Day 84

Man. I should have started this blog a long time ago.

Actually, I did.

I've been keeping a journal since about day 20 or so. It's huge. I've got tons a text on the whole experience. I'll start pushing it out to this website.

Anyway, here's the jist of it.

The streak began on June 25th, 2004, when I woke up at 5:00 in the morning, drove 30 miles to the beach, and went surfing for an hour before work, catching at least 3 waves before getting out of the water.

As of today, I've surfed every day for the last 84 days. That's 12 weeks of continuous surfing. 3 waves a day. About 80 of those days have been at the same time and place. 6am. 17th street, Huntington Beach, CA.

Yea.... big deal.

Well, screw you then. It is a big deal for me. I've been surfing for nearly seven years as a weekend warrior. And, with seven years of surfing history under my belt, I gotta tell you, I wasn't exactly ripping and shreading the waves.

I visited my brother in Hawaii in May this year. I surfed every day, in Ewa Beach and in Town for two weeks. It was some of the most fun I've had in the water. The whole time I was there, there was no super swells. The best I got was 2 - 4 on the south shore. But, all the same, it was great. I loved the fact that the wave breaks in the same place every time over the reef. I got to quit the "chasing the peak" game that I'm so used to playing. But, probably most importantly, I got to learn some surfing.

My brother moved to Hawaii a couple of years ago, and when "Step into Liquid" came out with the profile on Dale Webster, he started surfing every day. "That guy's my hero." He'd tell me. "You gotta catch three waves, or you can't call it surfing."

My brother claims to have surfed every day for 28 days in a row.

Unfortunatly, he's got a problem with his ear. When he was a kid, he got in a fight with the neighbor kid, who whacked my brother in the ear, popping a nasty hole in the ear drum. It healed, but has never been the same. Every now and again, it breaks open. And, there's something about going over the falls on a good overhead set wave thatll do it every time. So, my brother has been landlocked in Hawaii for the last year.

I would have liked to go when we could surf together. But, I got my chance to take the trip... and it happened to be in May. So, I went.

My brother went to the beach with me, casually, almost disintersted, he would dish out advice.

"You need to have your toes on the back of the board when you paddle."

He told me. He'd loaned me an 8'6" semi longboard with a pointed nose.

"You should never grab the rails when you stand up, just push up with your hands flat on the deck."

"You have to keep in the power section of the wave - right in front of the foam. That's why you see those guys cutting back to the foam. That's where the power is. Otherwise, you'll lose your speed."

"Always bend at the knees, never at the waist. If you realize that you're bent at the waist, stand up and then re-bend at the knees. There's no power in bending at the waist. When you bend at the waist, it's because you want to move forward, or drop in, or turn sideways. But any oif those things can be done by recentering your weight with your hips over bent knees."

"Shortboards always have to move. There's no stall. You can pump the wave by ramping up and down the face, it turns out to be a swirling motion of the hips, like your doing the twist but going all the way around."

"Any bad habit can be broken. Good habits can be learned."

Or, the most potent piece of advice: "Dude, you're a fucking kook. You need to surf every day."

So, here I am. Surfing every day.

More later

-Trav

copyright 2004 Travis R. English