You have to live there.  On PCH and moonrise Avenue, Next to Ted’s restaurant, God built a long reef of cobblestones that deposited from Sea Castle Mountain and the lair of Estat.  Too bad the beach sits in the shadow of Catalina Island and Clemente Island to the south. Farm Beige fishes the reef at moonrise and usually wins the halibut derby every year.   Seaweed covers the reef and forms a beautiful brownish green canopy offshore in the water in front of the island.  The Towers hangs off the cliff above moonrise.  Huge pylons set into the cliff enable a huge hotel like structure to perch precariously over the PCH.  The blue sky hover over the pebble strewn beach with coarse white sand and buttressed point, where a parking lot saves paradise and Teds restaurant smells like steak and French fries.  The white sharks that hover off shore love the garbage Ted’s pumps into the ocean and the huge beasts can be felt near and closer when a surfer cares to surf alone.  The fear, the sickening feeling of seizure, strikes lonely surfers because Moonrise heralds as an overflow surf spot for beginners, refuse and stooges.  The only way to get the break with tremendous form is to live there and call in sick to work when it happens.  Once a year or two or three, moonrise point breaks better then Lanikea on Oahu, Hawaii and fifteen second tube rides become the norm rather than the exception.  The secret lies in the shallow reef that only functions when the swell impinges directly from the northwest, bypassing Catalina and focusing on moonrise.  When a fifteen foot west swell enters Monica Bay , only surfrider beach breaks better and half the world is there and not at moonrise.

Lanikea on the North shore of Oahu lives a short drive up from Haleiwa, down from Eukai and next to Chuns.  When Lanikea works, a long wall a quarter mile long breaks down the beach at light speed.  Moonrise reef breaks rounder but rarely, and appears as an ephemeral spirit enlivening the life of a lonely nomadic wave rider who lives up the canyon a mile away close to the darkness those envelopes Tranquil Hills. When moonrise reef breaks big, a rider enters the wave at the point in front of the restaurant.  The wave then slows down for a second and then lines up on the reef like a long wall and breaks as a vortex for fifteen seconds all the way to the beach.  Swells like this hit moonrise for one day only and then drop off tremendously. The next day the surf is meager.  The west swell must peak at ten or more feet for the reef to work properly.  People live near moonrise or they don’t.  Frequently the only other thing swimming at moonrise are great white sharks attracted by the garbage and runoff from Sea Castle.  They rarely come up but someone can feel them close.  

Wracks had the pleasure of sharing big waves with that person who sang out of Seattle and died up there.  He was a student at University of Seattle in the health sciences.  He and utopia would nab the big sets with scarcely anyone else to contend with except the Brazilian grappling expert who retired after a successful MMA career.  Wracks never bothered with the Brazilian even though he would knock shoot his board at Wracks and threaten a beatdown.  The waves when they happened were just too good to think about doing anything else.  Wracks, utopia, and the Brazilian together with some white tips were the only ones out at moonrise and would watch the steady flow of traffic going north to rich man’s land while waiting for big sets. Most of the time Moonrise looks like a placid lake with ripples lapping up on shore in view the windows at the restaurant. In his youth, wracks would walk down the canyon, past the swami realization center and with his homemade surfboard paddle out at moonrise. Wracks would the walk up Moonrise Avenue, up the canyon and back to his home and family and friends and the darkness soon to envelope tranquil hills and mark the countryside for ever more.

In the free flow of consciousness existing in the mind of Wracks these memories flood consciousness and overflow into a keyboard hooked up USB to a cheap laptop. Late at night wracks wishes to share the beauty of the world, the accomplishment of athletic achievement and the free spirit of youth that reside in an older body now.  The girls, the waves, the dark force, they have all come and gone but what remains is moonrise, surf rider and Zero in the middle of the heart of terror set in opulent America. Wracks was there but not there anymore.