle!" He shakes his finger at me again and paddles off, water dripping off his ridiculously buff trapezoid muscles, all the while muttering to himself under his Hitler-like straight mustache. I am shocked and dismayed, and a few minutes later I am asking another guy in the lineup if I did something wrong . . . and before he can answer, Mario from 40 yards to the inside and closer to the impact zone, with six million dollar man ears, yells: " Shut up! You better shut up!" At this point I am fully intimidated and my wave count goes from lots to zero. I feel like a sunny day with clouds and rain showers suddenly covering it all. I come all the way to a remote place like Nexpa, a super mellow wave, not a world class, dangerous point break, but a fluff ball, fun wave, and I get threatened: "Me and my brother, we fuck you up!" It's like three foot! Are you kidding me? Incredulous! Barely any good waves on this day, a wind swell junky day, with waves all over the place -- what a joke! What is there to defend? Flies suck, they are beginning to swarm my breakfast of pancakes and fresh fruit and nasty Sugar/Gel/ Water/Syrup. I try to finish this last sentence in my journal, fuming inwardly about some sort of strange instinctual feeling of impotence in the wake of tucking my tail under and leaving the water at the demands of the burly local.

ER Harris