I am a Kook

A Kook is, but is not only, a person who is bad at surfing.

There are a million ways and reasons to be bad at surfing, but one of the kookiest, is to have no clue as to what you are doing wrong.

Perhaps the most kooky thing, is to make no effort to learn what one is doing wrong, yet continue surfing.

I am a kook.

I don’t want to be one, but there is so much I don’t know, that it will take a lifetime for me to get half a clue. That is my best-case scenario; one half clue.

I’m putting in an honest effort but there are obstacles.

For instance:

1. I’m not a real athlete, I’m more of a beast. In other words I’m more made for smashing and lifting than I am for balancing or doing anything at a high speed. Or a medium speed. Or anything involving the word speed.

             Except eating.

2. I need to lose 50 pounds. I require a lot of buoyancy to counteract my displacement to equal gravitational force. In other words, It takes a lot to make me float. Maximum displacement does not improve surfing. But more than that, surfing requires a lot of paddling and other things that resemble physical activity and at least 50 pounds of me are in no way helping. Those 50 pounds are the guy who lives on the couch, eats from your fridge, but doesn’t pay bills.

3. I live in Rancho Kookamonga. Kook is in the name of the place. No, it is not really spelled that way, and no, the word itself isn’t REALLY the problem, but the geography is. I am at least an hour away from the beach with no traffic. Everywhere in California has traffic, and gas is expensive.

4. Money. It would be nice if I had more money, or if things related to me surfing didn’t cost as much money. I’d be happy with either solution, but as it stands gas, road tolls, wetsuits, surfboards, and TIME are prohibitively expensive. I have found ways to scrounge out some time (for now), tolls come in small bite sized chunks, but that board. I currently ride on the homemade generosity of an older board that has been beat up almost as much as me, it weighs as much as me, and while it currently helps get my oversized self upright on a wave, it pretty much only allows that. And I’m not sure how much longer it can handle this one job. Surfboards, the ones big enough for me, are expensive.

5. I’m getting old. Not just older, but I am solidly closer to old than young. I make friends with retired people. There are things my body could once do, that it no longer can, and when I try it hurts. Things always hurt. It doesn’t matter what I do, the pain just sort of shifts around depending on the activity.

6. Excuses. The idea that the board, or my geography, or the tides, are why I’m not a good surfer, are excuses that don’t really hold water (though unfortunately the board does indeed take on water). I should just eat less. I should find ways to earn, or save, more money. Eating less might help that. I think if I ate less I could be more of an athlete. I have known these aforementioned things long enough to have done something about them yet this list remains up to date.

But mostly I just want a new board. A magical one. One that would make me better.

And that is why I am a kook.

Because of 1 through 6, plus this last bit…

I intend to persist.

I can’t help it. I’m stuck. I’m snakebit. I’m stoked. Addicted. Hooked. I’m no good at it and it is still fun. It is fun every time. It is hard every time and once I think I have improved, something proves me wrong.

Every time.

And I have fun.

So I will be there this Saturday morning as the sun comes up. I will be trying to get better but battleships are hard to turn even when they have an able Captain.

And I will go down with this ship.

Icarus is Thwarted Before He Even Gets off the Ground

I have an epic tale to tell, which I won’t get to now, but I must report a part.

The gigantic surfboard was crafted long ago in a Hawaiian garage, meant to carry a large man through the foamy tides of heaven. As the craftsman finished his work he looked up and saw that the night’s crescent had set, giving way to morning, and feeling a wave of inspiration grabbed a pen and gave the board its name- “Half Moon Gone”.

Despite being loved, Half Moon Gone had been retired to a Californian garage where it sat unsalted, replaced by other professionally crafted boards called “custom”.

One day Zeus with his custom craft, observed the ambition of an overweight Icarus struggling to fly on a board Zeus declared much too small for one with such oversized ideas. Deity had compassion on this mortal as he reached into the garage of his heart and dusted off Half Moon Gone, and he gave it me.

With this new board I began to fly.

The two of us, Half Moon Gone and I, looked like the love child of a turkey and condor. A most glorious wingspan centered on a total mess. A happy, soggy, salty, mess.

As this mess began growing feathers it became evident the wings needed a little upkeep. I climbed mount Google, presented an offering in the temple YouTube, then religiously, devoutly, applied sealant, sandpaper and paint.

Half Moon Gone was on its way from Condor to Phoenix. And I was ready to climb aboard and soar to the sun.

The final step required some inter-religious multi-cultural cross pollination, which in retrospect may have been the root of the problem. I left Olympus and submitted a request to the North Pole’s Saint Nick. I asked for a specialized altar allowing me to mount Half Moon Gone atop my car and the fat man, giggling, gave me one gift on which I could carry another.

I was happy. I was ambitious. I was ready.

But over on another peak, in Rancho Kookamomga, feeling ignored, was Santa Ana.

He watched me wake before the sun rose, scoffing as I placed Half Moon Gone upon its altar.

He let me get 25 miles down I-15 before he waved his hand and ripped the entire rack off the roof of my car, sending Half Moon Gone, with the rack still attached,

up into the air,

then smashed,

down upon the highway.

It was, and I still am,

Crushed.

Ethan Surfs Oceanside

Nothing is more California than surfing.

Nothing is more surfing than Hawaii, but that’s another subject.

 

If you want to hire this dude as a model, let me know.

International Surfing Museum: Huntington Beach, CA

While surfing is 100% a Hawaiian sport, it was California that exported it around the world. Whether it was Gidget, the Beach Boys, or Frankie Avalon who grifted the idea of surf culture away from Duke Kahanamoku or someone else, they did a great job of seeding said culture in the beach towns of Southern California. So now, surfers are thought of as blonde haired bros prone to using the word “dude” in places like Huntington Beach.

Huntington has embraced the image.

If you walk into the International Surfing Museum with a 10 year old child like I did, be prepared for the friendly woman behind the counter to do her best to convince the child to abandon any hopes of adult responsibility in pursuit of great waves- and to use the coupon on the back of your ticket stub for ice cream across the street. Her pitch almost worked on me but my child was unimpressed.

The place is small yet informative, with a good mix of information and artifact. There is a sculpture of the Silver Surfer, vintage Hawaiian planks, and a number of rash guards and trophies once worn or won by Eddie Aikau. Which is pretty much all you need for a top notch museum.

But Huntington’s offering is topped off by one large claim to fame, and by large, I mean Guinness Book of World Records large.

I normally ignore oversized objects mounted on poles outside stores, or museums, as props, but the giant surfboard mounted outside this museum once caught a wave and carried 66 people to shore. This seems about right.

To invest so heavily in an activity that is purely recreational for purely promotional purposes, is so very California. And I’m okay with that.

Birdwell Beach Britches:

In 1961, back in the days of Gidget and the Endless Summer, a seamstress named Carrie Birdwell Mann started making and selling swimshorts at her Orange County home. More than 50 years later the company is still in O.C. making pretty much the same thing, and for the most part- only that one thing.

We call them boardshorts. The world knows about boardshorts thanks to Old Navy and Target, but surfers know about boardshorts largely thanks to Birdwell. Mrs. Mann invented the shorts specifically for them.

Not to take away from what Quiksilver, O’neill, or any other surf brand have accomplished, but when it comes to boardshorts, Birdwell is what all of them are trying to be.

Like any responsible adult, the folks at the factory were a little leary of me when I showed up asking questions. But once they determined that, as they put it, “wasn’t up to any weird @*!!” they were more than happy to show me around.The family sold off the business, or as the current owners say “entrusted” them in 2014. Since then, a couple things have changed, while some other significant things have not.

For instance, they started using actual patters.While this may have removed some whimsy from the whole purchasing experience, it did make predicting if the shorts were going to fit a little more reliable.

They also updated the van.And by updated I mean they painted it not fixed the engine, which is why I found it parked comfortably in the factory parking lot.

What they didn’t change were the people working the floor. They have remarkably low turnover and most of the folks sewing the shorts today, are the same folks who sewed them ten years ago.

This might be in part an explanation for what else hasn’t changed, which is that these shorts are nearly bomb proof. I think these shorts are what the authorities use to identify the victims of shark attacks since the shorts are what always survive.

*I said that not them*

It is interesting that in our modern world of fast fashion and quarterly shareholder returns, there can exist a company and brand that survives without attempting to broaden offerings in order to capture market share or lowering quality to widen the margin and spur more turns.

They didn’t do that and they are still right there.

Like I said before, I don’t surf.

But if taking steps past big box mass retail is a sign- I might be on my way.

Childhood Dreams at Old Man’s Beach: San Onofre

I had a free morning so I drove to San Onofre State Beach. The internet told me they have beach camping there, the kind where you can pitch your tent right by the sand, but I couldn’t get anyone on the the phone to answer questions about availability, so I checked it out with my free day. I did not find what I was looking for. I found something different entirely.

When I was ten I did not know much, but I did know I wanted to surf. I had just discovered complex math and the associated reality that meant I would never be an astronaut. I had always known I would not play in the NFL, so the only dream I had left, at ten, was surfing.

I grew up inland, but on the side of the Mississippi that flowed toward LA, not New York, so cool was all T&C rather than CBGB. We knew we were posers with our long bangs and neon shorts, but I wanted to move past that. After years of begging, my parents let me go stay with my aunt in California the summer before 8^th grade. It was a step closer to my dream and I was planning my path in my head. I figured I would have to start out with a boogie board, but if I got good enough I would advance to standing up. I would need a board. I was ready for the breeze and splash of salt water. What I got was dirt and cactus because Aunt Nancy lived in Palmdale. It was a lesson on the dangers of mobilizing in ignorance.My last hope was college, because I had been trained to know that I must go to college, but I didn’t know anyone who had ever been to school in California and everyone told me I could only afford in state. So I stayed home. Eventually jobs, kids, and adulthood squeezed everything childish, like the dream of surfing out of my head. I moved on. I grew up.

I gave little thought to my childhood self when I took a job an hour east of LA. I was just thinking I needed a job.

Then I made that drive to San Onofre.

There was no paved parking lot and no packs of families lugging coolers canopies and beach chairs. There was no pier and no one renting out tandem beach cruisers. There were only surfers.

“Great morning right?” a leathery grey haired man asked as I closed my car door. He was sitting on a log facing the water. Next to him sat another old man wiping down his glossy red board. “Uh… yes. Sure is.” I replied awkwardly. The two men both smiled and went back to chatting with each other. I looked out at the water and it was bustling with people bobbing up and down just past the breakers, some paddling up and over the waves, and then, out there and everywhere, people were surfing. They stood up on their boards and shuffled out to stand on the nose. They popped up, cut left, then right, then pumped the board to stay out ahead of the whitewater. I loved seeing it.

I looked around on the rocky sand wondering when Anthony Keidis and his band of hooligans were coming to tell me to go away. They weren’t there. In their place were happy people who looked me in the face and said hello. There were men and women, old and young, and they all looked happy. I knew they were surfers, and only surfers, not because they were blonde or said “stoked” but because they all had boards. I saw a wrinkled bald man covered in tattoos chatting with a woman who looked like my frumpy mother. I saw a white guy with dreadlocks playing paddle ball with a child while a boisterous group of ZZ Top beards came lugging giant boards out of the water. There was what looked like an Abercrombie model chatting with some little guy who was wearing what looked like a beret, and a striped shirt that matched his striped board. It was some sort of intergenerational utopia based on a shared vision of riding on waves standing up.​

 

​My childhood aspirations came flooding back and I did not like it. It made me loathe myself.

Here I was standing right in front of what I had always wanted and the thing I felt the strongest, was that I did not fit. It looked like everyone was welcome, this feeling wasn’t coming from them- it was coming from inside me. My mind defaulted to this excuse making checklist of practical reasons why I could not join in. Not just right then, but forever. I live more than an hour away, I do not own a board and do not have any extra money to invest in a hobby that I could reasonably only think to dabble in, and I am fat. I am a poser. I remembered that I always wanted this and I do not belong. The list came so quickly and so naturally that I disappointed myself.

I am grown and capable. I can find solutions. I can learn. I have lived a life standing just outside closed doors and have nearly a half century’s practice of picking locks, borrowing keys, or kicking the door down. If I really want this, I can have it. Knowing this made me tired. I felt lonely.

I could save up money and buy a board. I could set my pride or awkwardness aside and ask someone to teach me. I could make some arrangements and over a period of time, maybe years, I could carve out a schedule allowing me some beach time. If I want it I can do it.

So the question is always whether it is worth it. Do I want to be on that side of the door bad enough to do the work? What will it cost? What will I gain? When you pass through previously closed doors, you inevitably leave something back on the other side. Often you leave someone. What if I am not trying to leave anyone? What then?

Traffic made the trip home take 2 ½ hours. Sitting in my car in my long pants and wingtips, thinking all of the things I just typed out above, I came to the conclusion that I think too much.

I should knock it off and just surf.

Not Afraid to be Cliche: hangin’ ten on the bear flag republic

I am afraid of neither cliché nor dumpster. I may be a little bit afraid of going all Johnny Utah and trying to teach myself how to ride a cliché in Red Hot Chili Pepper infested waters, so I settle for sitting on the couch and painting what should otherwise be a sporting good.

I found it in a dumpster. I saw it as a low rent project that would allow me the tools to learn my next sporting hobby. I had dreams of riding waves and floating just out beyond the break.

Two years later I have ridden very little beyond a sofa and sadly, I float a bit too easily in the pool.

Then I got an idea.

It is still rideable. At least in theory.

Momentum Surf & Skate

 

Golfers and surfers are a lot alike.  Both are passionate about their favored activity and have little patience for those who don’t take it as seriously as themselves.  

I’m sure I have angered many a golfer who found themselves near me as I hack away at that little ball, and to make matters worse, I chuckle rather than curse, when said ball makes a 90 degree right turn mid-air.  

I could only imagine how angry a surfer would be if he and I were trying to catch the same waves.  I would be Johnny Utah in “Point Break.”  

Maybe I watch too many movies.  Either that or Hunter Ford, the owner of Momentum Surf & Skate in Wilmington, NC, is just plain cooler than the rest.  

Hunter Ford, owner of Momentum Surf & Skate.

 

As I was browsing around Momentum Surf & Skate shop in downtown Wilmington, the guy behind the counter said, “Have you seen our new sweatshirts?”  He then displayed a shirt with the state of North Carolina front and center, with the store’s logo over the spot where Wilmington would be on the map.  I told him it was a nice design, he seemed genuinely flattered. 

The shop's logo was inspired by the marks left when Hunter burned his hand on his car's lighter.

 

Turns out the guy behind the counter was Hunter Ford, the owner/operator of the shop. 

As he was showing me his custom-made hats, shirts, and boards, it became evident that he was not just passionate about surfing, but passionate about his home-state as well.  “Wilmington has the second best surfing on the East Coast.”  Hunter told me matter of factly.  “Where is the first?” I asked, taking the bait.  “The outer banks, but it all NC all the way.  It’s a shame everyone just thinks about Florida.” 

Hunter showing off his work and his home state pride.

 

Hunter just laughed  after I asked him if he had just broken some surfer code by telling a non-local where the best surfing was. 

“Good things should be shared.  I opened the shop with the idea that there should be a place where the people who work there should actually talk to you, rather than some girl behind the counter acting too cool.” 

Mission accomplished Mr. Ford. 

Drop by on Wilmington’s Front St. or online at http://store.momentumsurfandskate.com 

Tell ’em Brohammas sent you and maybe he will give you a deal on a pair of Toms.  More likely he will have no idea who I am, but still treat you like a friend.