The War Pony Chronicles: St. Valentine's Edition

What a weekend for surf enthusiasts in Northern California.
The sun stopped pouting and came out of its room, waves of varying size and life-ending potential were served up like scripted folksiness in a Sarah Palin speech, and sweet sweet love was in the air.
Managed to score some waves, spend some time in the shaping bay, lunch on some fish tacos, take the girls to the park, fire up the grill and crack a local zinfandel with m'lady--and that was just yesterday. Feels like spring!
The local beachie, where waves are like a box of chocolates.
The surest sign that spring has arrived, however (besides asthma), is the first time the fan cranks up in the shop. Although scientists earlier today created the hottest temperature ever (4 trillion degrees celsius), my shop's come pretty close. Nowhere near that on Sunday, but it's always comforting to hear the soft whir of the fan over my industrial-strength earphones...
Anyway, forged from the heat of spring, the bittersweetness of dark chocolate valentines, and the birthdays of presidents 1 and 16 was local she-ripper Caroline's 6-something War Pony.
You can't spell SHRED without SHE.
The War Pony is a souped-up fish for our steeper northern breachbreaks. Curvier, slimmer, cedar stringier than a traditional San Diego style fish.
But I've not forgotten about you Northeasterners, or Clevelandites, or Michiganders, as you prepare for another round of snowy winter weirdness, and will share a moment from my weekend that was not entirely blissful: my three-year-old little lady enjoys running ahead of me on our beach walks, which can be inconvenient, but isn't discouraged due to its pride-inducing moxie. Yesterday, as I basked in a euphoric post-surf glow on one of our rare windless afternoons at the coast, I watched her spring, gazelle-like, toward an amorphous, dark relief in the sand. As I got closer, I recognized the form as bloated, decomposing seal, upon which she was suddenly seated. Closer still, and I was able to identify her right hand--perfect in its pink, cherubine innocence--probing deep into the swampy mammal's sagging eye socket.
My firstborn, pride of my loins, was overjoyed. "Daddy!" she cried, "it feels like wet Cheerios!"
And then, as if tying a red sating bow atop a box of candies for St. Valentine himself, removed her hand, held it briefly to her glowing face, and asked me, smile as pure as light, "wanna smell?"