It is a typical Friday evening.  My roommate Brian and I jumped on our beach cruisers and rode the six blocks to a local art gallery to check out the newly hung art.  After making a couple laps of the gallery, chatting with some neighbors and eating a few complimentary cookies, we got back on the bikes and headed to the local bar for a pint. 

(Now, I mentioned typical, and the events just narrated are very typical.  However, I did not mention that it is November.  And that the mercury had reached 87 degrees Fahrenheit this day.  Southern California, northern San Diego County to be more exact, is amidst and all-too-typical Santa Ana weather pattern.  For you weather nerds like me: when high pressure builds over Southern Oregon and Northern California, the clockwise wind rotation created by the pressure gradient blows the warm, dry Nevada and Arizona dessert air right down to the ocean in Southern California.  This weather pattern is typical from October thru February.) 

After our bottle and movie were expired, a plan began to form.  Brian made a few phone calls and just like that we were out in the night.  It was just after midnight and I was running down a full-moon-lit street with man in a wet suit.  It is a short jaunt to the stairs where we met two more men in wet suits, surf boards under arm.  One hundred and sixty plus stairs later, we were on the sand.  The men were giddy with excitement and ran rambunctiously in to the white capped black surf.  With in seconds of entering the water, I could no longer see them.  I found a spot on the cliff above the waves and sat in the warmth of the November night and watch for shooting stars.  Every few minutes a black shape would appear in the surf, run up the beach and up the stairs.  I watched 11 surfers come out of the water that night.  It was almost 1 am.

Nothing like winter in Southern California.