When u look @ the surf...wat u looking for?

[Skipper]

Anyone with open wounds.

[Nick Carroll]

Something to give me hope.

[Yuke Hunt]

A junction between land and sea.

[alakaboo]

A fat twitchy looking bloke on a corktop

[crabmeat thompson]

I think I just got dumber

[BA]

^ is that possible

im also looking for birds...and gutters and rips, eddies and backwashers, the reef and lagoon .

for both fishing and easy way into the surf and places to avoid when trying get out.

im looking at the crowd...or lack off

im wondering why the surf forecast is incorrect.

and the shorey....shorebreaks fascinate me

the moment I see the surf my mind is overtaken with these thoughts

What are you on? Or off?

That's the most lucid thing I think you have written.

[Drailed]

The ratio of best/least crowded peak.

[foamy]

The ratio of best/least crowded peak.

Yep, pretty much. Mostly you are looking at breaks you know well. So you know the dynamics.
An unfamiliar break, you look at the other surfers, entry/exit points, watching their rides, seeing the currents. I'm often looking for the presence of an unridden wall. And as Nick says, something that gives you hope.
An empty beach, I look for the presence of a wall, where the banks are, the channels, the currents. This is so obvious to us.
I go on beach holidays at relatively deserted open long beaches with some very intelligent, beach loving, non board rider friends. I"m surprised sometimes how they often they can't see the obvious. Like mate, don't go in there, that is walking into a big hole where the water is whirlpooling. There is a nice bank over there with an easy walk out. Oh really!
I was fishing a couple of years ago into a nice gutter full of whiting, dart (swallow tail) and bream. The gutter was closed at one end. It was the afternoon so there was a big onshore and casting into it was a bit hopeless. I said to the guys, come on, we will walk around the shallow water at the closed end of the gutter, stand on the sand bank 35 meters offshore, and cast back into the gutter. It worked brilliantly, waves coming thru, but mostly at no worse than at knee level. You'd catch a fish, swim it around to the beach by walking around the closed end of the gutter, throw the fish in the esky's icey slurry, then bait up and walk around back to the bank on the other side of the gutter.
The chaps said, this is great, they remarked that they couldn't see that option until I pointed it out. Bleeding obvious, of course, water colour and wave action. It is no wonder people get in strife.
But, in moments like that, I realise that in most other things, that aren't beach reading, I probably don't realise just how blind and ignorant I am.

[Biggun]

pretty much checking for a nice bit of bitou bush where i can have a sly billie

[steve shearer]

hahahaha, nice edit Ron.

[foamy]

No Ron, I don't recommend what existentialism tells us about beach going. In 'The Outsider' by Albert Camus, the beach scene is where Meursault shoots a man dead, then after a pause, shoots the corpse four more times.
I don't recommend this.

[bobjs]

That moment when my mind makes the 'yes' decision to go out, sometimes after long procrastination. Its like a switch is turned and then i can't get out quick enough.

[Beanpole]

The lifesavers in case I get into trouble by swimming in one of the dangerous rips. By the way why are all the dangerous rip signs only in English at Bondi?

On Existentialism: Camus writes some great stuff about the beach in his short story Summer.

[Trev]

Waves.

[makemake]

>>But, in moments like that, I realise that in most other things, that aren't beach reading, I probably don't realise just how blind and ignorant I am.

Yea, you could write a book on "Beach reading"
In fact Rob Brander has:
http://www.scienceofthesurf.com/book.html