"Be responsible and go home."

Humans, while often low, snide and selfish, can sometimes rise to the greatest heights of honor, dignity, selflessness. History has shown us we are at our best with backs to the wall, fighting impossible odds in some inspired last stand.

There are many famous in history, from the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC to the Siege of Mecca in 692 but my favorite is 1915’s Attack of the Dead Men.

In short, the Germans, whilst fighting The Great War, were seeking to overtake Osowiec Fortress, in northeast Poland, held by a few battalions of Russians. They waited until 4 a.m. on that early morning of August 6th, for favorable wind conditions, then bombarded the fortress with a mixture of chlorine and bromine gasses. Following the poisoning and waste-laying, over 7000 German troops advanced, expecting little resistance.

The Russians did not have gas masks and were greatly destroyed but one bold sub-lieutenant, Vladimir Kotlinsky, the highest ranking survivor, railed the remaining few, who wrapped urine-soaked rags around their faces, and charged the enemy.

The Germans, it is said, became panicked by the appearance of the Russians, who had turned black and yellow from the gas and were coughing up bits of their own lungs as the hydrochloric acid began disolving their flesh, and retreated so fast that they became entangled in their own concertina wire.

The five remaining Russian guns finished the Germans off.

Kotlinsky died that evening and the Germans took the fort two-weeks later but for one glorious moment, the ragtag were royalty.

Very similar, I believe, to the the plucky but under-gunned grumpy local viciously attacked on all sides by energized VALs who have picked up surfing during quarantine because it is “a great way to remain socially distanced, outdoors, while exercising.”

This categorization of “surfing” as “exercise” the root of many evils for we know that, while sometimes the arms can become a little sore, surfing is NOT exercise but rather a grand waste of time.

Well, the brave Western Australia city Perth appears to be making a last stand. The region is under another Covid lockdown though residents are allowed outdoors for one hour of exercise a day.

Except local Tania Edwards was out walking but became confused after seeing police tell surfers the sport is not classified as exercise.

She shared a video of the encounter to social media which shows police telling beachgoers “surfing is not deemed exercise, be responsible and go home.”

“We saw this police boat coming along shouting with his bull horn,” she told 6PR’s Liam Bartlett.

“I think the government is doing a great job, but I just thought that was a bit strange.”

Not strange.

Brave like the Russians.

Surfing is NOT exercise but rather a fantastic way to sit and stew.

We are all Perth.

Attack!

First Great Whites, now this.

Surfers have long been the focus of many, many terrifying natural phenomena from man-eating sharks to scary riptides to reef bashes, drownings, angry seals, clueless VALs, the World Surf League CEO Erik “ELo” Logan.

Yikes.

Lyme-carrying ticks, though, provided no worry.

Those nasty critters were for our woodland hiking friends to deal with and nasty is an understatement.

Lyme disease is one of the very worst plagues, very difficult to diagnose and causing fevers, rashes, aching joints, sleeplessness, semi-lucid hell.

Well, according to a new scientific study just released, there are just as many lyme-carrying ticks around Northern California beaches as there are in its woods.

Lead author Daniel Salkeld, a research scientist at Colorado State University, told NBC News, “We went into new habitats and found them in numbers we didn’t expect. A few years ago I would have said the ticks there wouldn’t have been infected because there aren’t any grey squirrels, which are the source for Lyme in California. I think they’ve been under our noses all along. We just haven’t thought to look very closely.”

Grey squirrels are, of course, thought to carry the ticks but a working theory suggests that northern California’s rabbits are transporting the li’l bastards around.

“This is a great study,” said Laura Goodman, an assistant research professor at the Baker Institute for Animal Health at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. “There is a bias in this country where people think they are only at risk when they go into the woods. But really, prevention and vigilance should be practiced everywhere outdoors, and we should be vigilant year-round.”

Great study my ass.

Lyme disease.

Ugh.

La BOMBA!

The world’s largest surf forecasting website Surfline spent much of last week hyping, re-hyping, a south swell due to hit California that was going to be so wild, so wooly, that only one name would do.

LA BOMBA.

The bomb.

La Bomba would travel north from Chile to mainland Mexico, where it had properly lit Puerto Enscondido’s famed Mariachi Pipeline, and lay waste to every south facing beach from San Diego all the way to Crescent City.

La Bomba would be great, it would be grand, it would be unlike anything else ever, a full hand jam off the top etc.

I was excited to surf La Bomba and to see others surf La Bomba too but then a fine sailing wind reared its head and seeing as yo no soy capitán but certainly soy marinero, set out to sea with my very best friends leaving cell phone service behind.

We gusted back into range early last evening, colorful spinnaker fluttering, and the first thing I did was to check with other friends, to see if they were still alive after experiencing La Bomba or if they had been exploded.

“It was ok…” was the universal reply.

Was La Bomba a dud in California?

Had those other friends been surfing the wrong spots at the wrong times?

Or, has Surfline become unwittingly trapped behind the World Surf League’s patented Wall of Positive Noise™, stuck issuing Newcastle-esque projections to non-professional surfers too? The Huntington Beach-based company has, for the past few years, been the World Surf Line’s exclusive forecasting partner and the event forecasts have become increasingly surreal. I can’t imagine that sort of “cup-not-only-half-full-but-overflowing” attitude couldn’t help but infect day to day operations.

Mightn’t one of the programers, someone who escapes the daily Joe Turpel morning affirmation readings and ELo smile exercises, have slipped an SOS to the surf world in the form of La Bomba?

Para bailar la bomba, para bailar la bomba se necesita una poca de gracia. Una poca de gracia pa’ mi pa’ ti y arriba y arriba. Ah y arriba y arriba por ti seré, por ti seré, por ti seré?

Or maybe those other friends were surfing the wrong spots and the wrong times.

What was your experience with La Bomba?

Has it not really hit yet?

Sailing, man.