How surfing changed my world
When I meet someone it usually doesn’t take long before the subject of surfing comes up in conversation. This is often because I am so excited about an upcoming surf trip, or still stoked from a recent wave strike that I can’t help but wear my stoke on my sleeve, which I will never apologize for. It is my feeling that if more people could find stoke in their life and become a few shades less jaded, the world would be a kinder place.
Most people react in a similar fashion, expressing their disbelief that I could live two hours away from the ocean and maintain the passion and motivation to surf as much as possible. At this point, I explain how I grew up on Long Island and discovered surfing one fine summer day in the Hamptons tagging along with my mom to visit her friend at her oceanfront beach house. It was August 1990, and I was an awkward 14-year-old tagging along with mom because I didn’t want to sit at home all day by myself; the beach sounded like the better option. I packed up my Morey Boogeyboard™, fins, and other beach accouterments and we hit the road. Little did I know that my young life would fork off in a direction I never anticipated or even contemplated.
Until then, I had mostly used the bodyboard to muck around in the shorebreak on family trips to the beach in the summertime. If I had seen a surfer on Long Island before that day it certainly didn’t register in my consciousness. In my fourteen-year-old mind, surfing wasn’t really a thing on Long Island, it just didn’t seem to receive the waves like I’d seen in pictures of California, Hawaii and other places with an established reputation and surf culture.
Cresting the dune at a spot which I won’t mention because it still gets very good on its day, my teenage brain pulsed with new sensations absorbing what my eyes were seeing as I gazed southward at the ocean. The fun-sized whomping yet playful shorebreak I was accustomed to had been replaced by something entirely new that still registers as clear as a movie reel in my memory: From the shore to about 100 yards out was pure whitewater, row after row, demarcated by an ocean the color of sapphire the likes of which I’d never seen in nature. Bobbing in the sapphire blue were a couple of dozen surfers, trading off head-high to overhead barrels peeling in both directions. I’d stumbled upon perfect waves and right away everything about the world seemed to shift. I watched for a while, mesmerized by what the surfers were doing on these beautiful peaks brushed to perfection by the faintest of offshore breeze. New York did indeed get quality surf. I found a connection with the ocean that I didn’t know I was seeking that day before I had even set a flipper in the water with my humble bodyboard.
I paddled out and was quickly intimidated by the quite-capable pack which I discerned were a tight-knit group, what we generally refer to as locals. The etiquette of surfing seemed obvious to me right away because the waves were so perfect and symmetrical. Take off in front of a surfer flying down the line or in the tube, you’re going to wear it pretty hard, so don’t drop in. I mostly hung back on the shoulder and watched the machinations of the session go down, but I did get a bunch of waves on some of the smaller sets and a few others that swung away from the main takeoff zone. Stoked as I was, I came to the beach already building my case to mom for getting a surfboard. I needed one, and I was determined to learn to surf as soon as possible.
From that day forward, before I even owned a surfboard, I was all in on learning about the surf spots on Long Island. I came to discover that they were plentiful, but you had to read the weather, tides, and swells to sniff out the good conditions. I’ve been a student of all that is surfing and the ocean ever since.
A deal was struck with my parents; they would split the cost of a new wetsuit with me. They wanted me to gain some experience in more proper surf in the fall before committing to buying me a surfboard, and a suit was needed once into late September. I bought a 3mil Wavelength wetsuit and developed a high tolerance for cold water, bodyboarding well into November when everyone else in the ocean was wearing winter wetsuits, boots, and gloves. But I didn’t care, I loved every moment of it.
The sweetest part of our deal was when my parents informed me that we would be going to Bunger’s Surf Shop in Babylon to pick out a board for my birthday. I ended up with a thick, wide, 7’0” Spectrum, which for the time was a solid beginner’s board. The drawback was that by December it was way too cold for me to attempt to learn to surf for the first time, and so I would impatiently wait, and wait, and wait, until the following April, water still frigid, yet warm temperatures drawing me to Gilgo Beach, a mushy, popular wave that was an easy 25 minute drive from my house.
The hook may have been set long before that first day I tried to surf, but I had no idea just what laid in store from that day forward.
To be continued…
Surfing’s the source. Change your life. Swear to God.
PS: they should never have done a remake of Point Break and I refuse to watch the new one.
