Here is my recent article on "The Inertia". You can check it out on The Inertia by clicking on this
link.
Watching shift changes is part of the charm of surfing daily.
For years, I crossed the bridges of the San Francisco Bay
Area and the Santa Cruz Mountains to fulfill my weekly cravings for cold
waves and warm stoke. My closest break, Ocean Beach, was 45
minutes away plus $20 for gas and $5 for toll. All week I would check
the swell forecasts, hoping that either a “green” or the once in a
million “orange” forecast would grace my Saturday or Sunday. I also had
to play in the fact that I had responsibilities to take care of which
included my wife and family, car payments, rent, errands, gatherings and
the occasional seven day work week. I even bought a week of vacation to
catch that once in a lifetime swell that never came. To fulfill my dry
stoke on weeks where I couldn’t surf, I created a blog where I could
mind surf. Besides writing a journal-like escapade of my kook
adventures, I created videos that I could watch to recapture lost stoke
and photos that I could turn to when the fog that rolled over twin peaks
made living dry a bit more dreary. Everything evolved around surfing on
the weekends. It was difficult, but once I hit the water, all that
“noise” was silenced. “The God-awful difficulty of just paying
attention” as William Least Heat-Moon put it, was achieved.
But then came the fortunate turn of events that transformed my 45
minute drive to the beach into a five minute bike ride. Job transfers
can be notorious for sending a family to a place landlocked and cold. By
sheer luck, my wife’s transfer landed us in Southern California, near
some primo surf. My surfing went from two days a week to an average of
five. Crowded weekends became mostly uncrowded weekdays. I also had the
freedom to reschedule my work around surfing, mostly by subtracting out
that long drive.
I also got to know my boards better. Instead of intellectually
understanding what having more or less “rocker” means, I now understand
how it feels. Through trial and error I understand which of my boards
work better during high tide and which ones to use when it’s hollow and
draining. Never being a skater, I am coming to understand which of my
boards skate better on walls that are rampy and which boards hold a
tighter line when it becomes steep and powerful.
I’ve met fellow weekday warriors who surf daily. Each half hour has a
different shift of characters. From characters that I’ve seen on
magazine covers to the character who only goes left. I know who is their
own boss, who’s jobs are more relaxed, who has to be at work on time,
and who doesn’t work. How? Because I have a watch. And I get asked for
the time a lot.
But it’s not a 24/7 surfing buffet. I still have to earn my keep. I
had to give up a lot to become a weekday warrior. Instead of living on
salary, I’m living on tips. Instead of a door opening, I have to open
doors. When others clock out, I clock in. And because I’m starting on
the bottom, I see things differently. Instead of living overly, I’m
striving for simplicity. And to strive for simplicity is to become the
salt, and when you are the salt, you meet the salt of the earth. With
the salt, you struggle, and understand the struggle. Instead of visiting
the third world, you become the third world in the first world.
Because I get stoked out on most weekdays, I want to share my stoke
with all my stoke understanding friends. And like I said before, when
they are clocked in, I’m clocked out. And sharing with your friends now
isn’t like it was back in the nineties. Sharing consists of Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter. I forget at times that I’m clocked out and others
are clocked in.
Presently, It’s weird to paddle out on weekends. There are new faces,
new personalities and everybody wants to go right. But there is a
joyful sense of stoke, where each woman and man on a longboard has a
warm smile, cheerful attitude and contagious laugh. And unlike the
weekday community that knows each other because of daily crossings in
the surf, most weekend warriors are foreign to each other, but in some
aspects, a stronger community. Weekend warriors have what I feel I have
lost, the ability to turn off the noise. I think you lose something when
you have your favorite dessert almost everyday, and that is what I lost
in some respects.
As a once weekend warrior, I hold a responsibility to my weekend
warrior brothers and sisters. Because I get to enjoy mostly uncrowded
surf during the weekdays, I will try not to surf on the weekends. That
is the time for weekend warriors to shine, that’s when they become
locals and the rest of us become foreigners. They are entitled to those
two precious days where responsibility is put aside and noise
cancellation is achieved. They are are the sentinels of the fragile
thing that we call stoke. And we all need to share the stoke, even on
weekends.
