B.C.B Memoirs. The Adventures and Misadventures of Pappy and Ryan The Ripper Part 2 - Road Rage and the Mysto Slabs.

The way Captain Eric told it, it was a mystos slab and location and name not to be given away to any kook...especially kooks from Beer Can Beach. Its location was a long drive up to the next county north and hidden behind affluent beach front property, snuggled in against some orange groves and mountains. It was kind of close to and kind of like Rincon but maybe not as defined and certainly not as prestigious, but it was fun anyway. The truth was Captain Eric liked the idea of a mystos slab because he was a traditionalist with a romantic imagination about surfing and surfers (if he was in a good mood) But in any reality check....mystos (a mysterious and hidden surf break that no one knows about) have been long discovered and trampled from the Southern California landscape but it was also fun to make believe. But I did abide Captain Eric's mums the word when I was getting out of my Wet suit, or getting in to my wet suit, or sitting against my car and watching the water behind murder one raparound shades against the sun when Beer Can Beach people started talking up surf trips to San O and C Street and Swami's and I never piped up to say - Hey I was at this place up north and blablabla.....no way, not at Beer Can Beach AKA Kooks Cove. The last thing I needed was to see all those barnies polluting the aloha vibes when good surfers congregate which was a rare and blue moon happening as is, because aloha in the south lands was becoming as rare as a mysto slabs.
The truth is...this break I will call Little Rincon to maintain it's anonymity as not to piss off Captain Eric who I am sure still imagines it the way he last saw it....The truth is...Little Rincon is not really that unknown at all but rather a real pain in the ass to get to, especially at high tide.
Now Ryan The Ripper was getting good. He stood up not long after the morning of the dead chickens and he was starting to rip. The only worries I had about Ryan The Ripper was that he was expressing a strong interest in shortboards. Not that I had any thing against shortboards but I was a longboard guy, most people over 40 are longboarders unless you were raised on shortboards and are quick to get up which I am not. And I liked the glide and the dance of the longboard culture. Hanging ten comes from longboard culture, nose walks and all sorts of balancing acts are al longboard culture. You can ride pretty big waves on a longboard, just as big as you can with a shortboard if you have the skills. Its the speed of the shortboard that differs. Waves break at different speeds. Some roll in and take their time and that is great for a longboard because longboards are slow and easy. Some waves break fast and furious, steeply over reefs and on sand. Shortboards are shaped for that speed, longboards are not. And Ryan The Ripper was gravitating towards this speed and I was sorry to loose a Longboard buddy but I could see his point.
The longboard revival started in the late eighties, early nineties. It started with a few surfers, tired of the whole competitive and aggressiveness that dominated the surfing scene in the 1980's. There was a time in the sixties when longboards were all they rode and then around 1968 some Australian surfer named Nat Young came to California with a board cut back to eight feet, In a world of ten foot plus boards this was unheard of, but it opened up possibilities in surfing to a whole new realm of wave that until then could not be ridden on a longboard. Then things just got shorter. By the eighties the longboard had pretty much gone the way of the Dodo bird until some skinny kid from San Diego County named Joel Tudor and another young guy named Tom Wegener and some of the old guys revived the Longboard style and put a whole lot of new technology into the shaping of them and suddenly longboards were back.
Back in a big way at Beer Can Beach and getting out of hand. Surfing has never really gone out of style but it has waxed in waned in popularity since the first Gigit movie in 1959. In the beginning of this new century everybody in the whole world realized that they could surf with one of those new longboards and everybody from the whole world (and their brothers and sisters) decided to live the dream, The Endless Summer etc, etc...and with the help of Internet surfcams they could be in Palm Springs or London UK and be able to tell if there was a swell at Beer Can Beach or not.
So about five years into this new century it got to the point that if one wanted be original, and what surfer didn't...they'd have to go short again and distance themselves from everybody from the whole world (and their brothers and sisters)! This caused flatlander's and desert rats from Rivertucky and new rich beach front ponces with their $1,500.00 longboards to be terrified of shortboarders because they had seen Point Break and Surf Nazis Must Die and tried to pass rules at Beer Can Beach to forbid shortboarding but no shortboarder would want to surf Beer Can Beach anyway accept to throw buckets at longboarders and vandalize their BMW's just for the spite of it. Ryan The Ripper liked the idea of terrorizing longboarders and I didn't blame him even though I was a Longboarder myself.
Anyway I decided to tell him about Captain Eric's mystos surf break and made him swear to secrecy because if it got out and all that riff raff showed up the ocean would lay flat and me and Ryan The Ripper would never surf again because the surf gods and Captain Eric would be pissed.
So I told Ryan The Ripper about mysto slabs in Ventura County and we loaded up his SUV in predawn March weather and headed up. It was a cold and cloudy morning and coffee and sweet rolls and stories about Pappy's adventures of the sea rolled of my poetic tongue and I showed Ryan The Ripper all the places up the PCH that he would soon dominate and he watched the shorboarders at County Line shut down the longboarders and he was impressed. he liked the shortboarders style and wished he had one. - Why do you want to become a shortboarder? I asked.
- Because I want to go fast, Because I want to rip, because, even though you and Christian and Jeremy are good people...and Pappy...even though you have taught me the secret of surfing, and I am eternally grateful for that, I want to chase those Kooks on longboards out of the sea...and besides...Kelly Slater is God!
- Oh! I answered. And I held back tears.
Mysto Slabs was one blown out sloppy mess. We stood there staring at it.
- Lets go to Rincon...says Ryan The Ripper.
- It would be the same...I tell him.
We went to C street that morning and it was good. Crowded but good. I had this Tyler 9.5 with a super rocker and although it was a stellar board...me and it just didn't hit it off. I had a crappy session. Ryan The Ripper still riding the piece of shit over sized thruster, had a ball but all he could talk about was the purchase of a 6.3 Al Merrick. The most aggro board one can buy.
And aggro it and he was. On the way back we hit traffic on the PCH in Santa Monica and some lady cut Ryan The Ripper off and he got hot under the collar and shook his fist at her and tried to spit on her tail light, and when the light turned red he started to open the door and go to her car. To do what I have no idea.
- She can't get away with that, that stupid bitch! He ranted.
I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back in the car. - Dude!...Says I - This is LA...She could be holding a Mouser in her glove box for all you know. He sat for a few seconds and thought about it and as the light turned green he said; - I hate LA!
And like tell me something I never heard!
I was saddened by Ryan The Rippers decision to go short. I went home and could contain myself no longer and washed my 1966 Volkswagen Beetle with my tears of sorrow.

Beer Can Beach Memoirs. The Adventures and Misadventures of Pappy and Ryan The Ripper Part 1 Santeria & The Secret of Surfing.

Spring has brought the hardwood trees back to life here in Vermont. Maple, oak, ash and birch. I live above The Connecticut River. It is a mighty river. The house I live in is on a hillside above it. Fog shrouds the valley in the morning and it reminds me of the California coast that sits in a fog on most mornings.
The miracle of spring after five months of winter is so pronounced here. It is a time to celebrate, there are geese flying north, all the hibernating animals are back and the robins too. I haven't seen a northeastern spring in many years because I lived in California for most of my adult life.
People say California does not have seasons but I disagree. Even in the middle of Los Angeles on a balmy foggy spring morning one can sense the fragrance of sage blooming on the coast. It drifts into the basin kind of like the smog does, not much air moves in the Los Angeles basin. But the sage blooming on the coast and that mentholated scent drifting into L.A. with the gentle ocean fog always told me it was spring. That and the wild flowers in the hills, poppies! California poppies leaving a blanket of gold along the highways and roads. All this reminds me of mornings, sitting in the ocean, always colder in the spring because of the wind upwelling the depths of the sea and bringing the chilly waters to the surface.
Wind! Surfing in spring on the California coast...not a good time to surf California. Strong onshore blasts start like clockwork at ten each morning and increase with the day. Sometimes it's blowing at six in the AM and it's time to go back to bed. The water is chopped, the waves blown out, the winter north swells have subsided and the tropical winter storms have not started so the summer south swells are nil. It isn't till some time around the last week of April that a southie meets us at Malibu and other point breaks. Beer Can Beach gets it too.
I first met The Ripper on some crappy spring morning at Beer Can Beach in early April. It was a sunny morning. The onshores were threatening to blow out what little wave action there was. It was cold spring surfing and here's this guy out in board shorts and a surfing jacket, short sleeve. A real total ripper I thought. - So what are you doing? I ask this wise guy...- trying to get hypothermia?
- It's all I got, he says and I'm thinking either this guy is total hard core or he's nuts. I see big Hawaiian guys out there in the winter dressed like they're on Maui in the tropics with their flower print shorts and bareback, don't know why they do it. maybe they don't want to spend money on a wet suite because they're flying back to paradise that afternoon or maybe they're just big, Hawaiian and bad ...maybe this guy is a mean ass Hawaiian white boy.
He was not a mean ass Hawaiian white boy. He was a newbie from somewhere in the Northwest. He was so new that he couldn't even get up on the board but I didn't loose all respect for him like I do for the other kooks at Beer Can Beach. I mean a good surfer has to start sometime. He had kind of a attitude. I could tell he wasn't a person who was learning to surf, he was a surfer learning to surf. How I knew this I cannot say. His name was Ryan. Soon to earn the nickname The Ripper.
It was a week later. It was dark in the AM at Beer Can Beach. The Pacific Coast Highway was already coming alive with early commuters dashing by as I stood there in the predawn looking in revulsion at dead headless chickens floating in the stagnant tide. Beer Can Beach had two personalities, one in the night, one in the day. I never wanted to know what the night time was like. There was gang graffiti sprayed on the sea wall and what with dead chickens riding small waves in to the trash polluted tide pools, victims of Santeria and sacrificed to a fearsome evil god in the guise of Jesus and The Virgin Mary and God only knows what else! -Jesus Christ! I sighed - where the hell am I living anyway? And who was going to make that water safe for surfers after dead chickens (not even plucked) floated around in them for some hours.
- So whadda ya think Pappy! I hear a voice ask. I turn around and there's Ryan (soon the be The Ripper) looking like he stepped out of Point Break as one of Bodhi's sidekicks all dolled up with his spanking new wet suit and looking all pro and stuff. I look back at the miserable conditions, the wind is out there, the fog is in and as long as the fog remains then it will keep the wind at bay, but as soon as the sun breaks through...Oh hell! I think. The ripper is standing over me with a look like...what the fuck and I say - Sometimes you just got to get wet. and he looks at me like I'm an asshole and I problem am and the other Beer Can Beach regulars are showing up and looking at the headless chickens glumly and resigning themselves to the fact that sometimes they just have to get wet.
It was a bad session. The waves sucked and Ryan (soon to be The Ripper) was trying to stand up on on some over sized thruster that reminded me of a 1973 Ford Pinto on 2 foot pieces of shit and getting extremely angry and frustrated and cussing like the Irishman he turned out to be. The dead chickens remained as visible as a turd in the punchbowl , victims of Santeria, still rotting around the garbage strewn tide pools and nobody seemed to want to deal with it. Last week there was a dead cat in the water, the week before there was a dead whale but I don't think that was Santeria. Could have been all the garbage that Gladstones Seafood and Hamburgers right there above the point throw out there and the whale couldn't digest the deep fried breaded fish and french fries. There always seemed to be something dead at Beer Can Beech.
So with nothing else better to do I decided to reveal the secret of surfing to Ryan (soon to be The Ripper.) I told him; - Surfing is like playing pool, the less one thinks about what they intend to do the better the chances. I told him; - Once you commit to a wave you had better follow through, hesitation is fatal. That's how great surfers die, I told him. I told him; - The more you surf the better you get and if you stop for a while you loose ground, it is like the game of pool, it is a little geometry, perception. guts, intuition, and boldness and he looked at me like I was an asshole and I probably was. But it was the beginning of a true friendship and in the surfing world one had beeter be grateful for it.
Mary showed up with her red hair on fire and eyes like daggers as she waded out in the garbage strewn tide pool to retrieve the decomposing chickens, victims of Santeria. giving us all her contempt for none of us having balls enough to do it ourselves. I knew she wouldn't talk to me for at least six weeks and I was right.
Ryan soon got up on his 1973 Pinto thruster and went on to better equipment and in a remarkable time became a legend and a California household word. But more about that later.

Beer Can beach Memoirs; Part 1 - Slaying Dragons In The Green Room and Look Out For Dolphins

I watch the snowboarders going to the Green Mountains for a day on the slopes. They remind me of surfers, kind of cocky, slightly outlaw individualistic. Of course they are all bundled up with the same watch caps that surfers wear before and after sessions and they have the same wear wrap around sunglasses, and on the street they sport t shirts and knee length Dickie shorts with sandals. And they've got the same vibe. They sound like surfers when they tell me that I would enjoy snowboarding because it's gnarly, like riding a 700 ft wave of snow dude, you'll love it Pappy, if you surfed you will snowboard!
I don't know about that. I have physical disabilities now and wiping out on ice and snow is not the same as wiping out in water. Besides, I am water. My home will be the sea always. I live one hundred miles from the sea now. That's OK. My spirit is salt water...Pappy sleeps with the fishes....Pappy! That's what the folks in the line up named me and it stuck, everyone at the beach called me Pappy, there is even a section of Beer Can Beach...a take off zone where a long right handed break reforms and continues another few hundred feet to the shore. I used to claim that area for myself. My old buddy Christian The Dominator named that section Pappy's. What an honor to have a take off surfing zone named after me!...even if it is Beer Can Beach.
My minds eye is always on the shoreline...It is always a bright morning on the beach, even while I drive through northern hardwood forests, Blue Jays perched in the wintering trees, warblers sing a haunting melody, woodpeckers jackhammer on the side of the hardwoods, it is the song of the forest, it is an ominous predator foot print in the snow, there are lairs in the woods where bears hibernate till spring. I feel like Siegfried in this forest, on my way to slay the dragon in it's cave. I have a dragon to slay up here in the great north woods. Like St George, like Siegfried, this dragon sits in the back of my unknown thoughts and here I am, sword in hand ready to lobotomize the beast. But enough of my dragons. I am in the forest but the sea awaits. I will return to the sea...always...and if my memory serves me well;
I go back to another winter, a winter of some years ago in the sunny southlands of California. Balmy air but cold water and a swell from the Alaskan Gulf...always a zoo at Beer Can Beach when the waves get that big, what with all the newbees out there and then suddenly there's these overheads coming in and these guys are crapping in their wetsuits. Me? I got one life to live. I figure if this waves takes me...I've gone out doing what I like to do best. But that doesn't happen, Not even close. I'm sliding down liquid mountains and I do come close to running someone over that does not realize the power of the sea this morning, guess he'll learn the hard way. I ride all the way to the shallows and stand in knee high surf. The waves are powerful and nearly knock me off my feet. I am waiting for a lull to paddle back out to my take off section. There is a riptide where I stand. That's good. I just wait for the lull, get on my board and let the rip take me out to the line up which has to be two football fields out there this morning. Boy! The waves are at least twelve feet That's pretty big for here.
Too bad about Beer can Beach though. It really gets overused in swells of this caliber. All the hipsters and extreme locals from Porto and points south have invaded it You see... all the movies you see about Los Angeles County as this surfer paradise is bunk. Ventura county is more like it, Orange and San Diego Counties are a lot more fun. So there's all these hardcore shredders who usually wouldn't be caught dead at Beer Can Beach in fear that someone they might know, might see, or might get their picture taken and put up on the Internet. Beer Can Beach has this reputation...it's the place where all the kooks go. It's an old folks break and a place for kooks. Kooks and old farts, just lame ass waves and Barney's galore I was glad it had that reputation...I supported that stigma...don't surf here, you will be the laughing stock of of first point Malibu. Don't surf here...anyplace but here! Dudes in the know don't surf here!
Of course my dissing the place only went so far. After all it was the easiest place to check out the surf without even getting out of ones car to do so. It was right in full view of the PCH so when the waves were breaking as good as they were this particular morning it was hard to say go some place else! And besides, the surf was big and all the beach breaks down south were closing out. I thought that was odd, it must be a huge swell if that was the case. El Porto, about ten miles south, could hold a six foot wave, Venice is trash above four feet, Topanga up the coast about half a mile, AKA Crime Scene was probably working but can't hold the crowd and then the locals get cranky and fights break out. That's why we called it Crime Scene. County Line was too far to drive and some of us had to work for a living some time that day, Point Dume was probably good but the locals take over on a swell this big and again the fights.
I had to face it. There was not enough room or everyone so everyone came to Beer Can Beach because when the surf was this big, Beer Can Beach could hold the twelve foot swell and my laughed at surfing hole becomes a world class surf film classic with every hipster, shredder, hotdog and noserider as far south as Palos Verde converging. I would have been pissed off but the waves were too big to do anything but try to get out there and ride.
It' s called the Christmas swell. It happens every year around the second half of December when Alaskan winter storms start to do their churning in the north Pacific. The storms make land fall in the northern part of California, Oregon and Washington. Southern California stays sunny and warm but the waves from the storms making landfall send waves down along the southland coast.
The sea is not a place to be if one is not prepared to give ones self totally to her. I always tell people; never say never but never turn your back to the sea. Surfers always face the horizon waiting for their ride. It's fun when dolphins and sea lions come up and check you out. Dolphins are friendly but sea lions tend to get a little testy. Especially if your around their pups. And there are hazards aplenty out there and on a morning with twelve foot waves coming in because one gets very aware of the prospects of getting held down on a wipe out or knocked on the head with someones runaway board in the soup while your trying to get out.
I guess I've always been trying my luck at slaying dragons. A wave can be a dragon and they were certainly great beasts out at Beer Can Beach that morning. But everyone has a wave just for them. I saw mine coming at me. It was a beauty...it wasn't the biggest wave but it had style, form and power. But there was a problem....
There was a little young lady with a huge voice on a shortboard just to my left. She was pissed off. She was complaining about all the longboarders and kooks that frequented this beach and how they should stay out of her way. She was here because the nasty locals at Crime Scene up the road had driven her off her turf because she was always whining about how she was training to be a pro and that everyone, because she was little and cute, should give her waves. nobody was giving her waves that day at Crime Scene because the guys there are a serious bunch of hard core hard asses and that kind of temper tantrum gets people persona-non-grada up there when the space is tight and the waves are big.
Now at Beer Can Beach it's a love fest, all accept for me and Christian The Dominator and Ryan The Ripper, and we got our own ways of letting all the Faux-pas chuckle heads that come to our break to show us how it's done just who's doing what out there and we do it with savoir faire! Now this little lady with the large lungs was out there when my lover wave came rolling in. Surfing rules say that the person to your left on a right breaking wave has the right to the wave. And I clearly committed a capitol sin by dropping in on her but sometimes I just get ornery.
I couldn't help it...it was my perfect wave and I dropped down on it and the waves lip curled over my head and I was suddenly in the green room on a stand up barrel. (If my readers do not understand the green room than I say you should go to Surfline.com and look it up in the terminology page of that site.) It was the wave of my dreams, It was the wave of my life. It was me in total Zen, living in the total here and now, me, the wave, and a loud little lady on the shortboard behind me in the barrel screaming; 'ITS NOT FAIR! YOU DROPPED IN ON ME...IT'S NOT FAIR, THIS WAS MY WAVE!'
The two of us wound up in the shallows once more and I thought she was going to cry. I told her I was sorry...I told her I would give her the next one...I told her not to let it ruin her day. She said she was a pro and that I was a kook and to learn to surf. I didn't let it ruin my day. And I was stoked that I made it into The Green Room, just like videos I saw of Indo and Hawaii and it was all right here at Beer Can Beach.
I should have gone in on that ride, but I stayed out and maybe I should have really gone in with a ride like that. but I wanted the green room again, this time to myself. it was a sunny December morning. It was getting seriously crowded and the sea wall along PCH was lined with cameras. Here came my dragon! It was a mountain of a wave. It was the biggest wave I have ever seen in a lineup. As it approached in silence the glassy mountain was suddenly breached by four dolphins riding it. They were to my left and it was a right but I figured they knew what they were doing and I knew what I was doing. I had a dragon to slay, I had a dream to peruse. There was no one going for this one. It was a monster. All the hipsters were out on the point and the Barney's around me were frozen with fear and I had found my own take off point was deplete of riders so there I sat and waited. I quickly did a hail mary and and paddled like hell. I was suddenly in the wave and dropping down on the face. Just then a dolphin breached the wave right in front of me. It's body was sleek and blueish, he looked as if he was having a good time, he was made for the sea and he was on that wave like no human could. A strong offshore breeze hit me in the face and the water sprayed a rainbow in the suns light. The dolphin was so close to me that I thought that I was going to run into it.
One never knows just how big a dolphin is until you are face to face. He was a big serpent and I learned fear and went down, into the depths of the sea, into the belly of the giant wave that rolled turbulent over my head. I was sent to the bottom, I bounced off the sand and I headed up. Up, up and up until the sun I could spot above the surface. I had lost my board, I got to the surface and gasped for air just in time for another wave to crash on my head, sending me back to the deep. Now I didn't know which way was up and which was down. I was struggling, my breath was getting short, I needed air. I stopped swimming and floated to the top, I saw the light and I came up gasping only to be tossed to the bottom once more from a third wave in a set.
I survived it. I dragged my half drowned body to the beach, my board waited at the shore line, I sat down to take stock. That was enough for the day. And as I was walking to my car the little lady with the big voice passed me and gave me a victorious look. I don't know if she saw the dolphin incident or not. If I had been cut off by someone and then saw a dolphin, in return, cut them off I would certainly have felt a certain amount of justice administered. But I tried not to let it ruin my day.
That Christmas swell lasted about four days. I went out on all four days. I caught some great waves but I never returned to the green room. I hoped and I prayed and I wished upon a star, but the green room stayed aloof. And I never saw the little lady again either.

A Surfer in Vermont; Part 2 - Total Water and Board Sports, but on ice and snow

Hello everyone. Today it is snowing here in Westminster Vermont, about a foot so far and no let up in sight. And that is my winter here. The reasons I moved to the Green Mountain State are many and complicated. Lets just say that California was moving on and I was not. Lets just say that...'today's forecast...night and morning fog, clearing to sunny skies by mid morning, high around 78, tomorrow...night and morning fog giving way to sunny skies by mid morning, high around 78...five day forecast...Night and morning fog giving way to sunny skies, high around 78' just didn't cut it anymore for me. That and the price of everything going through the roof and ever increasing congestion everywhere. There was a time I could deal with it and I could have continued to do so. But I felt I was dying a gentle, sensual and Tristanesque (sic) demise in my beautiful Hollywood single with Morphological ideas and eating fatty food. With my books and my movies and an assortment of friends that ranged from surfer dudes to rocket scientists to Beverly Hills socials...all the way down to Western Avenue rock heads, I knew them all...it might have seemed comfortable but change was overdue, so I moved here, to Vermont.
I am finding The State of Vermont an individualists/libertarian dream. It is a land of contradictions, a place hard to pidgin hole. Gay marriage was granted legal status without a challenge or backlash while there are hardly any gay bars outside of Burlington, Vermont's largest city of 30,000. It is the easiest state in the country to acquire firearms with no background check and it is legal to carry it concealed. Yet the laws for crimes involving firearms are harsh and usually mean long prison terms. Dairy farmers have movie stars for neighbors, Pulitzer prize winning authors live across the road from tow truck drivers. Vermont public radio has a 24/7 classical music station nudged in with country music and classic rock. You can drive the back roads and see trailers and junked cars on one plot of land...drive on, on the same road and there is a stately mansion with horses and duck ponds, private woods for hunting, garages for six. A house is not considered old if it post dates the Revolutionary war. Many families can can trace their pedigree on their land before French Indian war of the 1760's.
In California, cold weather is a dirty word. Here it is a fact of life. I didn't know how much people recreate in it. Ice fishing is huge here, outdoor hockey games on ponds and lakes are as common as basketball in Venice Beach. Ski resorts are everywhere. Snowboarding was invented here, and in my closest town of Brattleboro, pop. 13,000 there is a ski jump right in town. People live off the snow, Cross country skiing is everywhere and snowmobiles tear around trails.
I am a water guy. I love to swim and surf. I have to confess that I never lived in a place where lakes and rivers froze completely over. There are thousands of lakes and rivers here. My blood is thickening to the cold and now when it's 25 degrees, I consider that...well not warm exactly...but not that cold either.
I have made some friends here and they say I should go snowboarding and are willing to teach me. I said that I tried skiing about 30 years ago up in Tahoe and that was disastrous. They said if I surfed I could snowboard. It's what all the surfers around here do in winter. Hmmmm!
And I love to watch skaters too, around here it's as common as riding a bike. I think that might be fun even though ice this winter has been a menacing obstacle for me. Still it is water and I am all about water. Come spring (it comes late here) there is the coast of New Hampshire Maine, and Cape Cod.
I have a sinking feeling that localism on the mysto slabs (to quote my good surfer buddy Christian) of Maine can probably get kind of intense but I got used to localism in Southern California. Localism is when a local bunch of surfers frequent a beach and surf its waves. And they form a bond through seeing each other every day or every time they go out to surf. Usually they are very protective of their territory. Sometimes they can be welcoming, other times they can chase you off the beach...and everything in between. Surfing can be parochial that way.
Now I have been to Maine two times before, both times I was not surfing or even anywhere near a surfing spot. And judging from the local population of the state, I pretty much expect stink eye out there on the waves. Big time! But so be it. it's not the first time I've scapped with someone over waves. After all Southern California invented localism although I heard that the Hawaiians were executing trespassers on local beaches one thousand years ago. Aloha!
Been talking to snow boarders here in Vermont this winter too. They tell me that all the puncies from Connecticut, New York and Boston come up here and hog up the slopes and make a goat show out of weekends on the mountains...sounds familiar. Surfing year round on the California coast, winter thins out the lineup when all the snow boarders and light weights flee when the water gets cold and the waves get big. But come May they all come back with their copper tone tans, bleached out hair and overly expensive equipment. I guess it's unfortunate that snowboarders can't ride in the summer like we could surf on the west coast in winter but I bet the slopes are better on a week day.
I like my new home...it's quiet, it's enchanting, a little dangerous but unpretentious and out of the way. I am never far from water, I am not that far from the sea. There is surfing in the spring and summer and early fall, there is snowboarding and skating...there is plenty of hockey which is my favorite spectator sport and friendly people who I can watch it with. And...from what I am told...a miraculous spring coming some time in May. Lots of board sports, lots of water recreation. And two huge cities just a couple of hours away in case I want a urban experiance.
A special shout out to Hannah Kearney, of Norwich, Vt. who won gold for USA in Women's skiing moguls last week.
Thank You for reading this. Pappy

A Surfer in Vermont A Fish on Dry Land? Maybe Not!

There are surfers here. It's a spring and summer and early fall ordeal but it's here (not here, this state is landlocked but next state over) and there is winter surfing as well if your really looking for empty waves. Most of them are on snow boards right now and really bummed from the lack of snow this winter. They and the snow plow drivers. Everyone else is happy for the lack of snow. And I'm bummed because I haven't been in snow country since I was a boy and I still have a child's excitement when it does snow and I wanted to see it piled everywhere like I was told it was last year. It's not that it hasn't been cold here. It's been freezing, even by Vermont standards, but there just hasn't been much precipitation coming our way. But the ski lifts are grooming and I guess it's good. The Snowmobile owners are bummed too.
I always will be a surfer. It's something that a surfer is for the rest of his life. Even though I started late in my life, I always had an affinity for the sea and it really expressed itself in my surfing. It was one of the few things in my life where I totally fit in. A few months after I first stood up on a board I was nose walking and cutting back. Then it all went south.
Something happened. I don't know what exactly...pardon...I do know what happened. It all became so romantic and I almost forgot that I was living in the 21st century and started to wonder why all these yuppies were out on expensive equipment giving attitude and dropping in on me and my circle of friends. Everyone under 40 was a friend of Andy Irons and Kelly Slater and everyone over 40 had known Mikki Dora and Phil Edwards back when the Bu was the Bu when on a crowded day there were only 10 guys out when men were men and bla bla bla.
I always preferred country surfing, That's surfing in rural areas with empty windswept beaches and empty waves with maybe 4 or 5 people out who shared waves. Generous people, excellent surfers with gracious egos who really knew the meaning of aloha.
In Southern California this is really a tall order. But I did find this utopia occasionally when I arose at four AM and paddled out in the dark. There were freak days at Malibu when there were waves but for some reason not very many people were out and the ones that were, were smiling and sharing waves and having a good time. But this was not the norm. Most of the breaks where crowded and full of angry men of all ages who seem to have an ax to grind with the environment around them. I imagine they are the same people who road rage on Southern California's freeways. With the ever increasing population of women in the lineup I figured that it would mellow things out a bit and it does on some occasions but it does not address the overcrowding of surf spots.
There is no denying that the sport of kings is very in style and the likes of Justin Timberlake, Prince William, Adam Sandler and Ashton Kutcher on the pages of people show just how chic the whole sport has become. But there are two types...People who surf and there are surfers. Not that people who surf have no right to surf or anything but it really clogs up the lineup when people see these celebs in the mags. But it didn't matter anyway. I was getting tired of drop ins and no place to park. I lived in Hollywood because it's just too damn expensive to live at the beach now. Hollywood was ten miles from the beach and ten miles through Los Angeles traffic and all the other driving I did to find surf up and down the coast was taking it's toll not to mention sky rocketing price of gas. That and physical issues that overcame me and I found that I was unable to surf. In a mournful decision I decided to leave Southern California and move to a simpler environment.
One day last summer I was driving across a bridge over the Connecticut River that connects Walpol New Hampshire and Bellows Falls Vermont. I was heading for Vermont and a car heading for New Hampshire passed me on the bridge with a small quiver of Surfboards on the roof. A longboard and a few thrusters. I had just made the move from Southern California to Westminster Vermont about five miles south of Bellows Falls, still in my 1966 beetle with a surf rack and Calif. plates, we shakaed in the middle of the bridge and at first I didn't think anything of it but then it occurred to me suddenly how far the sea was from me, about one hundred miles (that's one hundred miles of two lane highway), and I realized that New England really does have surfers.
I have met surfers here. But it is still an obscure curiosity. I am sure that the Maine Coast has it's share of surfers and from what I have gotten to know about Mainers (people from Maine)...They probably be apt protect their breaks quite diligently. The water is cold even in summer but that never stopped me before. There is also Rode Island, Cap Cod, Long Island, New Jersey and the whole Atlantic coast to the south. My Arthritis is being treated, it seems to be better than it was.
Careful what you wish for...for you just might get it. Finding a lost coast somewhere on the rocky coast of Maine perhaps. Spending large amounts of money for surfing equipment, dealing with New England locals and once again chasing that stoke!