This has nothing at all to do with the season, but I was retrieving these photos from my phone and thought I'd post a couple of them. Last weekend I was visiting in the Silicon Valley area and we went to Santa Cruz one day. It's the sort of place that you immediately wish you could move to. The first picture is looking southward toward the high rocky point which is seen from much closer in the second picture. On the other side of that point there were real surfers, surfing. People surf in the Gulf of Mexico here but it's pretty mild, almost funny, stuff, unless there's a hurricane coming. These were way out from shore--somewhere between a quarter and a half mile, I'd guess. And the waves were several feet taller than they were. It looks scary, but it also looks like a whole lot of fun. 

That little black smudge on the point is a person, which gives you an idea of how high the rocks are. Sometimes the waves would send spray almost to the top.