Learning to surf - Part 1
I came to Hawaii for two weeks in the early Eighties. Surfing was a non-subject. It was so far from my realm that it didn't exist. It wasn't as if I had watched surfers and thought that I could or couldn't do it, I simply didn't see it. We water skied, (on the ocean, Danny still does). We sailed on the Hobie, we partied and traveled in packs.
Many of my old Aspen best friends ended up in Hawaii. All on Maui in Lahaina before a gradual dispersion took place over many years. Nancy has been on Kauai for twenty years. Karen lived on the big island a long time and is now on the mainland doing an extended R.V. assisted travel session. Donna is in Paris. Tim? Bruce is currently in Aruba. He lived in Taos, Sonoma, Vail and other places. Majic is on the 'Other Side'. And of course the unofficial leader of our loosely defined gang, Danny, still lives in Lahaina. Oh yeah, and Moose lives up north in Kahana.
We functioned as a group. Just like in Aspen. But in Hawaii the laid-back island attitude had particularly infected my gang. Hence the unofficial, never written down, but still known moniker nonetheless. I was a visiting member of The Slow Dumb Gang. We also sometimes called ourselves, Club Foot.
The S.D.G. was all funny and overly appropriate. After the fourth day of not actually getting out of the house till well after noon, and doing nothing of significance once we did, I became privately frustrated. Significant in the 'I'm in Hawaii for the first time aren't we supposed to go snorkeling or up Haleakala or something type of tourist activity' significant.
Of course, the stumbling around town in our tattered young group of friends looking for a place that serves breakfast late and booze early to 'hair 'o the dog' our perpetual hang overs is ultimately much more memorable and significant. I mean, how lucky?
We were all pulled to Aspen at the same time from different places for different reasons with different plans. We became instant life long friends sharing those two apartments, #615 and #625 stacked on top of each other in Silver King. We lived out of both places. I as often as not climbed up the outside of the building and came into #625 over the deck rather than used the stairs. Nobody said anything. It was just StevO.
Nancy was from Minnesota. Danny, Florida. Bruce and Jimmy, Connecticut. Richie Boy from N.J. Lucy and Barbara Sue grew up in Aspen. Krazy Kenny from Texas. Johnny D. from N.Y.C. Annie C. from eastern Canada. Donna-wanna from Conn. Majik from R.I. Juan N.M. Chevy? No idea. Ralph and The Good Doctor D? No idea. Shelfish, So Cal. Etc. and I'm omitting a lot.
And now here some of us were, wandering the coveted lanes of Lahaina. So, as I said, I didn't even see surfers then.
I came to Lahaina again for two weeks in the late eighties/early nineties. I think I was on my way to New Zealand that time. Never made it past Lahaina. On my thirteenth day out of fourteen, I took a surf lesson. I saw this guy lounging on the beach next to a bunch of huge soft surfboards. It was the morning, we agreed that I would come back at 4 for an 2 hour private.
During that day, we went to Baby Beach (no longer there) To play Frisbee. At that time I was still newly half deaf, having crashed my bicycle on Main Street in Aspen a few years earlier and used my head as a slowing down device. The beach Frisbee sessions are great, diving catches into the eighty degree ocean. It was the 'Locals' beach and Danny even kept the sailboat there. I was in the zone. As I lunged prone horizontal to the water, I could hear my friends' hoots and hollers. I couldn't make out the words with my one good ear. It wouldn't have mattered anyway as I was already air borne. I could only assume that this was a spectacular leap and hey, I caught it! At the same instant my fingers clutched the disk, I hit the water. But, I also hit the shoal at the same, same time. I bounced off of it the way football players sometimes bounce off the field wrapped around the ball. I gained a pretty accurate relief map of the surface of the shoal on my torso. A big circular abrasion bloomed nicely across my chest. I was also pink from a couple weeks of Hawaii sun.
I showed up for my lesson. A skinny white, I mean, pink boy with a red, soon-to-scab 'drawing' of a shoal across my bony frame. Just to make absolutely sure that it was obvious that I was an totally clueless beginner, he had me put on a pair of white too-big-for-me sneakers before we went in the water at the Break wall with these ridiculous boards. They were highly buoyant. If you couldn't stand up on one of these, just give it up and go the the bowling alley.
Well, I 'got up' yes I 'caught a wave'. It didn't really look like a wave. It looked to me more like a small amount of softly frothing foam running up toward the beach being pushed shoreward by a whole lot of nothing.
The next day I flew home and didn't return to Hawaii till October 2001. Three weeks after 9-11 I flew to Hawaii and stayed for a month. I didn't remember to go try to surf.
Spring of '05 I went to Costa Rica for 2 weeks with my friend Halsey. Halsey wasn't interested in taking lessons or renting one of those big stupid looking boards. We wandered into a hut and rented a couple cool looking surfboards. We proceeded to get pleasantly pummeled for the next several days.
After two days of near death, no breath experiences this stunning girl came walking toward me as I rested and turned pink on the beach. I thought I finally must be getting good at swimming into big waves, getting knocked back further than where I started and doing it over and over till I finally was somewhere beyond the breakers and could finally focus on never even once getting up on the board, and she was coming over to tell me how fast I'm learning.
She sat down, didn't look at me but pointed out to the waves. She said, 'You should swim out over there where there are less breakers, it's a lot easier.' I was elated that someone had been watching progress'. She left. That was it. It helped immensely, I proceeded to get out past the breakers much more quickly and was lucky enough to not catch significantly more waves that I wouldn't have caught without her help. I did end up catching one wave long enough to think 'Wow, I'm ...' then I crashed and realized that the board had even turned slightly under my feet for me.
After 5 days of this we returned our boards and walked away up the northwest oriented beach, never to return. We eventually walked, hitch-hiked and stumbled all the way to Nicaragua and went to the island of Omotepe in Lake Nicaragua. Another story, another time.
From then till this time, I told people about how I 'caught a wave'. I was quick to point out that I was talking in the singular here. I hadn't been catching waves . . . rather, I caught a wave. But that's not the case anymore.
Many of my old Aspen best friends ended up in Hawaii. All on Maui in Lahaina before a gradual dispersion took place over many years. Nancy has been on Kauai for twenty years. Karen lived on the big island a long time and is now on the mainland doing an extended R.V. assisted travel session. Donna is in Paris. Tim? Bruce is currently in Aruba. He lived in Taos, Sonoma, Vail and other places. Majic is on the 'Other Side'. And of course the unofficial leader of our loosely defined gang, Danny, still lives in Lahaina. Oh yeah, and Moose lives up north in Kahana.
We functioned as a group. Just like in Aspen. But in Hawaii the laid-back island attitude had particularly infected my gang. Hence the unofficial, never written down, but still known moniker nonetheless. I was a visiting member of The Slow Dumb Gang. We also sometimes called ourselves, Club Foot.
The S.D.G. was all funny and overly appropriate. After the fourth day of not actually getting out of the house till well after noon, and doing nothing of significance once we did, I became privately frustrated. Significant in the 'I'm in Hawaii for the first time aren't we supposed to go snorkeling or up Haleakala or something type of tourist activity' significant.
Of course, the stumbling around town in our tattered young group of friends looking for a place that serves breakfast late and booze early to 'hair 'o the dog' our perpetual hang overs is ultimately much more memorable and significant. I mean, how lucky?
We were all pulled to Aspen at the same time from different places for different reasons with different plans. We became instant life long friends sharing those two apartments, #615 and #625 stacked on top of each other in Silver King. We lived out of both places. I as often as not climbed up the outside of the building and came into #625 over the deck rather than used the stairs. Nobody said anything. It was just StevO.
Nancy was from Minnesota. Danny, Florida. Bruce and Jimmy, Connecticut. Richie Boy from N.J. Lucy and Barbara Sue grew up in Aspen. Krazy Kenny from Texas. Johnny D. from N.Y.C. Annie C. from eastern Canada. Donna-wanna from Conn. Majik from R.I. Juan N.M. Chevy? No idea. Ralph and The Good Doctor D? No idea. Shelfish, So Cal. Etc. and I'm omitting a lot.
And now here some of us were, wandering the coveted lanes of Lahaina. So, as I said, I didn't even see surfers then.
I came to Lahaina again for two weeks in the late eighties/early nineties. I think I was on my way to New Zealand that time. Never made it past Lahaina. On my thirteenth day out of fourteen, I took a surf lesson. I saw this guy lounging on the beach next to a bunch of huge soft surfboards. It was the morning, we agreed that I would come back at 4 for an 2 hour private.
During that day, we went to Baby Beach (no longer there) To play Frisbee. At that time I was still newly half deaf, having crashed my bicycle on Main Street in Aspen a few years earlier and used my head as a slowing down device. The beach Frisbee sessions are great, diving catches into the eighty degree ocean. It was the 'Locals' beach and Danny even kept the sailboat there. I was in the zone. As I lunged prone horizontal to the water, I could hear my friends' hoots and hollers. I couldn't make out the words with my one good ear. It wouldn't have mattered anyway as I was already air borne. I could only assume that this was a spectacular leap and hey, I caught it! At the same instant my fingers clutched the disk, I hit the water. But, I also hit the shoal at the same, same time. I bounced off of it the way football players sometimes bounce off the field wrapped around the ball. I gained a pretty accurate relief map of the surface of the shoal on my torso. A big circular abrasion bloomed nicely across my chest. I was also pink from a couple weeks of Hawaii sun.
I showed up for my lesson. A skinny white, I mean, pink boy with a red, soon-to-scab 'drawing' of a shoal across my bony frame. Just to make absolutely sure that it was obvious that I was an totally clueless beginner, he had me put on a pair of white too-big-for-me sneakers before we went in the water at the Break wall with these ridiculous boards. They were highly buoyant. If you couldn't stand up on one of these, just give it up and go the the bowling alley.
Well, I 'got up' yes I 'caught a wave'. It didn't really look like a wave. It looked to me more like a small amount of softly frothing foam running up toward the beach being pushed shoreward by a whole lot of nothing.
The next day I flew home and didn't return to Hawaii till October 2001. Three weeks after 9-11 I flew to Hawaii and stayed for a month. I didn't remember to go try to surf.
Spring of '05 I went to Costa Rica for 2 weeks with my friend Halsey. Halsey wasn't interested in taking lessons or renting one of those big stupid looking boards. We wandered into a hut and rented a couple cool looking surfboards. We proceeded to get pleasantly pummeled for the next several days.
After two days of near death, no breath experiences this stunning girl came walking toward me as I rested and turned pink on the beach. I thought I finally must be getting good at swimming into big waves, getting knocked back further than where I started and doing it over and over till I finally was somewhere beyond the breakers and could finally focus on never even once getting up on the board, and she was coming over to tell me how fast I'm learning.
She sat down, didn't look at me but pointed out to the waves. She said, 'You should swim out over there where there are less breakers, it's a lot easier.' I was elated that someone had been watching progress'. She left. That was it. It helped immensely, I proceeded to get out past the breakers much more quickly and was lucky enough to not catch significantly more waves that I wouldn't have caught without her help. I did end up catching one wave long enough to think 'Wow, I'm ...' then I crashed and realized that the board had even turned slightly under my feet for me.
After 5 days of this we returned our boards and walked away up the northwest oriented beach, never to return. We eventually walked, hitch-hiked and stumbled all the way to Nicaragua and went to the island of Omotepe in Lake Nicaragua. Another story, another time.
From then till this time, I told people about how I 'caught a wave'. I was quick to point out that I was talking in the singular here. I hadn't been catching waves . . . rather, I caught a wave. But that's not the case anymore.
posted by Steve-O at 8:57 PM
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