Teenage Kicks

I finished studying today at around 5 pm and decided I would walk home. I figured I had been sitting inside all day anyway, I could use some fresh air and I am NEVER in a hurry to get back to my apartment. Between the library in my neighborhood and my apartment there is a construction site that is used in the evenings as a local skatepark by skaters from the neighborhood. I usually sit for a spell and watch them skate. Most of them are really good and the site is great. It is various concrete levels with steel edges that seems almost made for grinds.

Anyway I sat for about and hour and it reminded me of a few years back when skaters and freestyle bike riders would gather at the end of Ventura Blvd. in Mission Beach and do tricks until a little after dark. Often me and my friends would hang out there and grab a bite to eat or something. If you were really lucky, and the sandbars were lined up right, you could get a session out in front of the roller coaster and then come in, throw on a sweatshirt and watch the sunset (when they are testing the ballistic missile defense system it lights up the sky in SoCal incredibly).

I gathered myself to finish walking home when...I like the idea of willing myself into action as a process of "gathering," it gets to how fractured I feel. Anyway, almost without volition, I closed my eyes and was found in the middle of a daydream. I was surfing around sunset, and I had just popped into a little left and set a line off the top. It was not big at all, maybe pushing chest-high, and a not too fast but standing up enough that you could get some speed. So I set a line off the top and didn't make a bottom turn, I just started pumping hard right off the take-off. The wave had a crumbly section at about 15 yards and I hit it just right to cutback in time to hit the lip backside as the wave was closing. Then I tucked and punched through to paddle out for the next wave.

It must have been PB cause it was so crumbly and sectioned so quickly (and it was a dream of course, PB would have sectioned off at 5-10 yds!)...The whole thing lasted less than a minute and I could actually feel the wave as if it were real. I even had the residual stoke of having just ridden a wave well.

Surfing stoke is almost all about after the wave cause there is never enough time to think while you are riding the wave. You definately feel though while riding the wave and that feeling is like nothing else in the world. But stoke, well stoke is derived from the reflection on the wave as a whole combined with a recollection of the feel.

You think about how you will ride it just before, as you are paddling in. You go over quickly how the waves have been breaking that day, where the sections are popping up and how crisp they are. Do you have enough time, or is the wave breaking right, to to lay out a full bottom-turn or should you just start downline off the top? Maybe its super-hollow and fast and you should just airdrop into a stall and catch the barrel right away.

Should you float the section or hit it, maybe even try and pop a little air or just fly-out over the back...is it hollow? Can you backdoor a little barrel, get shacked for a second or two?

Then you see who is with you. Is someone paddling in closer to the peak or below you? Should you call them off? If its your buddy you usually get in a little friendly ribbing as you take him/her to task for the wave. If its not your buddy a hostile whistle or some, not so subtle, nastiness may be in order depending on how things have been up to that point.

So you have a plan and you go. Then there is the often mid-wave change of plan (the whole thing is a considered improvisation really)...is someone paddling through? Maybe you should bring it right up to them and snap it at the last second to shower them with water...this is always recommended if its your friend. Think quick! Is this guy paddling through the same guy who has been snaking you and dropping in all day? Sometimes you have to take one for the team and run the board right over them, which will certainly break your board, but it will also drive home a point that needs to be made (especially if its summertime and this kook is some yahoo tourist).

So you're finished...this is when you get a sec to think and the stoke really wells up. Its best if you just got a really rad ride and your buddies or the rest of the guys in the line-up saw and they share your stoke. Collective stoke has a cumulative effect on everyone involved. Sometimes you have some unsettled business with the jerk who just dropped in on you and its necessary to make a bee-line for them to either return the favor or make a comment, maybe two.

After the little daydream I got to thinking that if things "work out" I will be 26 years old the next time I ride a wave! Man, that brings about a mountain of ambivalence.

On a last note...along with "collective stoke" there is a collective drag. I remember a not-so-good junky sesh with my buddy Pher in PB where he took off on a right into the pier. You could not see him cause the waves were overhead. Then I see his board shoot up into the air (brand new board, like a couple days old I think) and wrap around one of the support columns under the pier. There was a simultaneous "oh man" from me and the other guys in the line up that day. This also reminds me of the time that Pher broke another board on an absolutely killer, heavy and hollow day at K-58 in Mexico. We sat for what seemed like four hours afterwards, and I watched him torment over whether or not he should bring the two halves back to California (it was probably only one hour, in Mexico time slows down about 4x as long as it normally is). Finally, in a fit of disgust he stuck the board remains in the trash can and we loaded the van to head back to the states...