Life altering…
Perhaps there is a certain set of experiences common to all regardless of time and place. The first time you really stand up on a board, the first time you realize you are competent, personal achievement milestones, internal/mental crossings…these are scenes from my madness…
After months of struggling with a 6’4" cutdown longboard, a family vacation to Hawaii in 1970, my mother’s first time back since the 1930’s. Outer islands first, where there was still plenty of Old Hawaii. I sometimes wonder at night what Lahaina is like now, compared to then…haven’t been back…maybe the last time I “saw” the place was in “Waves of Change” eh? Last stop was Waikiki, Oahu…visited the houses my mother’s family lived in in the country, saw Waihiwa School where she went…saw the North Shore flat in summer but you could feel the heartbeat anyway. Rental longboard in town on the last evening but it was just less than catchable. But the next morning on a different tide in that most gentle environment I stood well and good and just those few waves somehow gave the feel and knowledge or maybe mana and I could stand on other boards when I got home. I’d dreamt about the place before and dream of it still.
Spring 1972, April if I recall…I cut high school to go surfing. I couldn’t get anybody else to go. I think the other guys I surfed with regularly had spring football practice so their attendance was heavily scrutinized. I went by myself only to find the point in Ventura to be swept by an early south swell. 6’? 8’? A couple of feet overhead…Biggest I’d ever seen with an eye on going out. I had a 7’2" Silverstrand Surfboard, a beautiful blue color, domed deck and hard edged down rails, absolutely flat bottom and big wide diamond tail. No leash…I wouldn’t even own one for another 2 years. There were nice lulls so I got outside on the second try. Very few people out, scattered up the series of peaks. Got some rides, and then got a really big one, did a couple of very tenative cutbacks and kept going. The wave kind of backed off, probably over the pipe, and I leaned back and started one of those really nice spray-fanning cutbacks diamond tails could do, and the two guys paddling out both hooted for me. I rocketed on down the line and eventually got out down past the Holiday Inn. It was a long walk back to the old dirt lot where my car was, the lot getting crowded as word of the swell spread. I’d been on it early, ridden my share…apparently well enough. You don’t earn wings surfing, but I suspect everyone has an experience that results in either knowing you belong or knowing you never would.
Fast forward…and I mean literally fast forward…almost 25 years. Surfing has brought life altering experiences too numerous to mention. Life has brought a whole hairy buncha those too…not always for the better. Knowing the clock is running I get a board about a foot shorter than what I’d been riding, ride it and other things enough to get into great surfing shape for a working stiff, hone the body and craft…July comes around…another south swell…2’-4’…nothing special but lazy and lined up. I pick a place that was showing and go out. I’d spent years riding this place on a longer board (8’7")…knew it like the living room of my house…lots of people but there were two breaks and nothing short of a kayak would connect and only a couple of people seemed to be getting rides so I ought to be able to catch a few. I paddle out, see that the outside peak is full of longboarders making the inside peak the spot…lots of beginners or new visitors on really shortboards going nowhere…I find out one guy outside is on a board that must be 11’ long, and he started making the connection…I sit outside the inner peak but this guy gets every set wave…then hustles back out…the agression just dripping off him like some cheesy Gatorade ad…this guy is ripping off everything he has a chance to paddle for…finally he’s inside me having just finished off yet another ride and I get a chance at a wave…I turn and start to paddle, and carefully spread out before me, carefully spaced for safety across the whole first section of this wave, are 4 college-age girls on longboards…all tanned legs and bikinis…really quite nice…you didn’t see that in 1972…and I realize as the wave lifts me that I have absolutely no place to go…the thruster I’m on is crap in whitewater or going straight, and I’m going to hit one of the girls if I go to either side. As I sit on the board to pull out, the guy on the 11 footer turns and takes the wave, yelling at the last girl in the line.
I paddled in. It was a beautiful day, and there were good waves to be had, but not there in the middle of the lunatic asylum. I had no idea that soon there would be hordes of kayaks, surf schools, longboards everywhere…Blue Crush still years away…at that time I knew of other secret thrills and places to pursue…other equipment that usually didn’t mean standing on the wave-riding equipment but could certainly mean getting absolutely pitted on a crappy 2’ closeout day if one weren’t a slave to fashion and conventional thinking. It was some kind of mental X-Men Cerebro machine moment…the mind had to expand and contract where necessary…after that day my mind was the key surfing machine in my quiver…