Surf Lessons

My friend, Jim Hill picked me up Sunday morning at 5:30 to go surfing.  Let me back up. I wasn't originally going surfing. I was going to watch Jim surf.  I knew that we were in between two storm fronts, last week's Hurricane Irene and some other storm that was getting ideas and Jim said the waves were tremendous and there were tons of surfers. The Quicksilver Surf Championship was in town and there would be some pros around but I was most curious to see the surf culture that exists a 40 minute subway ride from Manhattan and a half an hour from my house, at the beach The Ramones immortalized in a song I had chanted since I was 15 years old,  Rockaway Beach.


At 6 a.m. we're the first one's there and Jim's disappointed at the waves, I think, in part, because he wanted to share his sport with me and to show me a good time.  Jim's a really good guy and he was there to surf so despite the absence of sizable waves, he suited up and got in the water.  I, on the other hand, took a nap.


I had drank the better part of a tasty bottle of Raisins gaulois the night before, which combined not so well with a night of insomnia due to my anxiety that I would oversleep so I got out of bed with an RWH,  (red wine hangover) the size of the great outdoors. Pounding surf was not going to do anything for my pounding head so I was secretly glad the waves were small because they were quieter.   I  pitched my tent and and fell out on the beach immediately.

Hanging out at Rockaway Beach.

When I woke up the beach was abuzz with surfer regulars and boadwalk on-lookers. I had a neighbor now, who had hung a hammock under the boardwalk and was chatting with another surfer. I walked out on the jetty, parallel to the half-dozen surfers, straddling boards, bobbing  in the water, waiting for something that looked and felt right. Once in a while one of the waves would ask one of the surfers for a date, and the three of them, wave, board and surfer would dance toward the shoreline. It was a friendly and mellow operation. And quiet. Really quiet.  Even though the surfers were floating pretty close to each other, each seemed to be in their own aquatic, meditative reverie.

I noticed a lone female surfer, for no other reason that, unlike the other surfers, she bent her legs when she was paddling and it was a interesting, style-wise, like the surfer who bounced on his board as he started to slow down, to get every last drop of acceleration out of the ride. A style thing.  When Jim took a break, he told me that she'd told him she was retiring her board today. (Apparently surfers DO talk a bit out there!)  

When she got to shore I walked out to her and we started to talk.....turns out this was the the board she had learned on 10 years ago, when she began surfing at 40.  Suzanne waxed poetic about the board, which was duct-taped with love,  with dinks and scratches all over it. She was the only surfer out there whose board didn't have a strap, it having snapped off a while back. She was worried that if she kept surfing on it, it would fall apart before she could hang it as art in her apartment on 103rd street on the Upper West Side.  She asked me if I wanted to have a go at surfing.  


Earlier, Jim had asked me to surf.  I gave him multiple, rapid-fire reasons why I  was happy to watch. I had my glasses on and I'm blind without them and afraid I'd get disoriented.  I'm a swimmer not a surfer.  I didn't have a wet suit bottom.  

But when Suzanne asked me, I said, yes, automatically.  

The last waves for Suzanne and her fist surfboard.

 Who knew that my last weekend of summer would finish with such a kick. I left my thick, black-rimmed glasses on the shore, handed Jim my camera,  directing him to take my picture with the un-apologetic boldness of a reality star and gamboled, yes gamboled gamely into the surf. I am an extremely good swimmer,  swimming over 39 miles and taking a 3 place finish this summer in a 6-week lap swim at my local pool, but truth be told, I am terrified of swimming in the ocean.  But in I went and pretty deep, without fear or apprehension.  So genuinely excited to try something that was clearly way out of my skill-set and, frankly, my interest.  With Suzanne, I was all-in, without  feeling self-doubt, judgement, competitive or a need to perform.   It was gratitude that I mostly felt. 

"Don't think, just do it," advice from a surfer/sage.

I was grateful for this beautiful day.  For an unexpected experience. Grateful  for the friendship of Jim and  the generosity of Suzanne as  I was initiated into their athletic meditation.

Grateful that Suzanne, reflecting on the milestone of the 10 years of her life as a surfer that her board represented, brought me in to her world with an openness and an enthusiasm that made it easy for me to join her, ultimately inviting me to share in her board's last dance. What a soulful gift.

Me and my surf guru.