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!