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.
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