Surfers are loath to offer up intelligence on good waves, even when far from their home waters. So a week and a half ago when I ran into Zach —sun-crisped, 30-odd years old, on a tour from Mendicino, Calif — and he explained how pleased he was to pass up the legendary breaks in Bali for those 20 minutes from our house, I snapped to attention.

“You don’t even know how good you got it,” said Zach, shaking his head. We were standing watching elephants play soccer, a local traveling show that packed a couple thousand people into a makeshift stadium in the beach village of Lampuuk. He had already been on the water for several hours that morning. “There’s a right breaking on a reef just past the rivermouth here that formed a 150-yard long barrel.”
“And there’s no-body out,” he added.

Four days later, my buddy Graham and I strapped our surfboards to the side of our motorbikes and headed south. The initial plan was to surf the more tame sand beaches in Lhok Nga (sounds like lock na). I’d been on the board I was carrying just once and Graham and I were still getting used to the local surf. But when we crossed the one-lane bridge over the river, I thought we should at least look at the reef break Zach had mentioned.

On the other side of the river, we tried the first dirt track off the main road and followed it along the empty bank. The flattened dunes were dotted with rows of saplings planted by reconstruction crews. In 500 meters, we came to the back of the beach — white sand, with a creeping, leafy vine above high tide.

Out in the water, some small waves lined up behind what looked like a reef. They were aways offshore, maybe another half a kilometer. They welled up quickly, cleanly, crisply and broke to the right. There was no one around. This looked like the spot.

Between the beach and reef was a deeper channel where the water swept in front of us and then out to sea. That aside, I was rapidly getting used to the idea that a couple of greenhorns could try the break. The surf wasn’t pounding too hard and I could see a route to paddle out. There looked to be a little warm-up wave left of the bigger lineup.

“Think we should do it?” I asked Graham. I was getting that same intestinal sensation I feel when looking over the edge of the high dive.

“Sure,” Graham said, shrugging. He goes about 6’4”, 200, did turns in Darfur and Uzbekistan and doesn’t seem afraid of much.

We made it across the channel from the beach without too much effort. Then we skirted left of the whitewater on the reef to where that smaller peak was breaking. When the first set of waves came in, they looked double the height I expected them to be — maybe five feet or bigger (They always look small on the beach). As each wave walled up, it sucked up a slab of dark calm water over the knobby coral underneath then exploded quickly down the line to the right. In one clear, shimmering face I saw a silver tuna speeding across.

The scene seemed a little intimidating — all the more so because nobody was riding these half-pipes.

I paddled slowly into a couple waves and looked down their steep faces before pulling up.

“I need bigger nuts,” I said to Graham. He was looking over the situation, too.

I spied a medium sized glossy and turned my board to face the beach. If I didn’t give it a good shot, I’d be up all night thinking about it.

Three quick strokes. The wave picked me up quickly but just gently enough so I could get to my feet. I floated down to the bottom, in happy disbelief.

And then: this boulder loomed clearly just under the surface, right in my path. Luckily, I had enough time to dodge left.

The wave petered out a few seconds later.

I paddled back out past Graham, spitting seawater and a mashed recap. “There’s this huge rock it was awesome we gotta move down the line that thing was quick and steep I don’t know how I got up…”

Going back out, I saw our friend, the rock, swirling in the meat of each new wave. I set up next time far from it and any other swirls. Otherwise, the bottom was deeper than me. I know because chasing successive waves, I went for a spin cycle under a few crashing lips.

I caught a few more — each one a clear wall of blue around me for a split second. They were clearer, I think, than any waves I’ve seen in person. The paddles out were tough each time; the whitewater on the reef tended to swirl and push and prevent any progress. We figured out how to return left outside the edge of the reef and then back right into the lineup. Resting once in the middle of a paddle, I saw a big skate skirting the edge of the reef.

After an hour or so, Graham floated in to try the beach break. I went back out for one more wave.

Sitting there alone, waiting, the ocean felt massive. On the small breakwater at the rivermouth, I could see the sillouettes of three guys with long surf casting rods. Behind them the few hagard fir trees swayed lightly, the leftover from what was once a huge grove. In the distance were the new roofs of the village — the concrete houses, shiny new mosque, school — and the radio towers with the tsunami sirens. Would I be able to get to shore in time? Maybe. But the fishermen were still there, casting.

The first heavy winds rippled across the tops of the waves: time to get one before they got mushy. I took off farther north than before and it paid off: up on my board, the whole line of the wave stretched out before me to my right. I rode on its shoulder for 15, 20, 30 seconds, carving easy turns. It collapsed just before the end of the reef.

Looking back out at the spot from beach, my shoulders tired, my blood running rich and salty, I had an answer for Zach: We did have an idea about how good we had it.

And its only fair that I pay it forward, for what it’s worth.

Take care until next time,
Oakley

 

Sometimes it’s the oceanic networks we’ve built to make our lives better that rise up and blindside us.

 

You’ve likely heard that one of Banda Aceh’s tsunami warning alarms went off by accident on Monday. This happened after a hoax text message had been circulating predicting a major earthquake or disaster around June 7^th. The prediction was “according to CNN,” said the text.

 

Shortly after the alarm started blaring through a downtown harbor area, around noon, the local agency in charge held a press conference saying the siren was triggered by a short circuit and not a real tsunami. But it was too late. People streamed away from downtown en masse, causing a massive traffic jam in the main shopping district. At least two other alarms went off down the coast, sending some villagers hurrying for the hills. (Others saw that the sea wasn’t receding, as it does just before a tsunami, and gathered around the alarm trying to shut it off).

 

I was in Lamligang neighborhood, just out of earshot of the alarm and out of range of the last tsunami waves. But word about the alarm, traveling by text messages and cell phones, was still halting everything and pulling people out in front of their houses and shops.  At the grocery store, the owner and his staff were working their phones and looking worriedly out into the street. Two NGO workers heard what was up and went back into the coffee shop next door. I hopped on my motor bike and went about my day.

 

I arrived at a friend’s house to drop off some food and their house staff was standing in the driveway looking like they had seen a ghost. I tried to tell one young woman that not only were many people saying it was just a mistake, there had been no earthquake. Without that, no tsunami.  But she would have none of it. She stared at me blankly. She seemed far, far away. There had been no logic to what had happened on the day —as they put it — the sea came. So what was it worth now? Her family was down near the main mosque in central Banda, and now, after getting word about the alarm, another thing happened: the cell phone network jammed. 

 

Now there was no way to find out where loved ones were or to get a quick update on what was really going on. Riding back through the neighborhood, everyone seemed to be either staring down at their cell phones or looking out toward the ocean, wondering which was going to betray them next.

 

I felt strangely removed from the emotions pulsing through the city. When I finally got in touch with Hayley at around 3, we were both amazed at the reaction. Some of her staff had left in a hurry to check on their kids, even though the agency security people were explaining to staff about the false alarm. I’m pretty sure that the trauma of the real tsunami won’t ever translate, no matter how well we speak Indonesian and how deep our friendships get. But I wonder if it’s a kind of psychological barrier that will continue to deeply separate locals from Westerners here?

 

Back in our own orbit Saturday, long after the alarm scare had dissipated, we got a knock on the door at 9 am. There were two guys and a minivan outside, with 32 boxes of our stuff from Portland. All the things we thought we couldn’t live without, but had for 7 weeks: a laser jet printer, two foldable kayaks, old tax forms, pieces of a mountain bike. “This is totally weird,” Hayley said.  It was the flotsam of a suddenly former life, plopped down on our living room floor. 

 

Most of the boxes are still unpacked. But I couldn’t resist opening up the one with my surfboard to see how it had survived the journey. Fine, as it turns out; a feat when you think about the 12,000 miles it traveled.

 

I’m sure it looked different though — that artifact for the sea — to the local guys who came to the house this morning to measure for replacement screens.

 

Take care until next time,

Oakley

We are still trying to figure out Sharia law and its extensions into custom here. It’s not an easy cultural merge. One thing we have discovered: on a Friday night, the Sharia atmosphere can bring back the sensation of a teenager on a covert beer run.

Acehnese seem to have this schizophrenic attitude toward the system, which criminalizes social behavior the West might simply frown on or ignore completely. There’s deep history here of a sort of informal societal code along the righteous principles of the Koran, with punishment meted out by elders backed by community consensus. The local legislature codified the religious law in the last six years.

Now there is a separate police force and court system that deals with moral transgressions; the most common — if the local police blotter is any measure — are premarital trysts. Often the guilty are netted after local villagers call the Sharia police on their neighbors — again, the grassroots support. There are also public floggings for adultery and gambling, and all draw a big crowd. (Aceh doesn’t go to the level of hacking off the arms of thieves).

But around town there’s also a lot of flaunting the moral law and the culture that comes with it. Teenagers — surprise — are the biggest scofflaws; girls wear the customary jibab head scarf but match it with a pair of tight jeans. Last weekend, on a hike past a popular swimming hole, I was constantly running into kids making out in dark corners. Apparently, extramarital affairs and divorce are quite common — one friend’s Indonesian boyfriend has four different sets of half-siblings, and possibly a fifth: one of his mother’s husbands ran off and has never been heard from since.

The aid community’s free living ways have been a source of tension for Sharia’s proponents, such that local authorities’ published a cultural “Dos and Don’ts” pamphlet for the NGOs. It suggests wearing long, loose fitting clothing and not being caught behind closed doors with an unmarried Muslim of the opposite sex. In case you’re wondering if even this appearance of unsavory actions stirs the long arm of Sharia: one agency we know well here had to move two staffers out of a guest house because they were unmarried colleagues and sleeping under the same roof, albeit in separate rooms. The neighbors didn’t like the looks of it.

Aid workers have not been stopped from consuming beer, however. Under Sharia, it’s illegal for a Muslim to sell alcohol. But there seems to be a blind spot for foreigners selling it to other foreigners. Store and restaurant owners are wary about appearing to exploit this loophole too brashly. They never list beer or wine on the menu nor display it in a store cooler (hard alcohol is nowhere to be found). One learns quickly where to look and what to ask for.

So it is we found ourselves at a small grocery store on a busy avenue Friday night, walking gingerly to the back while doing our best to look thirsty. We found a clerk far from other customers and asked for a six-pack. In hushed tones, he summoned the manager. “Six Tigers,” we said to the guy, who was wearing an old white T-shirt and tired eyes. He was not Indonesian (we’ll just leave it at that). He offered bottles of red wine from France and Australia, and in a twist of global finance or maybe a label, the French wine was cheaper. We added the French red; the refreshments would set us back the equivalent of $21.

We were sent to the front of the store to wait. The proprietor’s wife smiled down at us from the pilot’s chair in one of those raised cash-register booths that surveys the whole store. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to get us anything; the owner was fooling around behind the register and his clerk was staring out the window. Was there a waiting period? “This is like Prohibition,” Hayley said.

The hold up was a shipment of apples in from China. For the next ten minutes, we watched as young men in flip-flops unloaded 30 boxes of fruit from a huge open-bed truck idling outside. Meanwhile, the shopkeep finished up his receiving forms.

Our goods eventually came, in separate shipments wrapped in black plastic bags. We quickly stowed them in a backpack. On the way out, the owner rapped me on the back gently with two fists, smoothing over the last of our jitters. “Come back, again,” he said.

At home, we cracked the Tigers along with a wholesome American meal of grilled cheese sandwiches. The light, Singapore-made lager cut through the heavy night. And I had a very brief sensation of being an eighteen-year-old on a beach somewhere and drinking deeply in happy defiance.

Take care until next time,
Oakley
PS –Sorry about the tardiness of the post; we’ve been moving into a new house this weekend.