I mean sometimes they are.

Okay, so MOST of the time they are. All I'm saying is even if you plan, and think about it, you're still at the mercy of mother nature and human error. 

This past winter break I did what I do every winter break: load my car full of objects that I might need "just in case", noisy young adults that I call friends, surfboards, smelly wetsuits, and the most unhealthiest of snacks.

This trip always consists of us surfing up the coast to Santa Cruz, arguing where we should surf and sleep, and seeing our friend and crashing on his couch in UC Davis and drinking far too much alcohol.

This year we called an audible.

I was joined by friend Tanner and we decided that instead of surfing up the coast, we would instead drive straight to Davis and surf the way back in hopes of they're actually being waves. We left at four am in hopes of beating LA traffic and making a pit stop in Santa Monica a quick photo opportunity by the pier. 

We groggily made it.

After a much needed caffeine boost from Starbucks, we tackled the worst leg of our trip, the 7 hour journey from LA to Davis. If you like flat farmland as far as the eye can see BOY IS THIS THE DRIVE FOR YOU. This part of the drive was mainly spent keeping a lookout for cops and counting how many billboards for Anderson's Pea Soup we could spot. The answer was too many (Seriously, like a ridiculous amount for PEA SOUP of all things).

Its time. After purchasing a sleeping bag, because its one of many things I didn't pack for this trip, we set foot in downtown Davis. Its about 30 degrees cooler than I'm used to and according to our friends who live there, the solution to get warm is to "ingest copious amounts of alcohol".

So that's exactly what we did.

After we recovered enough from our hangovers to function like proper human beings, we already found ourselves having to start our next leg of our journey: The Adventure.

We start by going from Davis to San Fran or "San Francisco" as the locals call it. We did our best tourist impressions, camera and all.

And after about 20 minutes of being a tourist, we realized how hungry we were and left SF to find surf and food. What better place to find waves than Santa Cruz, right??

Wrong.

We PLANNED on surfing Santa Cruz the afternoon we arrived and the morning before we departed. Neither of those happened to lack of waves and motivation to float in freezing shark territory, basically saying EAT ME. 

Then the icing on the cake. This is the part of the journey where my body decided "Hey know what would make this trip great? If your got niiiiiiiiice and sick" so that was pretty neat.  This lead to a not so pleasant trip down the 1 through Big Sur.

After finding the 1 closed about 30 minutes north of where we planned on staying in Morro Bay, we rolled our eyes, drank some redbull, and doubled back and around Big Sur until we arrived at Pismo Beach exhausted. 

Our dreams turned into nightmares as when we woke the next morning to again, find a severe lack of waves. We did, however have a splendid continental breakfast (THEY HAD WAFFLES YUS) and found ourselves back amongst an ever flowing river of cars.

After staring at Surfline on my phone for a good 30 minutes, my eyes glanced across one of the only fun looking surf spots to surf; C Street, Ventura. It was 9-11ft+ fair, which, for Tanner and myself, was right on the cusp for us going "ehhhh maybe not". However, we talked and decided that we would rather risk death than go home with our tail between our legs from our "Surf Trip" not haved surfed. 

After a solid session and finally giving our surfboards some much needed water time, we ventured further south in hopes of missing any dreaded LA traffic. We might have driven on the reckless side of the speed limit but hey, we're alive so its totally fine. 

We arrived at the southern part of LA in our last stop of our trip, good ol' Huntington Beach, Surf City USA. Oooohhhhhhhhh how ironic that name was. 

I hands down one had of my worst surf sessions ever. There was a terrible rip current that kept going "hey bud you should crash into the pier, its super awesome to get your feet cut on barnacles". It was choppy as hell and I had to paddle in and walk about 150 yards north, only to be taken riiiiiiiiight back to the pier. 

I know what your thinking. "Robin, if it was that bad, why did you bother even paddling out at Huntington then? Robin, why would be planning another road trip if you had such a bad experience this time? Robin, how are you still single with those dashing looks and boyish charm?"

WELL

I paddled out because even if its terrible conditions, surfing to me is 9/10 times better than any alternative.

I do these trips simply because I believe any experience is an experience worth having, good or bad. Its a memory to be shared or kept, or a lesson to be learned from. Either way, if you can do something like this, regardless, you should.

And I'm single simply because I can't pick one out of the endless suitors wishing for a slice of the Robin Pie.

(Just kidding, I'm very lonely, please help)