Storm front in Long Beach

March 20, 2011

My Sunday started out with a little tennis in the morning, then I drove over to my friend Steve's house to pickup a monitor adaptor. On the way to the peninsula it was obvious that it was raining and the wind was blowing like crazy... so I had to take some pictures

When I took these two shots I was hiding behind the Lifeguard building near the marina entrance. The wind and rain was coming down like crazy from the South-East.

Can you believe it, waves were breaking over the breakwater. Man the waves were really powerful today.

After I picked up the adaptor at Steve's and dropped off some of Ruth's fresh sugar coated blueberry muffins as a "Thank You", I drove back to the Claremont ramp and saw the force of the wind up close. Michael D sent me this wind graph of Belmont. Check out 2-4 PM. I looked at the time stamp on my pictures and they started at 2 o'clock until about 3. Michael said he went to San Juan Capistrano and there were 8 kiters on 9's or smaller. As you can see the peak was at about 7 and that's when Naji and I were chatting about the rain. It was coming in our bedroom window and I had to get to work...... mopping up the water and drying the floor.
As I drove up to the beach there was a woman trying to ride her tri-cycle with a child on the back. This did not look like much fun to me.
Over in the LaVerne parking a kiter was just wrapping up his gear. He said he had been out for over two hours and was tired. (Let me know if you know who this is so I can add his name)
I decided to drive out onto the Claremont ramp and caught this kite behind a giant sand pile. It may have been Bongo...I don't know. I was able to drive to the end of the ramp with Bart Miller to get an up-close and personal view of one lone kiter. It was David Lector. I didn't recognize the kite but I saw his truck on Ocean
At this point David was the only kiter on the water. He was cutting and jumping like it was a normal day.... NO PROBLEM....
Mean while those on the beach were wrapping up their gear....
When I looked back David's kite was in the water. I found out later he was using Susi's 5.0 and that the group had come up from Sunset because the waves were MONSTER down there. Belmont was their next choice. With Susi were Bongo, Jonathan, Morris and Peter.

I think in this shot David is on the left and Susi is on the right. I'm not sure who is holding the kite. What was great is he had a back-up team just in case.
I'm pretty sure David is on the left, then Susi and Bongo's to the right of the LG tower. Everyone is done for the day. Time for a warm glass of wine.
It's the end of the day and I came home to a leaky window. I spent the next little whild mopping up the floor and drying off the carpet. All in all it was a great day. BTW Steve the computer works great... THANKS!!!!