Of all odd places to ride waves, Point Zero ascends to top of the list. When Zuckie was asked why Point Zero was named Point Zero he replied in his casual goofy foot manner,”Why don’t you go and surf it yourself and see why!” No one speaks about Point Zero. People talk about Sakis which is the next point to the north, and drainpipes, but never about Point Zero. Pick, the archtypal soul surfer and one of the most talented of the pre-generation used to surf it alone. He never would talk about it either. One day Cool and Wracks picked up Pick hitching at Moonrise Blvd and PCh and he said, “Bring me to Point Zero today.” Kool who owns a brown and yellow Volkswagen van acknowledges the plea, drives past Point Doom and drops off Pick who draws on a cigarette he claimed from Cool and disappears in the bushes. Cool finally confides to Wracks why no one talks about Point Zero. “Pick was surfing it alone one day and a twenty foot white shark grabbed him in its mouth and swam around with him for over five minutes. Luckily a large set of waves hit the reef; Pick unzipped his wetsuit, wiggled out and escaped. All the shark got was a neoprene taco for lunch. Cool who also is a goofy foot never rides Point Zero either. “I like Colony,” he says, or “Let’s go to Drainpipes.” When wracks finally bought his first car at age 21, a car previously owned by the famous one for one hundred dollars, Wracks pulled down the side road and switchback, past the torn down beach house and the sign that says Point Zero and to the parking lot on the ridge overlooking the beach. The old barracuda, belching smoke and smelling like a refinery on fire comes to a rest. In front of Wracks sits a desolate beach. Point Zero sits as short left point, littered with boulders and has huge stalagmites sticking out of the water in the zone where waves break. Out about one hundred yards floats a huge kelp bed. The beach although short beautifully typifies the beaches in north County: white sand, sea shells, kelp on the beach and brick a bract thrown about by the intense tides of large duration and amplitude that happen during the summer months. To the north about five hundred yards lays Leo Carrillo beach with its famous Rock, right slide, and huge campsite across PCH. Half way to Sakis point, a dark strip of water abuts up to the beach. No waves break in between Sakis and Point Zero because a deep trench divides the two points and he or she can see the deep water showing with a dark blue shadow. In this trench that ends only ten feet from the beach, huge white sharks sleep. The only fatal shark attack in southern California occurred ten feet off the beach, in calm water, on a beautiful day to a swimmer wading in the water alone. The buddy to the person watched in horror as his friend was bitten in half then eaten whole. The water then became calm again. Why then does anyone surf Point Zero? Most of the time, small piddle waves crumple haphazardly down the left point in many sections and slow spots. Most of the other surf spots break better including Sakis that lays a ten minute walk up the beach north. The answer to the question lies in propinquity and timing. When the Bu is six feet plus, the reef at Zero at the point breaks. On a big southwest swell Zero breaks two feet bigger than the Bu on the reef with fast left slides after a shallow take off tube. One Saturday Wracks awoke late to discover a large southwest swell starts to hit North County south facing beaches. Immediately he puts his new Lightning bolt gun into the Cuda, Fires up the beast with a screwdriver in the ignition and heads north. Everyone in space including heaven parks at Surfrider beach. The Bu breaks at ten to twelve feet at low tide coming up in spinning tubular vortexes off the far point and everyone including the messiah floats out in the water on their big wave board. No parking spots remain and Wracks outclassed heads to places north. “I am going to check out Point Zero,” thinks Wracks. “I want to surf backside today in big surf. “ The ride seems short and Wracks keeps the windows down because the cabin fills with exhaust smoke as he drives. Down the small road the Cuda bumps and Wracks beholds the secret that Pick will take to his death.
It just happens that a large southwest swell focuses on Point Zero! The slowly rafting kelp forests one hundred yards out cover a reef that only yields breaking waves when the swell exceeds six to ten feet. In breathtaking revelry, huge mountainous breaking caverns rear up on the hidden reef and throw over like a left Sunset Beach Hawaii. The wave then hits the point and barrels down the line for fifty yards until it reaches the deep chasm that divides Sakis from Point zero and there the water remains calm. On this day when Surfrider breaks at ten to twelve feet and God thinks about going in, Point zero looms outside at fifteen to twenty feet high on the Sets. In his mind, Wracks thinks in an instant, like a light, “speed, danger, and sharks Oh My.” Wracks puts fresh Paraffin on his Lightning bolt space ship, pulls on a spring suit in blue, buckles up his leash and paddles out. A huge set hits and wracks barely make it over the top of the second wave of the set. The third wave backs off smaller. Out in the middle of madness alone, in the Kelp Bed Wracks sits. A person with a long board arrives on the beach and watches. A huge set of waves appears on the horizon. Wracks paddles to the right to get the second and biggest one. He paddles as hard as he can and sees a wall rearing up in front of him and Wracks thinks he is too far back and will drown. Wracks make the drop to the bottom and turns as hard as he can in a squat. The board accelerates like a bar of wet soap, and the wave comes over him, and the wall must be ten feet thick, and Wraks prays for four seconds. Neptune releases him and mother earth bestows him with a kiss and Wracks shoots out of a spinning vortex like he never has experienced before. After countless S turns down the line, Wraks exits at the trench and out of the corner of his eye sees a head slowly rise out of the water and look at him. Wracks paddles back out as fast as his skinny ass will go and the Long boarder who saw the wave runs down the beach with a nine foot six inch custom long board gun, jumps into the white water and paddles like a man possessed out to sea. Back in the lineup, Wracks sees the other person. The other person Wracks later discovers is Roy. Maybe Joist paddled out to put Wracks in a headlock? Maybe Roy arrives to size up Wracks for a go. Whatever the case, Wracks and Roy enjoy twenty foot waves alone with deep respect for each other’s territory. Wracks surfs at least six, maybe more, twenty foot walls all the way to the trench. Joist gets many too. Wracks starts to tire but knows that this session may be the best one he will experience in his lifetime. Finally a huge twenty five foot wave catches wracks in the impact zone and his leash slices through half of his board like cheese cutter. In the middle of the maelstrom, Wraks freestyles into the white water soup and feels something touch him. Sprinting like an Olympic swimmer, Wraks heads to the beach and body surfs a small ten foot wave into the craggy beach where he Rock dances through the white water and the breaking soup upends him two times. On the beach lies his new Lightning bolt gun almost cut in a half like a band saw. Wracks sits for awhile and watches the huge waves break in the kelp forest in a light summer breeze as the sun relentlessly puts a shine and glamor on the water’s surface. The rocks on the beach cover with green and the seaweed smells musky and the warm sand sits alone and other cars start to show up. Wracks waves to Roy and heads up the cliff. Roy sits outside alone. Wracks smokes a cigarette, climbs in the car, and drives home. Surfrider beach still has no seating available and people pay the Parking lot attendants at Alice’s restaurant fifty dollars American to park there. Wracks enters his house, walks to his bedroom and falls asleep. Wracks woke up at night to eat something. The dog in the basket wags its tail and yodels. Wracks eats, goes back to sleep, wakes up in the morning to wash off his gear and check the waves and the swell dropped down to six feet in size and Wracks returns home to study and do chores.
Wracks would savor Point Zero three more times at greater then fifteen feet before he leaves southern California. Amazingly, Roy appears out of nowhere with his long white long board with a red band around the center and they share huge, gaping, spinning, kelp forest vortexes together. A few other people eventually join them out at the reef but never more than five people at a time. A fin never came up to circle Wracks out in the lineup. However, Wracks could feel something there waiting for him, possibly waiting for a mistake. Occasionally when Wracks made a long ride to the chasm, he would imagine a head slowly emerge out of the water in the periphery of his vision from behind. The images from these ventures ingrains into Wracks memory and imagination. Point Zero still exists. Few people surf Point Zero because Surfrider beach and the Colony break better and situate in town. The secret is this: on a huge southwest swell, in the summer, Point Zero breaks bigger than anywhere in Southern California including Lower Trestles. Please don’t surf Point Zero Alone.

Jalama Lompoc began as a destination away from it all, far away, in the resources of my imagination.  Everyone would say, “Let’s go to Jalama,” and no one would know why except that the word Jalama arouses the curiosity of Wracks and more.  Geographically speaking, Jalama Lompoc exists as the name for a city in Central California, on the west beach side.  To get to Jalama Lompoc from Los Angeles, a traveler embarks on the 110 north and then at the Danish town of Solvang, head to the beach to highway 1.  Another way is to take the Pacific Coast Highway all the way up, past the Point Mugu obstacles, Past Ventura, Past Santa Barbara, until the winding hill with no pity at a 15 percent grade, for twenty miles, takes the traveler to Jalama Lompoc State Beach Park.  Then and there a traveler has arrived after three hours of driving.  Jalama Lompoc Beach Park to the north consists of campsites on the beach.  A cliff then grows to the north and the place becomes Point Argüelles.  The beach has white sand, plenty of seaweed and a scenic cliff backdrop.  Up to the north sits the city of Surf, the sister beach to Jalama Lompoc.  The Jalama area points directly north, northwest and Point conception just outward on the map to the most western place on the west coast of the United States.  For some unknown reason, the water at Jalama invigorates at a temperature ten to twenty degrees below the surrounding ocean to the north and to the south.  To a surfer, this cold water means intense pain when dunked by a huge breaker far out at sea and Jalama Lompoc has the largest breakers on the California coast.   All winter long, Jalama breaks bigger than ten feet every day and large swells make the place a shipping nightmare with waves bigger then can be imagined. Jalama also breaks in the summer but in a smaller capacity.   A reef to the very south, almost to the North gate of the Ranch, of Jalama Lompoc receives the name Tarantula point. In the summer when every break on the coast was under 3 feet, Tarantula was triple overhead.  During the fall huge tarantula spiders migrate across the road and you can see them and pick them up.  Every day from November to March, Tarantula point breaks from fifteen feet to greater than fifty feet in size, all wrapped up in a huge triangular peak that a surfer can ride right or left.  The left breaks bigger and longer and Big D goes there and surfs alone.  ‘Why do you surf alone in shark infested water,” asks Wracks?  Big D says, “I hate crowds.”  The Wracks never had the guts and just watches.    Jalama Lompoc sits arithmetically, in the center of the red triangle of death.   On these beaches, up to Pismo beach, and particularly Jalama, the biggest great white sharks on the west coast up to Alaska, lurk just outside the area where the waves break and take advantage of the upwelling phenomenon that brings in bait fish, to gorge on albacore, seals and in a pinch, humans dressed as seals in black wetsuits.  When Wrack goes to Jalama, he mostly watches because intuition tells him danger floats in the water and looks at him.  Wracks also does not like the cold water that turns a humans head blue after one hour in a full length 5-millimeter wet suit, while being doused by breakers over ten feet. The cold water keeps the sharks friendly but the fisherman in the area say they are there.   Wracks has never seen a shark at Jalama or at Tarantula point but local inhabitants tell him that if he sits on the beach long enough with binoculars, a thirty foot long plus great white shark with a  six foot dorsal fin will break the surface or breach in front of them.  None of the local wave riders  surf in these waters. When Wracks surfs the beach break reef, north of Tarantula point, he would occasionally see the kelp forest heave upward as if a huge object swims underneath.  Great white sharks do come into kelp forests to hunt prey and the kelp forest at Jalama and Point Conception forms the only barrier between surfers and huge hulking predators.   The long expanse of pristine shoreline, with beautiful undulating green water, vast kelp forests, abutting a craggy and beautiful coastline, hides a garden of death.  Egg man took Wracks to Jalama one day in the summer when the entire coastline held no swell and mirrored flat as a gridiron.  Tarantula point that day breaks at eight to ten feet of hollow turning tubes.  Egg man thought again and decided not to surf that day.  “Why aren’t you going out,’ asked Wracks.  “There appears to be no one on the beach for twenty miles in either direction,’ let’s go home.”

Why does Jalama Lompoc live in the imagination of Wracks?  The reason breeds thus:  The Point conception area boasts the largest and most perfectly shaped waves in the world.  The negative scares as cold water, huge waves and hungry, hovering predators that create nightmares.   Rumor has it that the most perfect wave in existence lays at the tip of Point Argüelles and that the biggest reef break on the planet, “Perko’s” sits between Point Argüelles and Point conception. A Wrack only imagines.   Perko’s breaks larger then tarantula point.  Wracks never has surfed them and probably never will  The thought of surfing Little Drakes wakes up Wracks in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat, awe and hunger. The Riddler got into the ranch and surfs Drakes.  The Riddler has disappeared and his legacy lives on as a quandary and story tossed around an opium pipe late at night, in a cabana, in the trench at Pang Oh.  The Ridler has gone, Hamilton has gone, and only Butch Van Artsdale lives on. Wracks sits up, late at night, with a laptop, and transcribes his thoughts to a testament meant to inspire and also warn the next generation of intrepid wave riders in search of a thrill and self-actualization.  The weather seems good up North.  Water flows, birds sing, and life abounds in contrast to the vast colonized desert to the south.  Another day passes, the children become adults, the world turns, online gaming abounds, and the imagination of the one brims full of tales, adventure, speculation and more.