I am not a surfer.

Head high to 1-3′ overhead, a touch of sideshore wind and only light texture. Sounded good enough for me, so I made the short trip down to Linda Mar this morning for my first session since moving to San Francisco. Was it my worst day in the water? That’s a tough one – there are plenty of contenders for that title – but it had to be close.

I should have known in the parking lot. First of all, the surf wasn’t head high, and the standouts were mostly closed out. Whatever, I didn’t strap a board to the roof of my car and drive all that way for nothing. Ominous foreshadowing event #1: Being the coldwater noob that I am, I put my wetsuit on backwards (EDIT: I have a step-in, which means no telltale zipper down the back – I’m not that much of a kook). *sigh* Instead of putting it back in the car and driving off like I should have, I put it back on, the right way this time, and trotted down to the beach, sans boots and hood (this will become important later).

While I was standing on the beach looking at the surf, a kid putting on his leash eyed my wetsuit and started up a conversation.

Grom: Hey, is that the O’Neill Mutant?
TheKook: Yep, well spotted.
Grom: I didn’t know they came in that color.
TheKook: They do in North Carolina.
Grom: Oh, really? North Carolina’s a little warmer than this, huh?
TheKook: Depends on the time of year. Winter’s about like this.
Grom: Well, it’s gonna get a whole lot worse.

Ominous foreshadowing event #2. Thanks, kid.

Seeing exactly zero surfers without boots, and only a couple without hoods, I trotted back to the car and pulled out the boots, but left the hood. Poor decision.

About fifty yards from shore, with no real channel to speak of, the breakers started to hit. Five minutes later – spent paddling against crumbly mess that I would’ve laughed at when I was in shape – I looked to my right and saw three surfers walking their boards through the shorebreak. I slid off the board to find that I had been struggling to make it out in three and a half feet of water. Ominous foreshadowing event #3.

Walking fifty yards further out only quickened the end. I ducked my head three times in the five minutes that followed, and instantly regretted it each time. “Ice cream headache” doesn’t really do it justice. Three turtle rolls and I’d had enough: I turned the board around and headed back to shore, having been in the water all of 12 minutes.

I remember talking to someone about surfing in North Carolina in winter, who said “Wetsuits are so awesome now, it’s like the temperature doesn’t even matter.” No sir, wetsuits are not awesome. You know what’s awesome? Rolling up to the parking lot in boardshorts and being in the lineup five minutes later. You know what else is awesome? Taking a dunk between sets to cool off, because it’s a hot day.

Maybe I’d feel differently if I’d worn the hood. Maybe. Right now, though, I’d like to think my mama raised a boy with enough common sense to stay out of the ocean when it’s that goddamn cold. Fuck. That.

I took the morning off last Monday and went to Wrightsville Beach with King Charles (hereafter, “KC”), a friend and co-worker of my brother’s. It was the first time I’d been in rideable waves with the new Ted Kearns 6’3″; and two short, uncomfortable hours in the water confirmed a few things:

• I am woefully out of paddling shape.
• I am a terrible surfer even when I’m in shape.
• I say I’m a terrible surfer mostly because if I was in a situation with even mildly treacherous surf, where I needed to ride my supposedly-very-easy-to-ride hybrid fish to safety, you would hear about my death on the news. I would be the guy who had a buoyant foam conveyance at his disposal and still died. Of incompetence. You would talk about me with disdain among your friends for weeks, until the conversation turned to Britney Spears’ bald head and probable meth addiction.

It’s a good thing that I realize I’ve only been surfing for a year and a half, and that learning to ride a shortboard is going to take time and a lot of effort, or I might chuck it all in. I don’t believe I’ve said on this blog that I’m moving to San Francisco, but that is indeed the case, and it’s going to be cold. I’d love to at least be able to ride the board I’m taking (I’ve all but decided not to leave it in North Carolina), but whatever. To get good at something you have to be willing to suck at the beginning.

The cold is going to make for a difficult adjustment. Towards the end of the session, I was struggling to get back out – arms reduced to the approximate strength of a malnourished third world orphan – and I took a flush of water down my front as I duck-dived. I wasn’t previously aware that my testicles were capable of speech, but, God as my witness, I heard them yelp. Thankfully, when I got out to the lineup, KC was shivering on his board. He went to check his watch and stopped halfway to his wrist, in a gesture that said “to hell with the watch, ‘time to go’ is ‘time to go,’” and so we agreed to catch one in and call it a morning.

Luckily, the trip was still pretty enjoyable. KC a) drove, b) didn’t make fun of me in the water and c) took me to his family’s palatial beach house, which has more square footage than the sum total of every apartment I’ve ever rented. He also told me a load of stories from his and my brother’s office, that I’m convinced are worthy of a sitcom, and I will be writing a pilot in the near future.

I leave for San Francisco in about two, two and a half weeks. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get down to the coast more than twice while I was here in NC, but then again, it’s a three hour drive. I’m still a kook. I have my limits.

I drove down to Kill Devil Hills on Saturday to pick up my North Carolina quiver (meaning, the one board I ordered from TK Shapes, a 6’3″ fish hybrid). Ted Kearns, the shaper, turned out to be a great guy, and as it happens, he’s moving in the opposite direction, to the Big Island. Guess that’s the end of my plan to support the Outer Banks surfing economy.

I didn’t own a wetsuit before this weekend, so Ted sent me to The Pit, where Steve The Owner sold me a wetsuit with a zip-on, zip-off hood, as well as a pair of booties. Steve’s a great guy too – if you’re ever in need of gear or clothing in KDH, pay him a visit.

As luck would have it, there was nothing in the water on Saturday, with the only prospect of ripples in Rodanthe, which was too much of a drive on top of what was already a six hour roundtrip journey. But I wasn’t going to drive all that way and not get in the water, especially with a new board in the car. So I wiggled a bar of wax over the deck and got ready to paddle out on Lake Atlantic. Small problem: after I put on the wetsuit, I went to put on the booties and discovered that I had one less right foot than I needed. I only tried on the right one in the store, and didn’t realize that there wasn’t a left in the box. *sigh*

So I paddled out bootie-less. And hood-less. I will stop here to say that the O’Neill Mutant wetsuit absolutely rules beyond belief, at least in comparison to the wetsuits I’ve worn in the past. I was only out there for 30-45 minutes, but my feet went almost completely numb, every turtle roll was such a shock to my head that I was ready to change religions if it would help, and my hands were inarticulate and rubbery, but my torso was fine and my underwear was still dry in spots when I got out. Kudos, O’Neill, you have won a life-long customer.

Anyway, for all my moaning, it wasn’t that bad. I’ll be heading down again, and I’m really excited to actually ride the board, having seen this weekend that it paddles as well or better than the 6’9″ Johnston I left in Honolulu.

[Photos here tomorrow]

Actually, it made more of a ‘whump’ sound.

First things first: back in the days of the dotcom boom, there was a far-too-prevalent phenomenon that I’ll refer to as the Timesheet Pissing Contest. It usually went something like this:

Worker A: What’s up, man? You look tired.
Worker B: I pulled an all-nighter last night. You know the stuff for the thing with the today-ish deadline? Yeah, came right down to the wire, but, you know, had to get it done.
Worker A: You’re the man! I totally hear you, bro, I clocked 63 hours last week and I am beat.
Worker B: That’s awesome, dude. I’m up to 52 hours this week myself, so with tomorrow and Friday… that’s going to be one hell of a week.
Worker A: Yeah, gotta take care of business, you know?

Notice that there is no mention of what was accomplished in that ludicrous amount of time, nor is there an explanation of why the all-nighter was necessary. That’s the Timesheet Pissing Contest – I work more/harder than you – which misses the point of doing the work in the first place.

I will shamefacedly admit that I worked some of those nights and weeks, and I said some of those things. As time went on, however, I found conversations like this more and more ridiculous. To me, the need to pull an all-nighter indicates some grave failing earlier on in the project. Similarly, an occasional heavy work week is almost unavoidable in my experience, but if every work week is heavy, the company in question needs to hire additional staff, or else it’s tantamount to employee abuse, in my opinion.

Anyway. The upshot is that your capacity to exhaust yourself for the cause isn’t important. Getting things done is.

I think a similar logic applies to surfing injuries. We’re not talking about badges of honor here. They are material evidence that you made a mistake (possibly a very stupid one), and the severity of the injury = the cost of your surfing education. So rest assured that I’m not proud of Wednesday night’s session with SurfYoda, but I’m tired of taking shit for not posting, so here we are.

On SurfYoda’s hunch, we went to Big Lefts (Ala Moana). Head high surf, a little over on the standouts, and pretty clean conditions. I caught a couple of good ones, for me anyway, and ended up getting caught inside for a set. After a long rest outside, I started to paddle for one and realized I was going to miss it, so I sat up and turned around. Helloooooo, cleanup wave. I scratched as hard as I could to get over it, and the nose of my board was about two feet from the lip when it broke. I shoved the board through the lip and kicked my feet, popping my head out the back, which begat the following thought: “Fuck yeah, I made it! Ah… shitIdidn’tmakeitf$%#@*#&@^@%%@&@…” And over the falls I went.

My hands were halfway to my head when the board smacked me in the face. It wasn’t a sharp pain, so I thought I’d gotten away with it, but after ten seconds or so in the washing machine, I surfaced, felt my forehead and drew back just a bit of blood. Any blood in the water is enough for me to call it a day, and I’ll spare you the details of how I got bounced off the reef on the way in.

It’s nothing to be proud of. Here’s your blog post, hope you vultures are happy.

Having recently watched the Pipeline Masters DVD, I’ve realized something about surfing Pipe (or, more accurately, me surfing Pipe): it’s a crack smoker’s delusion. There is no way I’m paddling out there. The underwater shots of the reef alone are enough to keep me on the shore, but after watching guys like Rob Machado, Kelly Slater, et al talking about getting hit in the head by the lip, knocked out, being a foot from the surface but not being able to get up to it to breathe… No thank you. I’ll take 1-2′ Kewalo’s and be quite happy.

What spurred the purchase of the Pipeline Masters DVD? Funny you should ask. A couple of weeks ago, I drove out to Aina Haina for dawn patrol with Sing Sing and another friend (we’ll call him Seconds, because apparently this guy loves second reef Pipe – no, really). They were going to check a few spots first, so if I didn’t see them there, the plan was to call Seconds’ cell phone. Problem: I left his number at home. Whatever, I saw there were waves, so I stayed at Aina Haina and paddled out.

About 45 minutes into the session, the other guys in the lineup got kind of excited, and as one guy paddled back after a wave, he passed two old guys on huge longboards, paddling on their knees. Once he was in earshot, I heard him say “It’s him!” I said to the guy next to me, “Did I hear you say that was…” To which he replied, “Yeah brah, das Mistah Pipe-LINE!” And so it was that I had the privilege of seeing Gerry Lopez surf from about ten feet away.

To say that he was the best surfer in the water doesn’t really do it justice. He’s easily the most fluid, most graceful, most comfortable in the water, most everything surfer I’ve ever seen. Even more so than the pros at the Op Pro in Haleiwa last winter. And he’s 57. Let’s hear it for yoga and vegetarianism.

So anyway, my stoke is at all-time levels after that session, as you might imagine, especially since it was an accident that I was surfing there that morning. I told the story to my friend Leetle, who then casually dropped that she’s gone surfing with Lopez a number of times. (Cue sound of balloon popping, flying around room.) Then again, her husband was one of the first designers at Quiksilver back in the day, so I guess I should have expected it.

Still way stoked about surfing with Gerry Lopez in the water. Still not going out at Pipeline. Ever.

Or at least, not a very prolific one. I guess, as one of the two readers of this blog, you’ve figured that out by now. Bear with me, I’m going to try to rectify that.

In the spirit of past grand plans for this site, a redesign is coming, along with a conversion to WordPress (currently using Movable Type) and possibly a move to a new server.

Regardless of the technical issues, I’m going to expand the scope of this blog beyond just surfing. In the past two or three months, I’ve begun to feel like I’m finally at the point where I can just go surfing, as opposed to having to go learning to surf. I’m not claiming any level of competency, but I routinely lose track of how many waves I get, and I now enjoy making a big drop (for me), even if I know the wave’s going to close out and the drop is all there’s going to be. So sessions tend to blend into each other and things rarely stand out in my memory as blog-worthy.

Hence, in comes the rest of my life: The Dukes of Hazzard in Bulgaria, for example, or my tips on how not to play soccer with a billionaire. It’s coming, I promise.