If ‘it’ has to be explained, you don’t have ‘it’ – Anonymous
“How long have you been surfing?”
“For years now.”
“You must be a good surfer, then.”
I am not a Good Surfer. San Francisco’s Ocean Beach and Santa Cruz’s Pleasure Point are home, I have surfed Baja, Tahiti, Hawaii and Europe, taken surf trips to surreal places worthy of features and spreads in magazines, and even lost women in part because of the sport’s influence. At first glance, I certainly am a surfer. I catch waves, have as much fun as anybody and respect the beauty of it. But I am not a Good Surfer. And now that I’ve relocated about as far from a surfable wave as you can get in America, my legacy back home will remain that of not a Good Surfer.
Every surfer, from the guy paddling into an ankle-high easy ride to the Water God getting towed into Jaws at 30 miles an hour, has at least a few commonalities: ambition, motivation, and the ability to stand on top of a moving board. But Good Surfers? They have more. They have patience. They have effortless balance, faith, understanding, a little luck and most importantly, they have The Glide.
I didn't know what the difference was or what I was doing "wrong." I was persistent in my surfing. I remained dedicated to the effort and amazed by its control over my psyche. I was constantly observing, analyzing my own actions in comparison, and very often ended up wondering where the disconnect was that led to my constantly “unsuccessful” undertakings. Things this difficult and frustrating normally get tossed to the “tried it and it never took” wayside within a few tries. But I remained vigil in my intense attack on attaining the surf pinnacle – The Glide.
I never attained it, never knew why, and given my new geographic location, resigned myself to the nagging reality that I never would.
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Unexpectedly, I returned home to the ocean for a week. Of course, a return to the line up excited me, but there was something different about my sense of this opportunity to surf. Because my return felt like a gift, a bonus, there was no intended approach, no self-applied pressure to improve. There was only a subtle and new urge to ignore the short boards I had spent so much time trying to master, dust off “Shorty,” the ironically named 8’3” funboard I caught my first wave on, paddle out to the 3rd peak of the Point, and have a few easy rides on my old buddy.
And as I sat inside at a break that is no longer “mine” on an otherwise unimpressive summer day, knowing that the countless sessions I toiled to become a Good Surfer were behind me due to my current landlocked residence, that my goal was not going to be met, I let it all go. The years of slamming down the faces of whiplash K-mart closeout specials, shivering in the shark-infested unknown of dark dawn patrols at empty, eerie breaks, flailing like a dishrag in the dryer trying to master boards made for people smaller than me, the naturally-evolved group pressure to become as good as my surfing cohorts. My grip on trying to master the ocean loose, my surf lobotomy in full effect, I lost it all, and got EVERYTHING. I finally began receiving the liquid frequency the ocean’s been broadcasting to me for years. Relaxed and dumb, I casually pointed my large non-shredding float machine down the line, and let the astounding physics take control.
Like a hawk suspended in a thermal uprising, with the weightless balance of a floating hangglider, the wave lifted me to my own surf joy, I was completely alone, and only after I had turned my back on the ocean and returned with an empty mind, did I begin the process of harnessing The Glide.
I’ve been raked across a reef in Raitaia, slammed into the sand and held by an Ocean Beach A-frame monster, stranded outside of a Rockaway wall with no reasonable way back in, yelled at and threatened by locals in Santa Cruz, and yet all it took was an unremarkable, waist high sunny summer day slow roller for me to begin my endless ride as a Good Surfer.
Maybe you’re a surfer. Maybe you have no idea what the real difference is between yourself and a Good Surfer. If that’s the case, I can only tell you not to care, because I certainly can’t explain it to you.
