Huntington Beach - Day 2

---

After waking up early, we ate breakfast at a pretty decent Vietnamese restaurant called What the Pho - probably the most clever name for a Vietnamese restaurant ever. I hadn’t had Vietnamese in a long time, and this place was a step up from Saigon Café, so I was pretty stoked. After eating, we walked down the big pier in Huntington Beach where the best waves in the area were. From the pier, we could see loads of surfers, and to the left of the pier, they were building some huge stands for the upcoming U.S. Open of Surfing, which was taking place a week after. There were also building a huge half-pipe also; it would have been pretty sick to be able to stay and watch the U.S. Open, but fuck it, we’ll be in Australia bitches.

SURFING (KIND OF)
After watching the surfers for a bit from the pier, we decided to be brave and try to surf. We got back to the apartment, and got a quick crash course in how to surf. We walked back to the area near the pier, where me and Danny rented a couple of surfboards and made our way to the beach. I was pretty stoked, but as I was soon to find out, surfing ain’t easy, bra. Keith had explained to us the basics of recognizing a breaking wave and jumping up on the board and keeping balance…he never said anything about actually swimming out far enough to get to a wave. As soon as I got maybe 20 feet from the shore, the waves started getting really big, and would totally thrash me and my board all about; when that happens, it gets pretty chaotic and hectic, with you getting hit by multiple waves, and struggling for air and to not go end over end in the water. Going end over end after getting hit by a wave was the worst part, because your eyes can barely stay open with all of the spray and chaos everywhere, so you get hit by the next wave and TOTALLY lose your composure. I would end up on my ass on the beach, bruised from getting hit repeatedly by the surfboard. Fuck that though, I wasn’t about to pussy out in front of my girl, so I kept trying. And kept ending up on my ass on the beach. Looking over, Danny wasn’t having much better luck. He finally said fuck swimming out on the board, and just let his board hang behind him while he attempted to swim out. That seemed way too exhausting, so I pussied out and went back to the sand. It wasn’t my finest moment, but at least I have a feel for what it’s like, and after getting lessons in Australia, I’ll be surfing like a mother fucker.

THE SUNSET
After our failed attempts at surfing, we chilled on the beach for a while, and the sun finally came out after a couple days of overcast. Keith, Danny, and Selena decided to walk back to the apartment to rest up, and me and Jacky stayed on the beach and laid on the sand for a long, long time. It was a beautiful, perfect, and relaxing moment, just laying on the sand with my girl in my arms on Huntington Beach, watching the California sunset and listening to the soothing waves. If you think that was a cheesy statement, then you can go fuck yourself, because you didn’t get to experience it. It was absolutely perfect. The only thing that could have possibly made it better would be if we had a never-ending box of Chicken Express.

DAVE & BUSTER’S…SUCKS
That night, Keith was too tired to go out, so the rest of us decided to go to Dave & Buster’s in Irvine, because none of us had ever been there before. I was actually pretty stoked, I had heard pretty good things about Dave & Buster’s before. We drive out there, about a 20 minute drive, and they weren’t serving any food, and it was last call for alcohol. It was 11:30 for christsakes! Dave & Busters lost some credibility in my book. We made the most we could with our time though; I kicked Danny’s ass in some basketball, and he won the jackpot on one of those ticket games, so he won like 800 tickets. We went to the little store you go to redeem tickets for prizes, and everything was expensive as shit there. I bought Jacky a Dave and Buster’s shot glass with what I won, and Danny bought this little remote controlled car deal, which we didn’t even end up playing with, and actually left it at Keith’s. We hit up Jack in the Box on the way home, feasted on it, and went to bed pretty early.

---