How Mercurial Our Sport: Surfing---It's Only About the Ride

Okay here's where thoughts take me on a winter day like today. I'll blame it on the weather. Thirty-five degree air, wind's onshore, ocean temperature is 48 degrees at Duck Research Pier. While writing this: sun, gray, rain, snow, gray, sun to the north, gray to the south. A low carrying warm moist Gulf air has just rubbed against a high with dry frigid air from the Great Lakes over our beloved coast to give us this weather kaleidoscope, a classic winter setup. We may get a sweet northeast kickback swell off this stuff as the low moves offshore. But that depends on the wind left behind and the tide and of course, where and when you choose to check the waves, the sandbars.

From the first day I was thrilled out of my skin by riding my first wave in 1963, I began the desperate journey to re-capture that feeling. Many who have felt this physical, emotional, even spiritual lift, understand how profound it is and how deeply it touches us. But just as profound, it is equally mercurial and fleeting. In the end though, we sometimes forget it is only about the Ride and how it makes you feel. It's not about contests, it's not about fitness, it's not about sponsors, it's not about stickers and clothes telling the world you're a surfer, it's not about how you think it makes you look, or the vehicle you drive. All this other stuff comes along on its own to some degree for each of us. It is the Ride and the Ride only which has a person remain devoted to the sport for a lifetime.

We soon awaken to how many conditions must come together to produce really good surf: swell generated from some form of low pressure system all the way to the extreme of this, a hurricane, wind direction and speed(to carve the wave into a ridable shape), tide (which influences the wave steepness and projection by the amount of water over the reflecting earth surface, i.e. sandbar, rock, reef at any time), and the aforementioned bottom conditions. We also soon learn that those optimum conditions, when they come together to create what only they can, wait for no one. There are no "tee times" or "kickoff" in surfing. Conditions are even changing while you are standing there checking them. And herein lies the mind-numbing predicament of the non-competitive lifestyle surfer who must balance making a living with his pursuit of the best conditions.

This is my story and I am astounded at how much it is the story of many, many people in our coastal community not unlike any coastal towns where there are worthy waves to ride anywhere in the world.

When my family moved to Hawaii in 1971, I remember seeing classic Hawaiian guns (spear-shaped boards around 8' long) standing ready in the greasy, oily corners of gas stations in downtown Honolulu. These boards had old,used wax on their decks. They weren't there to impress others their owners belonged to a hip cultural group. They were waiting for the next summer south swell. I recall admiring the substance this represented. It was real and genuine.

Our community is broadly threaded with surfers who represent virtually any socio-economic level and any job or career. I personally know carpenters, contractors, tradespeople, building inspectors, politicians, doctors, teachers, school administrators, dentists, nurses, restaurateurs, waits, fishermen, scientists, town planners and local government employees, attorneys, accountants, mortgage brokers, bankers, realtors, appraisers, financial managers, firemen, bohemians, vagabonds, new age hippies and ex-convicts who surf. This is interesting to me because the group noted above possess diverse demands and agenda they must reconcile in order to pursue good surf. Of course there's ridable surf and there's epic surf (see the Thanksgiving Swell posts, November, 2007 for epic surf) with epic conditions wielding the most influence over everyone's schedule of non-surfing obligations.

Epic conditions turn this group inside out mentally and emotionally. Just check 'em out when you know there's a good swell. I'm sure there's a surfer working with you or nearby. If you don't surf, I'm sure this is quite entertaining to witness from the outside. To see them as people fighting a distraction doesn't begin to describe it.

Veteran wave riders are most creative about feeding their addiction though. For instance, by the time you start torturing them by bringing up the subject, they probably have already been in the water for a before-work session. Then there's the "liquid lunch" session and after work session. For the politicians and foundation members in the crowd, having to attend a "board meeting" is often induced as the best way to give cover to their discrete mission. Some travel the world to distant waves as a means to remedy their yearnings.

But the work still gets done, the obligations still met and by a joyful group, especially during or after an excellent swell. The best at maintaining the balance demanded between surfing and work and even family, remain here with their world mostly intact. Those less discrete or committed to their other obligations struggle more.

Even you non-surfing Outer Banks readers, I'm sure can recognize the difference between flat spells of no surf, and the happiness around you when "it" gets really good. You know don't you?

You see, in many ways our community beats to the pulse of the ocean. This is, after all, why we came here in the first place. We will not and cannot forget this. Many of those who helped build our community and continue to contribute to it, I'm proud to say, move with this pulse and so do our children. But it's still only about the Ride.