Nothing says Christmas like the Cliffs

I spent Christmas in San Diego at my parents’ house. My brother Kevin had arrived from Hawaii, and had joined me for a day of surfing in Huntington before we headed down the coast for the holiday.

After the ceremonies of Christmas morning, my brother and I snuck off to surf. We visited at a place called “no surf” by a big rock, apparently christened the “bird shit crescent”, at sunset cliffs. Access to the water is by walking down a series of rock platforms to a ledge five feet above the water’s surface, throwing your board into the water, and jumping in after it. Once in the water, we were several hundred yards from the break, and had to paddle south. I stopped mid paddle to put on my leash. It was the early afternoon. The water was crisp and bit my face with its cool teeth. The sun was warm but the air was completely devoid of wind. The surface of the water was clam like glass. Sets of waves rolled into the reef and broke on cue.

A peak closer to the entry point was a popular longboard spot called “ospray”, which was to our right as we paddled. A lone surfer on a longboard paddled around the wave, occasionally catching a ride. By the time we left the water, he would be joined by a crowd of twenty five.

From where we entered the water, the face of the rock cliffs curved and formed a crescent arch, which was the north curve of a cove. In the center of the crescent, a large and ominous rock protruded forty feet from the water. It was an angled and chiseled monolith, covered with the white paint of bird droppings. At the inside of the cove, a soft sand beach laid below forty feet of sheer rock cliff.

On Christmas day, the break at the rock was working very well. Sets were head high. There was a right and a left. I caught one decent left, and quite a few very fun rights.

At Sunset Cliffs, there are locals in lawn chairs that sit atop the cliffs, drink beer, and watch the surf. In the water, many guys know each other. Some act like locals. Locals like to talk to each other and call each other by name loudly. This is the way they announce to strangers that they are on a first name basis with the other surfers, and therefore have certain rights at the spot.

One guy in particular was hilarious. He yelled at both Kevin and I in the course of the afternoon. I don’t remember what he yelled at me for, but Kevin was paddling up over a peak and this guy turned around to try to catch it, only to find Kevin right in his way. He could have gone left, but was clearly thinking about the right. Of course, with everyone crowded at the peak, there was nothing either of them could do. With ten people on one wave, it was bound to happen. But he let out a long “oh, come oooooooon” as if Kevin had just farted in an elevator. He turned and paddled away, expressing his discontent. With the right state of mind, one can find happiness in the most sordid of places. Conversely, with an opposite state of mind, one can be discontented and irritable in the most beautiful of settings: in the midst of consistently beautiful waves on a warm and clear afternoon in the cool blue and green waters over the pristine reef and swaying seaweed against a backdrop of leveled rock cliffs and playful birds.

The next day, we returned to the same spot. It was low tide in another windless afternoon. The sun was less bright, obscured by the incoming cloud cover of a storm that would drench the area in rain the day following. The surf had backed down as well. The peak waves of the sets had good size, but were inconsistent. Between sets, currents dragged the group of surfers in various directions, leaving the group to guess where they sat relative to where the next wave would break. A set of waves came every after a wait of three or twenty minutes, often catching everyone off guard.

Still was fun, but I had to switch Kevin or the funboard to catch some good rights.

More later

Copyright 2004 Travis English

NOAA's arc

Think of the North Pole. It's where Santa lives. It's very cold. The South Pole is pretty cold, too. Remember the pictures of Sir Earnest Henry Shackleton on his expedition to the South Pole? It looked very cold.

Now think of the equator. Think of India, South China, North Africa, Central America, Jamaica, and Hawaii. Those places are hot. They're hot all the time. These are places you want to avoid if you sell wool jackets.

So let's imagine that the poles of the earth are sources of cold air, and the equator is the source of hot air. Let's imagine that these sources constantly spit hot and cold air up into the atmosphere, blanketing the planet from the top, bottom, and middle. When the cold air hits the hot air, we get storms.

Of course, most of the planet is water, so many storms happen over the oceans. When a storm happens over the ocean, winds blow on the surface of the water and create chop. Light wind produces small chop, but heavy storm winds produce big and ugly chop. Think of pirate movies, where the boat rocks precariously from side to side. Water splashes onto the deck. The first mate cries, "Aye captain, she's a-blowin' us o'er." Now, that's some real chop. Each piece of chop is a small wave. It has a height, a speed, and a direction. (The direction is the same as the wind that made it.)

When the storm dies, the individual waves of chop either die or keep moving. Those that were small and slow, and didn't have a lot of energy, fade into the water and die. But, those pieces of chop that picked up enough power during the storm keep moving. Picture a vast army of chop marching away from a storm event. As they travel, they organize. Smaller waves are overcome by bigger waves and their energy is absorbed. Waves at similar speeds group together. When enough chop travels away from a storm, and has travel time to organize into neat and clean groups of wave sets, we call that a swell.

Swells move across the ocean in a funny manner, known as deep wave propagation. A group of waves moves together. Big waves are in the middle. Smaller waves are in front and behind. But, each individual wave in the group moves faster than the group as a whole. A small wave rises up in the back of the group, becomes larger as it gets to the center of the group, then shrinks as it moves to the front of the group. When the wave reaches the front of the group, it disappears, and reappears in the back.

Why waves like to travel this way is a topic of discussion for physicists. I read a few theories, but I couldn't understand any of them. Personally, I think it's neat. I'm trying to convince my wife to try this with the family on walks through the park. All three of us could lie on the grass. The one in the back could pop up and crawl over the other two, then lay down in the front. The next one pops up, crawls over, lies down, pops up, crawls over, and lies down. We'd be the hit of the park, that's for sure.

"What the hell are you guys doing?"

"Deep water wave propagation."

Fascinating as it is, deep-water wave propagation doesn't have anything to do with surfing. We surf in shallow waters. So shallow, in fact, that the depth of the wave is less than the depth of the water. The bottom is pushed up over the top and the wave breaks.

Not many surfers care much about deep-water propagation directly. They do, however, care about people who care about deep-water propagation. That is, they care about surf forecasters.

Surf forecasting has grown more in the last thirty years than at any time in history. Surfers who listened to coastal radio broadcasts for ocean buoy data can now view real time color charts of wave height, period, and swell direction on their computer screen with the click of a mouse. Surf forecasters can accurately predict the arrival of swells and which beaches will get the best surf. A surfer today has resources to know what to expect at which beaches every day.

Since I started surfing in the mid 1990s, I have never known a time when reasonably reliable surf forecasts and accurate real time surf reports were not available to me.

Real time surf condition information is provided by buoys. Buoys are great devices. They sit in the ocean and they bob up and down. But they measure every movement. Those movements are processed into swell conditions: amplitude (wave height) period (time between waves), and direction. Since the dawn of the Internet, buoy data is easily available to anyone interested. Data from the buoys is updated hourly, or every three hours, depending on the buoy. CDIP, the Costal Data Information Program, has 14 buoys located along the coast of Southern California, from Point Conception to San Diego. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, operates 7 buoys in the same region.

The Internet site for CDIP provides a color graph of wave heights along the entire California coast based on buoy data fed through computer models of the California coastline. The chart includes primary swell direction and period, and is updated with every polling of the buoys. The chart is called the "nowcast". I checked this website every morning from a computer next to the breakfast table in my dining room. The buoys updated at 3:40 a.m., giving me a good picture of the swell conditions only two hours before I would set foot in the water.

But, buoy data can only provide a snapshot of the present. To see the future, we look to NOAA. NOAA is pronounced Noah, like the man in the Hebrew Torah whom God warns about a coming storm. With this information, Noah was able to build a boat for his family and a few pets.

NOAA collects and distributes data from a vast satellite network above the globe. Weather monitor satellites fall into two general categories. Geo-synchronous satellites orbit the earth at the same speed of the earth's rotation, which fixes them above a position on the earth. The GEOS-8 and GEOS-10 satellites, for example, sit over the north and South Pacific Ocean. (GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite). Geo-synchronous satellites take three types of pictures, visible images (VI), infrared imagery (IR) and water vapor imagery (WV), to determine cloud and storm patterns in the atmosphere. This data is extremely useful, but its value is increased when combined with the information from the polar orbit satellites, which spin over the north and south poles twice per day. POSIDON/TOPEX, ERS-2 and SSM/I are polar orbit satellites. They orbit at a lower altitude than geo-synchronous satellites, and enable observations of wave and sea heights and near-surface wind conditions. Then, of course, there is QuickSCAT. Launched in 1999, the QuicSCAT satellite observes over 90% of the planet's oceans every 24 hours. Using microwave radar, QuickSCAT measures surface wind speed and direction with an accuracy previously unimagined under nearly any weather condition.

In other words, when and where the wind blows, NOAA knows.

NOAA is a division of the US Department of Commerce. It employees 12,000 people, and operates on an annual budget of $3.2 billion. Its scope of services is too long to list. Suffice to say that the website at www.noaa.gov is the doorway to an incredible library of nautical, marine, atmospheric, costal, and satellite information.

One of the programs funded by NOAA (as well as the US National Weather Service, and the US National Center for Environmental Prediction) is called "Wavewatch III". Produced for predicting hazardous costal and nautical wave conditions, Wavewatch III is a global model of open ocean wave height, period, and direction. The model produces forecasts up to 108 hours. In other words, with the click of a mouse, surfers can see the size, direction, and energy of every swell, produced by every storm everywhere on the planet's surface.

Truly, this is the age of information.

North shore surfers from the beach boy generation tell stories about dropping everything to go surfing when the waves were good. One could never tell if the waves would be good or not, so one had to be ready to live at a moment’s notice. Surfers brushed aside family, jobs, friends, and obligations without even so much as a word of warning when the big swells came in.

I know a few days in advance.

Sources
www.stormsurf.com is the site that I read to understand waves. Most of this article is condensed from Stormsurf's pages. There are a bunch of tutorials on the site that are well worth reading for any surfer.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2004/s2356.htm
Underwater, underfunded: NOAA faces Budget Cuts, Amanda Onion, ABC News (accessed at http://www.cdnn.info/industry/i040322b/i040322b.html on 12/22/04)
www.noaa.gov
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/
What isn't in this article is my opinion of the "pay for forecast" services (not to mention any names) that bleed US taxpayers for $20 a month for access to information that their government already paid hundreds and million of dollars for.
If these guys are scientists, and are moving the state of forecasting forward, then they should join NOAA, get some grant money, and give us all something that everyone can use. If they are, on the other hand, serving the industry, so that credit card, cell phone, and surfwear companies can have pictures of tow in surfers on big waves, then they should get the support of those industries that profit from it.
There may have been a time when this was appropriate, when the wealth of real time and predictive information wasn't as available and needed an interpretation and delivery service for surfers. But, that time is passed. The "pay for forecast" business in the US today is, in my opinion, unethical. It's a scam. Don't fall for it.
I get my info from www.stormsurf.com. He updates five-day predictions twice a week for the west coast, and does it for free. www.surfingsandiego.com also has a good little section on forecasts, which points back to Wavewatch III. The official wavewatch III portal is at http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html


Copyright 2004 Travis R. English

Waves in Memories

My wife woke up with me at 5:00 a.m. She helped me gather up clothes for the baby, some diapers and toys. I got my truck ready for surfing in the darkness outside our back porch. I had the engine running and the heater on. It was the middle of December. There were only nine shopping days remaining before Christmas.

My poor wife, Jennifer, was beseeched by family problems on all sides. Each week of the month brought new hardships. Jenn's niece had come down with pneumonia during recovery from surgery. Jenn had spent the weekend previous caring for her. This week, a sister in Arizona suffered a domestic breakup. There were three kids involved. My wife had been charged with the drive out to the desert to attend the trouble. Just to round out the bill, both Guenevere and I were horribly sick. The soundtrack of our household was a symphony of snivels, sneezes, coughs, and chokes.

My days had been no picnic of late, either. The cold that made my head feel like a balloon full of cotton had persisted for weeks. Every time I my condition improved slightly, it returned to haunt me again. In addition, my hours at work were booked. The office traditionally closed for the week between Christmas and New Years, a break I relished. However, the backlog of tasks that needed completing before I could leave for the holidays was daunting. The idea of a sick day didn't even seem possible. Of course, my "well enough to work, well enough to surf" mentality probably wasn't helping. I'm no doctor, but daily exposure to sub-60 degree water probably isn't one of the recommended cures for a winter cold.

Jennifer had arranged for Brett's wife to look after Gwen for the day. I had to work and Jennifer would be driving. While neither of us was too excited about leaving our sick kid for a day, there wasn't much choice.

At 5:30 a.m., I quietly snuck in to Guenevere's room and gently picked her up from her crib. She grunted and cried in a single exhale. I picked her up and put her over my shoulder. Her cheek rested on my collar.

"Its ok, kiddo." I whispered. “Daddy’s got ya."

Jenn followed me to my truck, and tucked a blanket into the car seat with Gwen. She said goodbye to baby, and paused on her way back into house. "I'll call you from the road." She said.

"Good luck." I told her.

I put the truck into gear and eased out onto the lamp lit roads. Gwen looked at me with worried wide and tired eyes.

"Da du?" she asked.

"Yea, tiger." I assured her. "It's ok. We're going to Brett's house. You get to see Jessica and Jake."

She looked around uncomfortably for a few moments, then rested her head on her shoulder and closed her eyes. I turned on some light music on the radio.

Forty-five minutes later, Brett and I parked our cars in the small lots between two sets of houses at Sunset Beach. I had heard that Bolsa Chica had been taking the swell pretty well, but neither of us had a state beach pass. Our plan was to park at the north end of the beach, walk about a half-mile south and paddle out.

Surfing conditions were as good as southern California gets. The swell was 4 to 5 feet. Set waves were easily overhead. Winds were strong Santa Ana winds from the east, blowing offshore against the breaking waves. A rare morning low tide was on us at 6:00 a.m. The low tide was a relief. High tides had dogged morning surf for most of late November and early December, with the highest tides of the year, up to seven feet above median low.

As I dressed in my superhero outfit, I hardly felt the part. My head throbbed. My sinuses were congested. I craved drinking water. I had taken aspirin and a decongestant with a bottle of water during the drive to Brett's house, but none of it seemed to be working. As I left my truck and walked south, I felt weary, and suddenly wished that I had eaten more than a half bowl of macaroni for dinner the night before.

A surfer's sinuses can run the course of absurd extremes. Salt water has the immediate effect of opening the nasal passages wide, like the saline solution used in nasal spray. However, the after effects can be unpredictable, often to the point of hilarity. The day before I had been in a meeting with my boss. Halfway into our discussion, my nasal clog had suddenly opened producing a gush of fluid. I struggled to maintain composure, sniffing violently to control the flow and patting my nose with the back of my hand. As sick as I was, my boss didn't comment. But, I would have done anything for a tissue.

Brett and I stopped in front of a concession stand and waded into the cool water. I dunked my head under, felt the bite of the cold, and then exhaled through my nose. The water shocked me to alertness. I felt better. I paddled.

The paddle at Bolsa Chica is normally a bit longer than Huntington. In head high surf, it took me the time of two wave sets to make it through to the line up. Once there, I sat up. I was exhausted. I felt miserable.

I looked around.

The morning was beautiful.

The winter air was crisp and cool. The wind was strong from the shore, breathing on my back and pushing spray from the top of the waves. Waves rolled in, bulges of cold water as far as the eye could see. Even with the howl of the wind and the roar of the breaking waves, there was quiet. I saw no pelicans, no dolphins, and only a handful of surfers spread out along my right and left.

Brett took a wave, and a second, as I waited and drifted. The currents moved us to the north.

"Look at the mountains shift behind the telephone poles" Brett told me between sets. "That'll tell you how strong the current is."

I looked. The effect was eerie. Hills to the east shifted like a cartoon background in slow motion.

I decided to do some surfing. I paddled over towards a peak where I had seen waves breaking. Misjudging the distance from the shore, I found myself inside when a set came barreling through. I paddled madly at the face of a looming wave that was breaking in a swirling tube to my left. I reached the crest just as the mouth of the tube reached me. I threw my board up the face and dove through the tip of the wave, avoiding its grasp by the slimmest margin.

I caught the last wave of the set. It wasn't great. But, it was a ride.

I caught one good right one got one big stomach-lifting drop on a close out right before Brett and I found ourselves caught in a wide section of rip current. We paddled parallel to shore and towards the sand for the span of several sets before catching waves into the shore.

Brett suggested that we walk up the beach and try again. I agreed.

At a section of beach several hundred yards to the north, several distinguishable peaks had formed. One the medium sized waves, a series of lefts and rights could be had. When the big waves came, they broke in a long, peeling wave to the right. There was but one other surfer at the spot when Brett and I paddled out. We surfed there for ten or fifteen minutes, catching a few mid sized waves, before I paddled into the big right monster.

I don't know how many waves like that a memory can hold. Do surfers forget them as the years go on? Are they replaced by more current images? Do they simply fade as time goes on? Or, do the details fade, leaving residual feelings of wonder and awe? Are some waves remembered forever?

On shore, I later told Brett just how much the morning had meant. My wife was overstressed. My family was overstressed. The holiday madness was on us. My work was insanely busy. My daughter was sick. I was sick as a dog. But, the surf was perfect, and I needed it like a drug.

The wave picked me up effortlessly. I stood to my feet slowly, gracefully. I watched a clean trail opening for me in the swirling water, like pedals of a flower opening for the sun, or an invisible path opened by magic through a mythical forest. There was no forced action, no tricks, no jerking motions, and no thoughts. I simply followed. As plumes of spray flowered at the crest, I was a child chasing a butterfly - down to the bottom, up to the top, partway down and up again.

As I reached the end, I screamed out. The path ended. I closed my eyes and rested. The foam accepted my body, a cold soft liquid bed for a sore patient. Under the water, there was no light. There was no air. There was no sound. There was no direction. There was no sky. There was no ground. I drifted in a fantasy in space, enveloped in the memory of fleeting moments past.

Ripped from public view...

Ah, it was fun while it lasted, eh?

I'm not sure if anyone was reading this thing anyway. If you were, and you find this message, hey, drop me an email at travis@english.net. I'd be interested to hear any comments from anyone who was reading the thing.

So, the blog is emptied. I took it all down. It's not gone, it's just not here. I'm assembling the whole thing together in a book manuscript. As of this writing, I've got about 180 pages of manuscript, which is probably a 140 page book. I was aiming to get to something that would print out at about 150 pages.

I have no idea if there will be any interest in publishing the thing. I'm trying not to think about that yet. My job right now is to finish it. Then, I'll concentrate on publishing it. It's haunting, though. It's hard not to think about publishing. But, the way I figure it, the worst that could happen is that nobody wants to publish the thing, and I take it to a printing press and buy a fifty copies of it for however much that costs, give a bunch away, throw one in the library, and keep a few on my bookshelf. If that's how it goes down, at least I'll be able to say "Hey, I wrote a book once." (It wasn't any GOOD, but I wrote it!) Of course, I'm more hopeful than that.

Fear and insecurity are amazing things. See, I'm not a writer, really. I'm an engineer. I know this because I went to engineering school. I have an engineering degree. I work for an engineering firm, doing engineering work. Hell, I even have an engineering license from the state of California. I can, legally, call myself an engineer. I can affix a stamp onto engineered plans and sign them as a registered professional engineer.

So, what do I know about writing books?

I took the blog down because I realized that it was a horrible mess. I've been editing the writing for a few weeks now. It was terrible. To call it a "rough draft" is to give it quite a bit of credit. Fortunately, it has cleaned up pretty well. In it's current form, it's readable. My kid sister, a grad student who is much smarter than I, has offered to read and mark up the thing over the holidays, so by early next year it should be even more readable.

I do want to find a couple of other people to read it and give me comments. So, feel free to email me if you want to volunteer.

For titles, here's what I have so far:

1. Confessions of a Dawn Patrol Surfer (my current favorite)
2. Diary of a Dawn Patrol Surfer (less St. Augustine, more Ann Frank)
3. The Hundred Day Wave (a friend recommended this)
4. Time Riding Waves (refers to the EPA article that I did. would require expansion of that theme)
5. Just a Surfer (reference to "Just a Housewife", a popular feminist book. The idea is to shake loose from the images and expectations society places on you.)

Thanks for reading.

See you out there.

-Travis

(And if anyone can talk Venice into doing an interview, put in a good word for me. I think she's avoiding me!!)

To be a kook

Imagine if you will, a surfer.

The surfer is male. He is 20 years old, supremely handsome, blond, tanned, and well muscled. He lives to surf. He schedules his life around surfing. If he is asked to work on a day when the waves are good, he will refuse. He offers no explanation other than that provided by the ocean. If he is required to attend to some family obligation, he will go or not go depending on the tide and the swell. He surfs every day when the surf is good. When the surf is down, he surfs three times per week - requiring salt water like a plant needs sunlight. He grew up within blocks of the beach. He will live within blocks from the ocean for the rest of his life. He rides custom made surfboards. A surfboard shaper with whom he has a relationship of mutual understanding shapes them for him. He possesses extraordinary skill on a surfboard. He has surpassed beginner and intermediate stages. His surfing is self-expression. The face of a wave is his canvas, upon which he chooses to paint lines and curves. He travels the world, seeking out great waves. He may be a professional surfer. If not, he falls into one of two categories: the aspiring professional, or the soul surfer. As an aspiring professional, he participates in contests. As a soul surfer he decries professionalism, preferring the sweet smell of the ocean to the foul stench of money.

This man is a real surfer. He is a true surfer. He is a hardcore surfer. He is not a wannabe. He is not a poser.

He is also, of course, a myth. He is a platonic form, an ideal, and a stereotype. He is the combined definitions of the hopes and dreams of surfers, writers, and advertising executives. He exists only in our fantasies and in our media.

The surfer ideal is an interesting character to discuss in pure form. Asking questions of the form is analogous to asking questions of ourselves, our society. How do I see the ideal surfer? How does the world see the ideal surfer?

Can he have brown hair?

Of course he can have brown hair. We’ve seen him hundreds of times with brown hair. That was an easy question.

Can he be black? Can he be Hispanic? Can he be Hawaiian? Can he be a woman? If so, does it have to be a ridiculously attractive woman in a bikini bottom, or can she wear a wetsuit?

What about the other qualities that are variously attached to him? Does he wear surfwear fashions? Is he an environmentalist? What type of music does he listen to? Does he smoke marijuana? Does he do other drugs? Is he aggressive, hostile, loud, brash, rebellious, criminal, and otherwise offensive to social norms? Is he calm, relaxed, peaceful, welcoming, hospitable, spiritual and wise beyond his years? Does his disposition depend on weather he rides a longboard or a shortboard?

Part of the appeal of surfing is a culture and the lifestyle definition, which transcends the act of surfing. Defining a surfer in this context is more than saying "one who surfs". At times, this expanded definition of surfing is healthy. Dedication to surfing, functional physical fitness, swimming strength, and personal style in wave riding are ideals surfers aspire to. Other times, however, the definition of surfing is used to exclude, to discriminate, or to judge. A group of surfers who define themselves as "real" surfers, or "true" surfers can justify acting inhumanly to other surfers who, in their judgment, do not meet a set of criteria. Sometimes that criterion has to do with performance and surfing ability. Sometimes it does not.

Etymology, the study of words and phrases and their origins, credits surfers for bringing a more than a number of entries into the popular lexicon. "Tubular", "stoked", "radical" and "dude" come to mind. But, surfers are also credited with popularizing the negative terms "wanabe", "poseur", and "kook".

Judgmental, mean attitudes towards newcomers, and territorialism are legacies left by the Malibu surfers of the 1950s and 1960s. When popular films and music broadcast the surfing culture to the masses, attracting new surfers to the beach in record numbers, members of the clique of Malibu surfers became resentful.

Bruce Brown, the filmmaker of "Endless Summer", included a scene to mock the recent arrivals of "fake" surfer in his first movie, "Surfing Hollow Days" (1961). In the clip, an inland "wannabe" painted on a tan, artificially colored his hair, added fake surfboard bruises to his skin, and hung a fake surfboard tail from the back of his car. By itself, the scene is a harmless joke. However, It shows the early attitudes of the self-defined "real surfers" towards newcomers and visitors that evolved into localism.

Localism has been called "the stain on the soul of surfing". It is well documented in both surfing press and mainstream news media. Google's "How To" section includes an article on how to avoid getting in fights with locals while surfing. Surf spot guides list localism as one of the dangers of a spot for the traveling surfer, as if to say: "Beware of: sea urchins, sharp reef rocks, sharks, and locals." Reports in surfing magazines and internet bulletin boards allege manners of behavior including: verbal threats, taunting, pushing, cutting off or surfing around unwanted surfers, "locking out" unwelcome visitors from the take off position, deliberate crashes, pulling surfers out of a wave by the leash, fighting in the water, throwing objects from piers, following surfers to their cars to damage either the surfer or the car, and breaking boards or equipment.

Cliques and gangs of locals claiming ownership of surfing spots and inflicting bodily harm on other surfers is an extreme example of the elitism in surfing culture. A subtler, but vastly more common example is the liberal application of the term "kook". I've heard surfers call other surfer kooks both in shouted complaints across the water and in murmured commentary to friends. To be labeled a kook is to be relegated to a lower status of worthiness. Kooks are told to "get out of the way". Kooks do not deserve their turn on waves.

The terms "wannabe" and "poseur" are clearly derogatory. Most of us would hate to be called either. However, one magazine article I read on the population and demographics of surfers used the term "wanabe" interchangeably with synonyms such as "recreational surfer" or "weekend warrior". The author described a "hardcore" surfer as one who surfed three or more times per week, among other charictoristics. Those who met his standards were the "hardcore" crowd. Everyone else was a wannabe. The article contained charts and graphs of California, Hawaii, Florida, and the East Coast marked with the population of "Hardcore" surfers in each area, and the corresponding population of "recreational/wanabe" surfers.

When I read the article I felt small. In his analysis, I was most definetly a wanabee.

The magazine writer, however, was not alone in his tendency to impose classes among surfers. For all the stereotypes and associations applied to surfers by television, film, and mainstream culture, the fact is that no one is more judgmental of surfers than other surfers. A shop owner that I talked to openly used the "hardcore" and "wannabe" class distinctions to describe his clientele.

"Well, you've got your hardcore surfer..." he said. "He's the guy who surfs all the time, and skips work when the surf is up. Then you got all the weekenders and the wanabees."

The defining traits of a "hardcore" surfer vary by whoever is defining him. The shop owner I spoke to defined a hardcore surfer as one who holds surfing as a priority over work. This theme is common enough. A bumper sticker in the 1980s read "Real Surfers don’t Work." Alternately, the magazine article about hardcore and wanabee surfer populations claimed that hardcore surfers are those who subscribe to surfing magazines. Advertisements love to show real surfers as those who wear the latest beach fashions. Surfing films promote real surfers constant need to travel. The surfboard shaping community understandably promotes the idea that real surfers buy custom shaped surfboards rather than stock models or used boards.

As someone who had a full time job, didn't subscribe to surfing magazines, could count his surf trips on one hand, and had never bought a custom shaped surfboard, I had to draw the logical conclusion. I was a wanabee. I was a kook.

Realizing that I was a wanabee was a wonderful revelation to me. Once I got through the stinging pain in my pride, I accepted it and embraced my kookiness. I realized that I was happy being a poseur, a wanabe, and a kook. I was happy, because all the things that would be required of me to stop being a kook were things that I was uninterested in or unwilling to do. I liked my job. I planned to keep it. I loved my wife and my daughter. I wanted to keep supporting them. I couldn't see an urgent need to change out my wardrobe for surfwear clothes with nifty labels, and I was pretty sure that the next surfboard I would buy already existed. I could buy it used for half the money and it would still be a lot of fun to ride.

The best thing about accepting I was a kook was that I was free to go about my love affair with surfing. Fortunatly, very few definitions of kooks, wanabees and poseurs have any relation to one's enjoyment of surfing, or passion for the sport. I could surf every day, love my time in the water, swim with dolphins, get away from the stress and business on dry land, breathe the cool moist air, smell the ocean, and be a kook.

More Later

-Travis

Copyright 2004 Travis R. English

Sources.
1. "BoardTrac, an Orange County-based marketing research firm, estimates there are 2.58 million surfers and body boarders in the country who spend approximately $4.1 billion annually on everything from surfboards to sandals."

2. Final day of Action Sports Retailer expo in S.D. a chance to reflect on rosy outlook
By Terry Rodgers, San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE 01/20/04

3. Venerable surf scribe Matt Warshaw, author of the soon-to-be-released Encyclopedia of Surfing replies:
"the Superstudy....23 million (International Surfing Association).
http://www.surfline.com/community/whoknows/05_12_surferpop.cfm

4. "Raise your hand if you surf" article, found on Surfline.

The ___ beneath my feet

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that in the US, people spend up to 90% of their time indoors. As a public heath measure, the agency encourages awareness of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) issues. Publications available on the EPA website list the heath effects and exposure risks of asbestos, biological pollutants, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, pressed wood products, cleaning products, lead, mercury, nitrogen dioxide, pesticides, radon, airborne particulates, environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and combustion sources such as gas, kerosene, coal, or wood.

In any indoor environment, residential or commercial, adequate ventilation is required for good indoor air quality. Building codes for commercial buildings require that occupied spaces are ventilated with air from outdoors. In most commercial buildings, this is accomplished by continuously ventilating outdoor air through the heating or cooling duct system. In residential homes, forced ventilation is not required by building codes. It is assumed that the sporadic opening of windows and doors will provide ventilation with outdoor air.

The statistic that people in the US spent 90% of their time indoors shocked me. Did I really spend so much time inside of buildings?

I considered my average day without surfing. I usually woke up at 6, got ready for work, walked outdoors to my car, drove to work, walked from my car to my office, worked, walked back to my car, drove home, walked into my home, sat around the house for a couple of hours, and want to sleep. In total, I spent 10 minutes of my day walking from buildings to cars and vice versa, an hour and a half driving, and the rest of the time indoors.

When my daughter learned to walk, I started a routine of walking with her to get our mail. We lived in a residential complex. Each structure contained five dwelling units. If the tenant of the dwelling unit paid rent, they lived in an apartment. If the tenant paid mortgage, they lived in a townhouse. We lived in a townhouse. In either case, our mailbox was not a mailbox on a post with a flag on the side. Our mailbox was a four inch by four inch locked cubby in an aluminum bank of 24 cubbies located one hundred yards from our townhouse. The walk took my daughter between five and ten minutes.

In my consideration of an average day, I added ten minutes of outdoor time for walking to the mailbox and calculated the results. The results were depressing. Based on a 24 hour day, I spent 93% of my time indoors and 7% of my time outdoors.

However, 6% of that was time in an automobile. I debated whether time in an automobile could be considered time spent outdoors. Sure, one can see the outdoors more plainly. One could open the window and feel the outdoor air. Ultimately I judged that if I couldn't kick my feet and jump, I was still constrained by boundaries, and was not outdoors. I adjusted the numbers. They now read: 93%, 6% and 1%. I spent 93% of my time in buildings, 6% of my time in cars, and 1% of my time outdoors.

Was this healthy? I didn't know. But, even if there were no health concerns, it wasn't what I wanted. Living life going from building to car to building to car, with only concrete and carpet under shoed feet wasn't my idea of a balanced existence.

Trying to make the figures appear more encouraging, I decided that it was unfair to count sleeping hours. After all, whether I spent my sleeping hours indoors or outdoors was irrelevant. I subtracted sleeping hours and re-calculated. The results looked better. I spent only 91% of my time indoors. Of course, I now spent 8% of my waking hours in a car, and the fraction of time spent outdoors was still 1%.

Housing is ridiculously expensive where I live, compared to many other areas of the US. My wife asked me years ago why we couldn't move to a more reasonable market. I scoffed. I refused to leave Southern California. How could we? The annual climate here is the envy of the world. In the winter, overnight low temperatures rarely drop far below 40 degrees, often warming to over 60 in the day. During summer, heat waves can bring peak temperatures above 100 degrees on a mere handful of days per year. For the majority of days between the reasonable extremes, outdoor conditions are mild and enjoyable.

Of course, to enjoy them, one has to be outside.

I added an hour of surfing into my morning. The percentage numbers improved. Including surfing, I would spend 82% of my waking moments in buildings, 9% in cars, and 9% outdoors. I could get close to spending 10% of my days time outdoors. Surely, this was an improvement.

It was an improvement. Surfing every morning is more than escaping the limitations of man made buildings. Surfing is play. The playground of the surfer is completely divorced from daily existence in a way no other playground can be. Entering the ocean is an escape from the very dry land we live on. In this playground, there is no ground beneath our feet. Standing, walking, running, jumping - words which have understood meanings on land - must be redefined or abandoned completely. The ocean is a swimming pool that is infinite in three directions.

It could be argued that surfers are the slice of the demographic pie chart that most appreciates the ocean in costal communities. Many residents and visitors enjoy the view of the water. Walkers, bicyclists, joggers, and skaters commute within sight of the shoreline. Boaters, sailors, and fisherman utilize the ocean for recreation. But, surfers are physically immersed in the ocean. A sailor spends time above the liquid world. A surfer spends time in the liquid world.

"Why do you go every day?" a co-worker asked me.

I considered the question. I knew that I would spend a vast majority of the next twenty four hours in man made environments – buildings, houses, and cars. The brief moments that I would spend outdoors would be on concrete, asphalt, brick, or ceramic tile. It seemed like an hour in the water would be a welcome counterpoint to any day. The water would be warm. The air would be clear.

"Gosh.” I replied. “I can't see any reason why I wouldn't."

More Later

copyright 2004 Travis R. English

. . . but to surf, is divine

"Just so you know: This is my first interview..." Howard said into the phone. He laughed nervously.

"That's ok." I told him. "It's only my second."

Howard was a Christian. He attended regular functions and services at Hope Chapel in Huntington Beach, a congregation of hundreds. Several years ago, Howard and a friend heard about Christian Surfers (CS), an international organization of surfers. CS claims to form the "bridge between the beach and the church". Howard became interested. He began attending meetings in San Clemente where a local chapter meets. He was interested in starting a Huntington Beach chapter. When a group of local surfers also became interested in starting a Huntington Beach chapter of the organization, the fledgling group was born.

Howard described his groups and their evangelical message as "low pressure". He admits that Christians have a reputation for evangelical behavior. Other Christian groups play a very hard game of selling salvation. One of the goals of CS is to attract people shunned or turned off by traditional churches. Surfers are known for individuality and non conformity. CS has attempted to bring the Christian message to surfers in their own language. Their published literature includes "The Grommet's Guide to Jesus" and "The Surfer's Bible" a printing of the Bible with a roaring wave on the cover.

At the time I spoke to Howard, the Huntington Beach chapter of CS had a building membership. Participation at the weekly bible study meetings ranged from eight to fifteen people. Participants were generally high school age teens or adults over thirty. Participation was building, and Howard was hopeful of making the chapter into a staple to serve the HB community. "I've got like 70 people on my mailing list." he told me.

Chapters of CS were required to hold a minimum of one bible study meeting and one outreach activity each month. The HB chapter chose to hold Bible study meeting weekly. For outreach, they organized events to open to the public. Howard excitedly told me about a screening of the surf movie "Noah's Ark" at the Huntington Beach pierside movie theatre. "It's by the guys who made 'The Outsiders'". Both surf films were produced by a San Diego based Christian non-profit organization group called "Walking on Water", who produce videos in addition to running Christian surf camps.

Members of the HB CS chapter surfed together, but their schedule was sporadic. They used short notice word of mouth to coordinate times and places. "We'll be at 9th street tomorrow." Howard told me. While the surfing sessions were not intended as an evangelism crusade, Howard saw the opportunity. He talked about maintaining an open mind towards reaching out and helping someone in the water. "You always talk to someone." He told me. "Someone says hi, or someone's complaining about the waves." A group of CS in the water could be an attraction to a surfer who is interested in seeking a spiritual connection but would never darken the doors of a church. The group hoped to attract by example.

Regionally, CS organized a southern California contest series for the fall and winter of 2004. Between September and April, eight events were held between San Diego and Santa Cruz. Contestants pay registration fees to compete in a series of contests leading up to a regional championship. CS volunteers worked the contests. At each contest, there was a raffle for a prize. Entrance into the raffle was provided to all who filled out a questionnaire about spiritual status and dropped it in a raffle box. While guests completed the questionnaire, volunteers were available to talk about the Christian message.

CS’s goal was to be a presence for Christianity within the surfing community. CS was not, in and of itself, a church but a group that partnered with local Christian churches and groups in surfing communities. Starting the chapter in HB, Howard saw the CS chapter as a service group.

CS US owned several “surf mission base locations” in Costa Rica, Panama, Puerto Rico, Barbados, and Hawaii. Members can participate short term mission trips where they host bible studies, build skateboard ranps, show surfing videos, or minister to children. Cost of a 7-day mission is $550, plus personal airfare and any applicable surfboard cargo fees.

Howard and the new HB chapter considered a trip to mexico. The purpose of the trip would be to build strength in the new group, and provide an opportunity for outreach into the HB community. “Guys that come could invite a friend.” For a new group, outreach and formation was critical. He told me about difficulties getting people involved in a new group. “People don’t want to change when they surf.”

The connection between Christianity and surfing can be traced to the latter half of the 1970s. In the aftermath of surfing’s seemingly unshakable association to drugs and counter cultural rebellion, several professional surfers announced their Christianity, and began surfing for Jesus. CS, as an organized group, began in Australia in the late 1970s. CS was founded in the US in 1984 in Santa Barbara.

But surfing’s appeal stretches across dogmatic boundaries in the competition for souls. From Hawaii to Israel and the Far East, surfing may contain a more common and universal spiritual element, recognizable by a variety of faiths.

From it’s Polynesian origins, the riding of waves has been connected to spirituality. Hawaiian surf songs and spiritual chants reflected a deep spiritual connection to nature and to the ocean waters which was expressed and appreciated in the act of riding waves. The Hawaiian term “aloha kai” was used to express a connectivity, a love and a caring for the sea.

Rabbi Nachum Shifren, the “surfing rabbi”, learned to surf in Malibu with some of the legendary surfers of the early 1960s. He moved to Israel in 1977 during the Yom Kippur War, and served in Israeli Defense Forces. Back in the states, he was ordained a rabbi in 1990. He is the founder of Jewish Surfers International and has written articles on kabala, mysticism, and the power of the ocean waves on the individual spirit. In 2001, he wrote a book, entitled “Surfing Rabbi: A Kabbalistic Quest for Soul”

Jack Reiley, an instructor at California State University Channel Islands, teaches a class called “PHED105: ZEN OF SURFING”. The class is two hours per week for a credit of one unit. It is taught through class lectures, movies (the “Yoga for Surfers” video is on the reading list) and, of course, surfing. Reilly feels that Zen and surfing are a natural combination. Riding a perfect wave is an act between the human senses and an entirely spontaneous natural force, the rider is attuned to the wave in Zen harmony.

I asked Howard for his thoughts about surfing and its significance to human spirituality. He naturally struggled for words at first, but eventually began to speak about a connection to being in nature, finding a peaceful moment, and being in a place where one can experience something transcendent, where one may be more open to God. He spoke of the value of quiet and peaceful time away from the worldly tasks and traffic. “Anything to pull you out of the day to day hustle” he said “creates an environment where God can reach you."

More Later

Travis

copyright 2004 Travis R. English