My Time as a Human

Surfer’s log: day 2.

He was probably in his mid thirties, broad shoulders strengthened by paddling, a head of sun bleached blond hair and the light heart of a ten year old. He waved to his girl and sprinted out into the ocean with his board in hand, diving right into the crashing breakers and paddling his way out like the ruthless, brutal ocean that had been pounding us was his childhood playground and lifelong best friend. He almost immediately took a wave, whipping and carving across its surface like he was dancing in air. After several rides he popped up out of the water with a huge grin and enthusiastically bounded up to his girlfriend. She sat patiently knitting on the beach, her hands continuing to knit and purl as she looked up to give him a smile, having accepted her role as second love long ago.

To become a surfer I have to learn to love the ocean as he does. I have to learn to know my body rolling and tumbling beneath the waves as an embrace. I have to swallow the saltwater, grin and lick my lips. As the waves hit my face or send me sprawling, this is the playful shove of an old friend, and I need to come up grinning.

We spent today working our way through the beginner process of walking out and riding whitewater back in. Whitewater is the gurgling mush that is left over just after the wave breaks and is the easiest to catch and ride. There isn’t a lot of power left, but it’s enough to stand up on a large board and make a few attempts to turn before gliding onto the beach.

As the sun worked its way out to sea I felt like I was getting up faster and more consistently and Margaret was right there with me. We kept edging further and further out, catching the whitewater closer to the break where it would be stronger. When at last the sun was swallowed up we were strolling back with our huge boards on our heads like proud Indian women, filled with the contentment and satisfaction only an intense day of focused work can bring.

We had just enough energy left to peel off our rubbery wet suit skins and start the drive back along one of California’s ubiquitous eight lane highways, in this case the 5 bound for San Diego. Already I was wearing nothing but shorts, shades, and a thin layer of saltwater. Our conversation consisted primarily of single word pronouncements about the day as we slowly panned our orbs over the palm trees rolling by. “Sweet.” “Nice.”

As part of our secondary mission to consume as much ocean food as possible, we’d already had amazing fresh .99 cent fish tacos from a nearby shack. Today Aviva texted us to a Thai place for a mountain of mouth buzzing, forehead sweatening, zappingly hot Thai curried seafood. The muscles were astounding. I’m so happy that the ocean produces such delicious fuel for the riding of its waves.

Sleep came swiftly and was most welcome.

Surfer’s log. Day 1.

In fear of the swarming, beer toting fourth of July crowds we gave ourselves plenty of time to get lost finding the beach for our first surf lesson. As it turns out, alcohol was banned on all San Diego beaches starting last year. At 9:00 AM the only people heading down the long wooden steps were slinging planks, their wetsuit arms dangling and swinging from their waists like rubbery appendages.

Our fearless guide was an old surfer who’d probably been hit by one too many waves. He was having a bum day and spent the pauses between instructions semi-coherently muttering about his incompetent employees, one of whom wore a hat with his competition’s logo. He called her on it and she grudgingly stuffed it into a bag.

He explained the various dangers to us, including the dreaded sting of the sting ray. “If you do manage to get stung by one, well, we have a hot pad. Actually, that happened just last week. And the damned hot pad wouldn’t work. You know you’ve got to crack that little thing inside it so that it heats up and… well anyway, it wasn’t working and the kid was in a lot of pain so we called the lifeguards. Of course, they never showed up. This year we’ve got the most damned incompetent bunch of lifeguards I’ve ever seen. That’s the last thing you need. Incompetent lifeguards. Anyway, try not to get stung. But if you do, well, I guess we’ve still got that hot pad.”

Thus reassured that all would be well, we practiced a few rounds of jumping into position on the beach and then hauled our massive foam boards to the water. These surfboards were so huge and floatacious that they pretty much rode themselves. All of our paddling probably did little more than confuse the situation. Because they were so stable, we were actually hopping up onto the boards pretty quickly and the challenge became all about staying up once we’d made the clumsy leap into position.

By the end of the lesson, around 1:00 PM, we were having a blast and starting to feel that elusive sense of control dangling just beyond our reach, our fingers touching it in little moments of thrilling ecstasy. The inevitable wipeout that followed would leave me writhing and struggling to the surface, blowing out saltwater as fast as I could to make way for shouts of delight.

We began eagerly bargaining for rental deals on equipment and our instructor agreed to let out our wetsuits and two boards for the week. We went back to his trailer, grabbed two nine foot foam boards, and scribbled the total amount on the back of one of his release forms. “Oops. Who was this for? Oh well, now you have his address. Here, I’ll add a phone number. Whatever.” We loaded the boards into the back of the van, where they fit perfectly, proving Bebe to once again be the ultimate road vehicle.

“You can pay me now. Or at the end of the week. I don’t care. You look trustworthy. You’re hippies. Sorta. If I’m not here just leave the boards by the trailer and put the money…” he looked around. There were piles of debris stacked in front of the tarp draped between his trailer and the tiny shed that held the boards and wetsuits. He lifted up a milk crate filled with cans of spray paint and a yellowed cardboard milk carton labeled, “Dog and cat repellent. The best available for the prevention of accumulating animal waste. Remove all solid waste before applying the product.”

“Here. Yeah, leave it here. You just, you know, look around, nobody looking, and then slip it under here.”

We thanked him and headed straight back to the beach. This time we stripped down to just our wetsuits and boards, bringing only a bottle of water and car keys. We didn’t even wear sandals for the walk across the pavement. This time we had to walk quite a ways along the beach to avoid all of the surfers and children that had started to fill the water, but eventually found a clear spot to make mistakes. We rode and rode and rode. It was very much like learning to ride a unicycle. Every tiny perceived breakthrough lead to a rush of insistent energy pushing me back out into the pounding waves to try again. Even though I was using a big foam beginner board and riding the cruft near the shore, I was already feeling like a hero every time I stood up and felt myself flying toward the land, the engine of the wave a massive force that I, a tiny insignificant being, could tap for my own amusement.

After four more hours of riding we finally decided it would be better to wrap up and save some energy for the rest of the week. We met up with my friend Aviva Stand-Luebke and her crew at a sweet beach house near Ocean Beach. After a grilled feast we wandered to the beach that had been covered with blankets and people as far as we could see. The fireworks started north of us and were visible to our right, then fireworks displays started at the end of the pier in front of us and to our left in Mexico. With each particularly bright explosion over the water, I could make out a cloud of little black dots floating on the ocean’s surface: dozens of surfers in wetsuits who had paddled out for the view.

Just before the fire show cleared the sky Aviva stuffed my hands with more marshmallows than I could possibly eat and my puzzled face was suddenly pounded by a hailstorm of squishy white blobs as the whole crowd exploded in a massive marshmallow fight. What can I say. For today: go America!

Somewhere in 1959 Americans discovered that kids had been standing on long blocks of wood in the water and using waves to propel them back to the shore. The movie Gidget sold the idea and suddenly there were bands and fans and a culture of wave riding that lives on today. Rolled up with beautiful weather and cinematic technicolor in the sushi roll we call the “California”, this mix has been the dream for Americans ever since.

Beer is not quite yet cheaper than gas, but that may only be true in Texas. America was once a land roamed freely by bands of teenagers in old vans but soon their explorations may well be confined to the internets.

This is it. A brief moment in time. A last chance. From central Texas comes a wild dive to surf the last wave of petrol before it stops flowing forever:

The Last American Road Trip

Margaret Heyn and I will load up my 1995 Honda van and easily roll it to 250,000 miles on a breakneck launch into the American Dream. We will drive to the coast, take surfing lessons and then surf like crazed water borne monkeys until our triumphant return in one week as bronzed surf gods. We will arrive just in time for a large festival of celebration for my friend Anderson’s obtaining of a doctorate and Margaret’s first days in medical school.

We’ve rented all the classic surf films and are watching them until we pass out.

The mission begins today, Wednesday July 2, at 8:00 AM central standard time.

There is an aesthetic to European cities that arrises from an ethos very different than that found in America. At it’s core this belief system includes the ideas that people have value, the community of people has value, and quality is more important than quantity or size. I definitely found this in Montreal.

Buildings in European style cities are things of beauty on the outside. They are designed to be appealing to people walking around outside of the structures, who may not even be involved in the commerce taking place inside and yet somehow deserve respect. Kunstler talks a lot about this, actually.

There were huge parts of the city designated as walking zones, as though people were as important as cars. There were also generous bike lanes throughout the city and at night, a collection of bikes lined the fronts of every house we passed. Public parks were plentiful and seemed to regularly host music and art events, including drag races where men dressed in drag competed in drink carrying and torch song events.

I felt like people’s health had value too. Not only did everyone have healthcare, but there were massive open markets of vegetables and fruits, as though people still ate them instead of fast food. The majority of humans I saw around me were striking in that they were their original shapes and sizes, as though they got exercise and ate reasonable portions of something other than corn syrup and fat.

When I later traveled west to Ottawa, the situation quickly reversed itself again. While I didn’t immerse myself quite as much in the city there, I was amazed to watch everyone grow several sizes. The stores followed suit, becoming gigantic box chains like Home Depot and Circuit City as though I had suddenly warped back to any suburb in the U.S.

Montreal was wonderful and the Montreal Jazz Fest was teasing me with great acts and flirting with me through beautiful posters. Fortunately, I came prepared and I was hip to this city’s game. I knew full well that if I stayed any longer the tiny window of livable weather would vanish in a white cloud of snow. Once it had trapped me the winds would tear me apart and even though I can’t read Celsius, thirty degrees below zero is thirty degrees below zero! (In fact, at that temperature it’s actually true that -30F = -34C!)

So in my short visit I danced around with my friend Heather Kelley, munching on a delicious loaf of Spelt bread from a shop that only made bread. We stopped to eat samples of peaches, apricots, berries and tomatoes at the market. We sat at an outdoor cafe while a group of musicians spontaneously formed to sing with guitars, passerby of all ages stopping to join in on familiar songs. We met a man selling bags made of recycled materials, his new business after meeting a lovely French woman while world traveling who dragged him up to Canada to be married. I found Go stones in Chinatown. I saw French hipsters packed into a cafe to watch an old black man sing the blues. I wondered at one way streets that suddenly changed direction throughout the day.

I might not be able to afford the snow boots to live there, but I may very well make the trip up again to sample the summer buffet, all the more rich and full for it’s brevity!