I Prefer Picking Avacodos

When you see an ambulance at Ekuhai Beach Park parking lot, you fear the worst.
I could hear the waves building early this morning and by the time we got down the hill and rode the bike path from Three Tables to Ekuhai the bigger wave faces appeared to be about twenty feet.
A large crowd was gathered on the beach to watch and photograph the action. Lots of big telephoto lens on tripods, girls in bikinis, older tourists in white walking shoes and pressed Hawaiian shirts, and dudes with cowrie shell necklaces. There might have been a hundred surfers jammed up out in the lineup waiting for the right wave. It’s a wonder they weren’t crashing into each other. It was a traffic jam. Some took the waves standing up. Others on boogie boards wearing swim fins shot down the wave faces and spun around on their boards. The boogies could ride a wave almost into shore. The wave at Banzai was breaking both directions. A surfer had to decide which way he or she was going to go, left or right. The films you see of surfers on big waves are a bit deceiving. Film, especially telephoto seems to slow down the action. When that wave crests and the surfer decides to go she slides down the wave at a tremendous speed before making a break one direction or the other and fighting her way through the tube made by the cresting wave. (There’s lots of girls out there). One guy disappeared for many seconds, then reemerged with a fist held high in triumph. These people are just nuts. I noticed a boogie board without a rider slide up on the beach. A few minutes later I could see the boardless guy trying to make his way in. Every time a wave came up behind him he would dive down under it and when he finally made it to shore and retrieved his board he seemed exhausted. We got back on our bikes and rode another mile to Sunset Beach. The waves weren’t as big. While we were there a little, blue Honolulu Police helicopter landed on the beach. They didn’t seem to have any particular business. When they took off the cop in the passenger seat  waved to the beach people as if he were in a parade, his arm fully extended out the window as they flew out over the ocean. Back at Ekuhai the lights blinked on the ambulance. Linda heard someone say there’d been a death. We didn’t wait to see. Some people have more courage than good sense when it comes to waves. You don’t need a license to be a surfer. All you need is a board and the willingness to take the risk.
I celebrated not being on a surfboard by picking some avocados from the tree outside our door.