Having lived in Santa Barbara for over a year I am starting to gain a reputation as a whiner and complainer. "There's never any waves in SB." "God it's so small here!" Wahh. Wahh. Wahh. People are tired of hearing it, but the truth is that nearly every time I check the surf from a wide variety of locations from as far north as Lompoc to as far south as Oxnard Shores it is flat. California is dependent primarily on swells that form in the north Pacific during the fall and winter, but these swells seem to evade the Santa Barbara area with great deftness. Point Concepcion and the Channel Islands no doubt form a natural barrier that prevents the majority of waves to wiggle their way into the lives of those of us unlucky enough to be stationed down in So Cal.

Well after six days in a row of four-plus hours of surfing per day, I may have to take down my label of 'Surf Purgatory' and start to agree with those who I have argued against -- maybe SB is a good place to live if you are a surfer. This streak has made me at least rethink my seemingly foregone conclusion that life sucks if you like surfing and your zip code is in the 9310-somethings. Wow! This stretch of consecutive surf days was filled with: incredible consistency, beautiful shape, excellent local weather conditions, unmatchable length of rides, there was almost no aspect that was missing except . . . empty lineups. That was not the case. As some of the photos indicate, if you chose to surf at one of the premier breaks you would not be lacking company.

The craziest thing about this string of good surf is that . . . it's not over! I have been on vacation visiting the folks in the Bay Area (Sorry for the lack of blogs lately guys!) and every single day the buoys have remained in the perfect range for good surf in Santa Barbara. New storms just continue to line up in just north of Japan, and with the somewhat southerly direction combined with high pressure cells that force the storms to impact on Northern California, it has been a ridiculous trend. There is no end in sight. The new year of 2006 will begin with one of the most memorable continuous streaks of large good surf since the El Nino event of 1998.

Lucky for me, I guess, I get to go back to Santa Barbara on the New Year, and live there, and surf there. Hmm. Lesson learned. Mother Nature provides how she feels like providing, and we don't have the power to determine where and when the glassy blue walls will rise and fall for those of us who search them out to thrill our souls.

ER Harris