Posts from the ‘Surf’ Category

Feb 27

surfing, a love story

I originally wrote this story for The Toast, which was one of my favorite sites in the era of The Awl and The Hairpin, among others, when there remained space online for weird, funny things that weren’t really relevent at all. They were just fun to read. Anyway, I wrote this for an audience of women who didn’t surf. It’s about surfing, California, the miracles nature creates, and how our illusions stay with us, despite or maybe because of their distance from reality.

***

The clutch pedal feels cold under my bare foot, and there’s sand lodged in deep between my toes. I’m pretty sure I have ten of them, but I can only feel two or three. Sky, air, sea, they’re all grey, so much so that it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The heater in my VW is episodic. It works, but never until it’s good and ready. My hair smells like kelp. My feet are so cold. I pull my beanie down lower and drive faster.

The surf is best in the winter here, when the winds in the North Pacific whip up storms that hurtle toward the coast. That’s where the waves come from; they come from the spinning winds and they come from a long way out to sea. Sometimes the storms make a wrong turn and tuck up into the armpit of Alaska never to be seen again. That’s good for Alaska’s massive snow-fed rivers and mighty salmon runs, but not especially good for surfing in California.

The best storms for surf hang out around Hawaii — because why wouldn’t they? — or they crash into the coast somewhere north of San Francisco. If the storms are too close, the surf is wrecked. If they’re too far away, the waves are too small by the time they arrive at the beach. To make good surf, the storms have to be just the right size in just the right place. It’s a miracle we ever surf at all.

But surf we do. We surf when it’s clean and perfect. We surf when it’s big and we surf when it’s small. It’s best on the low tide, but we surf the high tide, too. We have boards of every size and shape for every possible occasion — long boards, short boards, boards with wide tails, boards with pin tails, boards with a little more foam, boards with a lot more foam. They come in every shape you can imagine and some you can’t. Blown out, knee-high slop or head-high, reeling perfection — We surf it all.

Dec 3

the womens sports challenge

It’s the unique burden of women athletes that they have to argue for the existence of their sports. If an event isn’t interesting, critics are quick to jump to the conclusion that women shouldn’t have contests and shouldn’t compete at all. Men’s sports, well, of course, we have men’s sports. Men are considered the default. No one would really argue that men’s sports shouldn’t exist. And yet, it happens all the time with women’s events. No one got barreled? Well, why do they even have a contest of their own. Or at least, so runs the argument. — You can read more if you like!

Oct 16

who are you

Who are you, he says. It’s early and overcast and the wind is blowing sideways. I’m not a morning person and this combination wasn’t about to change that. Neither was the surf, which was a long way from good. The greeting came with just that edge of habitual hostility that comes as second nature to long-time surfers. Who are you, I’ve never seen you before. A secret handshake, a familiar ritual. I started laughing.

Jan 20

2 Comments

dream date

the pebbles roll under my toes. i like how it feels, the push and tug of the tide. i am in the shallows at a mysto reef break that somehow picked today to come alive. i shall make waves today, it decided, purely on a whim. or so it seems.

the place goes flat for so long, it eventually becomes impossible to believe it even exists. it’s like the great pumpkin, looking for the most earnest pumpkin patch, and never quite finding it.

the waves come up on the horizon, a mirage, a dream. you walk down the trail, turn the corner, and there it is. alive.

the first wave crashes over my head like a judgement, some kind of punishment for sins i no longer remember. there’s nothing dreamlike now. up close, the water froths and spits. the ocean, she gets angry sometimes.

and of course everyone’s here. the word goes out. someone texts his best friend who tells one other dude who calls his best friend who tells the guy at the coffee shop and before long, we all know. there are no secrets.

there are pros on their stickered up boards, locals on their lunchbreaks, the crazy dude who never shuts up, the girl who can’t really surf but sits on the main peak anyway. the dudes burn her, which isn’t nice. but it is predictable. when it’s like this, nobody’s feeling generous.

paddle, look left, pull back, paddle again. paddle, look left, get one. too bad it’s a close-out. back into the rhythm, i lose track of time, the dropping tide and shifting sun tell of hours passing. paddle, look left, go.

then we’re on the beach. a guy’s calling into work trying to sound like he’s not on the beach in his wetsuit, sand between his toes, salt-stuck hair. another dude is looking for sunscreen. i hand it over. i try not to drop my towel changing. life is about little victories.

the waves keep rolling through one after another, each more perfect than the last. the wind sleeps. the water is a mirror.

you never want it to end. that elusive perfection, it haunts your dreams.