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.