Happy New Year MMVI (Watch out!)

by chris cunningham

[NEW YEARS 2006 GALLERY – 1280 x 1024]

Happy New Year, you’re about to get taken out by a wave. Ha ha ha. That’s not what you want to see when you’re looking through your viewfinder. I thought it would be nice to get a shot of the waves crashing along the rocks near Fort Point. Until a huge set came in and bitch slapped me all over the place. I’m 1 sec. away from getting soaked head to toe. Camera and all. Oh yeah everyone else thought it was funny, but it took me a minute to regain my composure before I could find the humor in it. At least I now know my camera can take the full force of a wave and brush it off like a champ!

Went on a little road trip over the New Years and stopped in Morro Bay and Half Moon Bay. Then made my way up to San Francisco and took in some sights before heading over to Keith and Shelli’s for their annual New Years DAY party they’ve dubbed “Reclination”. The storm was out of control this weekend. The surf was huge so I stopped in Half Moon Bay to check out Mavericks surf spot and the storm was going off so it was ugly out there. No surfers though, too nasty. After I got into San Francisco there was a ton of flooding and one poor bastard’s truck was killed by a tree. Headed up to Marin and more flooding until I got to Keith and Shelli’s where I parked myself for the night. The party went on for hours anyway so it was good to just crash there. Except for the fact that the drive home the next day would turn into a nightmare. I got up on Monday and headed out at noon to have lunch in San Mateo. Then decided to take the 152 by Casa de Fruta and take the 5 home. Lucky me, traffic was out of control. Gridlocked or really slow most of the way and pouring rain out. I thought that was bad until just before the Paso Robles exit they shut the freeway down all the way to the Grapevine. That’s like three hours away! I finally heard on the radio from L.A. that the winds were so high that trucks where laying on their sides and one had even hit a power pole and that was laying in the road somewhere. So they herded everyone off the freeway and I had to cut across to the 99 which was an hour away. Anyway, got home at 11pm after leaving Keith and Shelli’s at 12:30pm. Ugh. So that sucked, but in two weeks when we go on the Sony ski trip it’s going to be epic because of the storm. In the past 30 hours alone Mammoth Mountain has gotten 8 feet of snow. That is what you call duuuuumping.