THE WORLD LOOKS BETTER BEHIND THE BARS OF A SCOOTER

Everywhere we went, the questions were the same:  “You rode from where?” On those?”

 

Yes. We did.  Me and my scooter girl amigas.  Less than an hour into our first foray on rented scooters this past Spring, we were unanimous in our assessment: “We. Have. To. Get. These!” And so commenced our mission to purchase scooters and start riding. 

 

I’d been coveting the opportunity for a few years now.  Living in a resort community, with the attending traffic and parking woes, and given that my local surf spot has very limited FREE parking space (and the fact that I refuse to pay outrageously exorbitant daily parking fees when I only need a few hours surfing time) and the fact that scooters get outrageously incredible gas mileage (80-100mpgs!) it seemed a no-brainer to me. 

 

Alas, there was the initial outlay of cash expenditure and the fact that I’m poorer than a church mouse.  Yet when Carole and Tammi acquired their Honda Metropolitans, I knew I would just have to find a way, cuz, baby, I had the will. 

 

A little Googling found me a website where I could purchase a cheap(er) Chinese “knock-off” model for less than half the price of the Hondas.  What’s more, I could pay in installments, which I did for the next few weeks, until my little scooter was delivered to my driveway in mid-August.  Granted, “some assembly” was acquired, (front wheel, handlebars, oil change, connecting electrical system, battery installation, and wrestling the *$%@! Plastic front panels into place) and I was up until 5am the night before our most epic ride of the summer, trying to put the pieces together.  Flopping into bed out of sheer frustration, I awoke ready to attack the panels but by the time I finally screwed them into place, and Tammi and Carole had arrived at my house, we discovered the dang thing wouldn’t start!

 

Fortunately, there’s a private mechanic down the road from me and we bribed him (a bottle of booze and some cash) into coming to my house to have a go at it; turned out the oil used for shipping purposes had clogged the fuel line and carburetor but with about a half hour of toil, he had that puppy runnin!

 

All motor vehicles recommend a gentle “break-in” period, but we had places to go that day.  Indeed, my first ride was a trip out through Sanford from my home in Wells, to Wolfeboro, then a circumnavigation around Lake Winnipesaukee, before finally riding to Tammi’s house in Kingston NH, arriving at 12:30 am, where I crashed on her couch a few hours before I was up with the sun and off home again, (after making it to work in York and pulling a five hour shift.) 

 

Many more adventures and muchas, muchas mileage were put on our scooters after that day, covering all sorts of sights and scenery in both NH and Maine.  I even found a way to attach my surfboard and on a crowded summer day pulled up at my surf spot without the hassle of worrying about parking.  Yay!

 

It’s funny, we’ve had a lot of fun, met a lot of people, and been asked a lot of questions about our scooters and adventures, but it always starts with those two outlined above.  Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is.  Yes, they don’t cover ground as quickly, but they do it far, far more cheaply; over $50 to fill up my Subaru, less than $3 to fill up my scooter.  No-brainer.  And when you think about it, scooters and mopeds are the prime means of motorized transportation in most of the third-world; people commute and travel all over on much less intricate and sophisticated highway and secondary road systems and they have no problem.  In America though, where so many are used to the notion that “bigger is better,” and “comfort is best,” we seem odd and even a bit crazy to be cruising  around on our little bikes.  Most see them as toys to tootle around town on.  “Why not just get a motorcycle?” many of them say.  Why? Because maybe we’ve discovered that bigger and more powerful just might not always be better.  Maybe you see more, appreciate the ride and freedom more at a slower pace.  Maybe cuz they’re just so darn much fun! 

 

Though it’s getting to that time of the year where we might have to put the scooters away, we’ve still managed to get in some shorter rides during the milder days; mine is still parked in the driveway, ready to be rode on the right day.  And me and my scooter girls are already planning new adventures for next spring.  Who knows, maybe even some longer, overnight trips.  Hell, in a recent conversation I had about my scooter adventures, a friend told me of the elderly man he met in a New Hampshire campground this year.  The guy was there with his little red 50cc Vespa and a trailer he was towing.  Talking to the guy, my friend discovered he’d ridden all the way up from Alabama.  What’s more, he was on his way to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia for a Vespa convention.  Crazy?  Why?  I just smiled cuz I knew exactly why…and I bet that elderly man looked my friend right in the eye and said: “Why not?”

 

 

Against The Universe

Sometimes I think all the Universe is aligned against me, conspiring to keep me from realizing my dreams, my potential…

 

Ever have one of those frustration nightmares, when you’re trying to accomplish something or get somewhere and everything keeps going wrong?  I have a recurring nightmare of this sort; typically it entails me trying to get to the beach, and into the water when I know there is an epic swell happening.  Usually I am all set to go, pack up the car with boards and wetsuits and go experience the epicness…only, I’m always missing one key piece of equipment.  Maybe it’s a wetsuit bootie, or my leash, and for the remainder of the dream I wander around trying to locate this missing item, this one item I MUST have before I can get in the water.  At various points during this nightmare, I will gaze out and see other surfers getting the rides of their lives…but I will still be on land, waiting to paddle out, looking for a missing fin or some stupid thing…

 

Last week one of my long-time dreams seemed to maybe, just maybe, beginning to materialize; the break I’ve been waiting for, working and suffering for over 30 years, my dream of publishing one of my novels, seemed might be attainable after all…

 

Nothing earth-shattering, it is still only a “nibble.”  Yet, I did manage to garner a request from a literary agent, the exclusive right to consider my literary novel, TROLL, about a hermit surfer and his long-lost daughter who travels all the way across a continent to find him.  When approaching agents, you usually begin with a (very) short introductory query letter, describing your project in no more than three or four (very) short paragraphs, and hoping (desperately) that they might be intrigued enough to have a look.  This particular agent I submitted to likes to see a small (10 page) sample of your work along with the query.  Now, most of these queries and proposal packages are rejected outright, in fact, they say 98% of all materials submitted are rejected.  If you’re a writer, you better reconcile with that rejection ratio, otherwise you’ll find yourself (as some do) jumping off the nearest high bridge out of frustration and depression.  Rarely (exceedingly so,) does an agent request any further material after this initial probe.  Most times, you’re lucky to receive a response at all, and when they do bother, it’s often after weeks or even months of anxious speculation over the fate of your work.

 

So I got a nibble.  Like I say, not earth-shattering, but significant in that this agent asked for more! Yippee! (Careful Mo, you’ve been in this position before, only to have your hopes ultimately (yet again) crushed and mushed into a puree of woe and heartbreak…

 

Wanting to look “professional,” I of course wanted to send off the manuscript right away!  Only problem is, the agent wants it in a format (14pt font rather than the usual 12pt) that I hadn’t counted on.  No biggie, that’s what computers are for; go back and switch it up, right? Sure, only I have to go through the entire manuscript as I do so, and renumber all the pages and make sure all the space breaks and new chapter headings are aligned…

 

So I do all this.  Only after printing the first 40 pages, my printer cartridge runs out of ink.  No problem.  Except that I don’t have another cartridge, nor do I have the money (bank account in the negative) to purchase one.  No worries, one of my co-workers whom I often give rides to promised she’d give me gas money over the weekend.  Only when it comes time, she only has: $3  Seriously.  Three lousy bucks!  But all is not lost. I remember I have a friend that I’m repairing his dinged surfboard; all I have to do is fix it quickly and deliver it, and get paid!

 

So I spend most of the weekend working on the board, thinking I have it fixed (twice!) only to discover new dings I’d not noticed each time I loaded it into the car to bring it over to him.  Aaaarrrgh! Back into the workshop, sanding, glassing, sanding some more…

 

Finally, this morning, I do get it to him, he pays, and I run over to Wally World for my ink cartridge and shipping labels and the special envelope the agent wants me to send with my manuscript.  Whew!  Run home to recommence printing.  Yay!

 

Only…because the font size is larger, the manuscript numbers considerably more pages than I anticipated, and…wait for this…no, really, wait…with only twenty more pages to print…I RUN OUT OF @#$%&* INK!!! AGAIN!!! 

 

Now, broke again, and having to go back to my real world job…the project, my dream, my LIFE…hangs in the balance…

 

Nightmare.  Molasses footed nightmare…

 

Oy, at least tomorrow is payday…

Lost Art of the Surf Check

Dick and I would squander hours up on the bluff, guzzling untold gallons of Arabian petroleum in our idling cars, gulping ounces of watered convenience store coffee from paper cups, all while talking story of past “epic” sessions, as we stared out to the lineup, trying to conjure clean surfable pockets in the usually small and crumbly surf.  More often than not, we’d talk each other into paddling out into that small and crumbly surf regardless.  We’d scratch frantically into the gutless onshore knee-highs, only to have a section crumble before us just as we popped up, or even have our fin scrape the bottom sand.  Invariably, at some point in the session one of us would turn to the other, wait to catch the other’s eye, and mutter, “Well, I’ve been out in worse.”  And then we’d both laugh and agree that we had indeed been “out in worse.”  But rather than grumble and complain about the dearth of consistently real swell activity in the Gulf of Maine, the session would elevate to a comedic episode of who could ride the most pathetic wave or execute the most goofy, exaggerated “Waimea survival stance” on an ankle-snapper.  And also invariably in every session, one or the other of us would catch “the-wave-of-the-day.”  A ride that if not exactly worthy of a Surfer magazine cover shot, was at least enough to redeem our decision to paddle out.  I’m not saying we always paddled out, but when we did, there never seemed to be a reason why we would’ve been better off driving off our separate ways, grumbling expletives about the cruel irony of being a surfer on the East Coast.

 

I see them now.  As I sit in my car, no longer idling not because of consideration for the atmosphere so much as consideration for my checking account.  Surfers pulling to hard stops at the overlook, glancing quickly, not even waiting to see if there are any sets before making their decisions to squeal tires out of the lot, in hunt of better conditions elsewhere.  When they do exit their vehicles for a more prolonged look, they usually do so with a cell phone bonded to their ear, talking to a buddy who is at that other spot so they can compare notes.  Sometimes they’ll instead use their smartphones to check buoy reports and webcams.  Rarer now do you see surfers congregate in mass to cast steely eyed appraisals of the surf’s prospects while they regale each other with bullshit stories of “that time…”  There’s no sense of community anymore.  Back then, a gathering of us, all warm in our hoodies and boots, coffee cups and/or ciggies in hand, would gaze out to laugh at the lone sucker who’d volunteered to be our guinea pig; breaking the ice to grovel  in the slop and show just how bad it really was.  And then the bullshit stories would become grander, more exaggerated once we were satisfied it wasn’t worth the effort.  Of course, if that poor sucker managed to catch a half decent ride, you couldn’t have witnessed even cockroaches scattering before a flicked on light scramble with more alacrity into our suits and lug our boards down over the rocks to the water.

 

Though my earliest inspiration was of course Bruce Brown and his “Endless Summer,” my period’s heroes were Kevin Naughton and Craig Peterson, globe-trotting vagabonds who would set out on their adventures impetused by no more than a rumor overheard in a pub, or a crude map scrawled on a napkin, of a mystical point break on a forgotten shore.  Of course, more often than not, after slogging through malarial jungles, dodging AK-47 toting revolutionaries and bandits, and paddling down crocodile infested estuaries, they’d find a break that was even more crumbly and depressing than my home break in Maine.  Oh, but the stories Kevin could tell, accompanied by Craig’s pics, that even while you knew were idyllic misrepresentations of the realities they’d experienced, would inspire legions to set out on their own adventures.  You see, in those days, whether you were driving your VW van down to dawn patrol your local beach, or stowing away on a rust-bucket freighter bound for “somewhere in the Indian Ocean,” you went on hope and faith and mystery.  It was a glorious time to be a surfer because it was all about “the score;” you never could be sure what you’d discover.  Sure, we caught it good far less frequently, stood skunked and frustrated on more drizzly, small and crumbly beaches than we care to remember.  But when you broke cherry on an undiscovered point, or even lucked into an epically un-forecast day at your home break…well, it was an experience that is lost on the current generation of surfers. 

 

One stand-out day I’ll never forget was that sunrise morning when Dave and Clancy and I lucked into a head to just overhead day at the Rivermouth when the sun was gloaming through the backs of the waves and the barrels were crystalline orange and surfer after surfer on the overlook would pause to check it.  We laughed as one-by-one they all drove away.  It was nearly two hours before another surfer finally broke the ice and paddled out.  Within minutes we were overrun, but with the hordes, came also the onshores.  So we caught our last waves and went in, laughing how we’d had it all to ourselves for so long.  And in the lot we watched them trying to outmaneuver each other, to catch what now had turned into sectiony, bumpy faced walls.  Clancy and Dave agreed that I’d caught the-wave-of-the-day, an overhead, long, long walled bomb that they’d seen me screaming across, in the barrel, from behind the wave, riding a 5’4” stubby little quad that I’d crudely hacked from a broken board and glassed in hideous ’80’s era neon orange.  Both had agreed I had no hope of making what from behind looked like a closeout, until…until I blasted out over the final section, some two-hundred yards down the line…

 

Surfers now, instead of bundling into their cars with wetsuits and boards and coffee for the morning surf check, will stumble across the room to power up their lap tops or cell phones or tablets, to study web cams and buoy readings and tide charts and surf reports on Magic Seaweed, before making the decision to crawl back under the covers if it doesn’t exactly look “epic.”  I pity them.  I weep for the loss of adventure, the independent “screw-you” ethos that surfers once possessed.  Most surfers today miss out on what used to be an integral aspect of the surfing experience.  The parking lot, or bluff overlook surf check.  The gathering of your tribal mates.  Of sitting in your car on a miserable, drizzly, leaden gray day, gulping hot java and shooting-the-shit with epic characters like Dick and Clancy and all the other epic characters I’ve known through the years.  They miss watching Canadien kooks paddling out into onshore, closed out slop, merely for our amusement.  They miss the Naughton and Peterson inspired adventures.  And they more frequently than not, miss those days when in spite of the cams and reports and discouraging forecasts, you paddle out into marginal conditions anyway, and just happen to score that “wave-of-the-day” that sticks in your memory till the next time you arrive at the beach in a petrol fueled automobile, coffee fueled body, and a hope fueled soul that there is something there that is worth the effort.  Because there almost always is…

Dollar Store Novelist

I’m a writer.  I am a writer because I say I’m a writer.  That’s all there is to it.  I used to believe that one had to be a published writer before one could claim the title of writer.  After my first published writing credit, seeing my name in print, something I created, accepted by an editor and printed in a publication, I realized that there was nothing very earth shattering about that accomplishment…confetti did not rain down from the sky, fireworks did not explode in multi-hued splendor above me.  And when I spent the next eight months or so trying to extract promised payment from that editor for my work, only to suffer that editor’s BS and heel dragging over delivering said payment, I suffered the indignity of watching that magazine go belly-up before I ever did receive remuneration for my effort.  Welcome to the world of a “professional” writer.  The novelty, the “glamour” snuffed on my very first foray into the published life…

 

In all my years, decades now, of doggedly pursuing my writing, I’ve suffered all the indignities a writer can suffer.  I’ve been taken in by charlatans and scammers, and watched editors butcher my words because they were too ignorant to understand what I was trying to convey, and I’ve also endured the thousand deaths a writer endures at each fresh rejection.  If you can’t take critique and rejection, don’t ever, never, ever, pursue the writing life…trust me on this one.

 

I’ve worked at my craft through all of this.  Sometimes with my personal work here on this blog, I get a bit lazy with my words and sentence structure…but when I submit something for publication, I labor over…everything.  And most any “good” writer will tell you that they are never satisfied; that there is no piece that couldn’t do with a little more revision.  Sometimes when I see stuff that’s already published, I get embarrassed at my mistakes and clumsy prose.  “Damn, how’d I miss that?” I inwardly cry. Oh, the chagrin!

 

Even when I read other’s works, I can’t help but mentally re-work, revise the author’s words.  I almost can’t read a novel anymore without imagining how I might have written a particular sentence or passage, what other words I might have employed.  It is truly rare, and pleasurable when I read a really good work where I can simply lose myself as I once did in my childhood, letting the book take me away into an inner world, a world that for those hours of reading, was made to seem so real, where imagery in my head becomes more than a splendid and exquisite façade, where the mechanics and structural skeleton is not so clearly visible but becomes a flesh and blood living thing…

 

I’m reading a book now that I bought at the Dollar Store a few weeks ago.  $1 for a literary novel written by an obscure author.  The story is of a concert pianist, eastern European immigrant to America.  There is much in it of classical composers and piano and violin music, a world that I am only vaguely familiar with; I occasionally listen to classical music but I’m by no means an aficionado.  The book is not only plotted well, but the prose and the subject is multi-layered and the writing is masterful.  For now, I’m lost in its pages, lost in the author’s world.  It’s not a book that will ever be read by the masses though; no movie will ever be scripted and transposed to film.  Shame, it would make a wonderful movie; there are some very interesting characters and their growth shows much depth as the novel progresses.  As I read, I’m reminded of another author, one of my favorites, who also happened to be one of my writing professors way back when at UNH.  He was an amazing writer and wrote a number of very, very good novels.  One of them was on par with Steinbeck’s  Grapes of Wrath in scope and style and execution. Yet only a select few readers are even aware it exists.  Tragic that such talent goes largely unrecognized.

 

When I read a truly masterful piece of work I am both awed and envious sometimes; I know that I will never be as masterful with my own writing.  It’s humbling.   And it’s maddening too.  Because I realize that is what I aspire to be, a writer of quality and depth, a novelist of literary work that has value beyond the mere monetary label ascribed on its cover.  But my reality is, like this book I’m reading, the stuff I write, if I’m lucky enough to ever publish it, will most likely never be read by a wide audience, that what I have to say, my take on this thing we call “life” will remain mostly in my own skull.  If I’m lucky though, maybe my work will someday be purchased on a lark by some reader looking for a cheap $1 read, and maybe for those hours, I might take that reader on a journey into another world, my world…and if I am ever so lucky to hold a reader’s interest, then maybe that has a greater value than whatever financial remuneration I might or might not receive...what recognition I may, or may not garner for my effort…

 

 

 

Auntie Mo

I’ve been called many names, held various titles in my day.  Some of them complimentary, endearing, even reverential…some, less so.  Some of my friends and co-workers at an old job used to call me: “Professor.”  I don’t know if it’s because they considered me especially learned and intelligent, or if it was more for my propensity to send them off to search the dictionary every time they needed clarification on a certain spelling or meaning of a word of the English language of which they knew I have some affinity and aptitude.  Though I’m not now nor ever was an actual professor, I wore/wear that title with some pride.  In addition to a few teachers and professors I’ve had in my past, including my father who taught me so much, I have great respect for those who pass on their knowledge and wisdom to others and endeavor to do so myself in my daily life. 

 

I coached soccer at various levels for about 20 years, everything from pee-wee 3-5 year olds through my old town’s rec dept. to Saturday morning rec teams, travel teams, both JV and Varsity at four different area high schools and even an adult women’s indoor team.  I loved coaching as coaching is another form of teaching, and similar to a martial arts “sensei,” the term of “Coach” implies not only respect for the person and the position but respect that that person commands a certain level of expertise in the specific game or endeavor.  Whether it was slapping five and tumbling around the grass with my five year old players, teaching proper heading techniques to high school players, or trying to explain the nuances of attacking and defending play through the utilization of salt and pepper shakers and beer bottles to my woman’s team at the post-game debriefing at Margarita’s Restaurant, I felt some pride when I was addressed as “Coach” by my players. 

 

I’m also a parent and held the attending title to that role for many years.  But I’ve been estranged from my three boys for some years now and there is so much pain associated with the circumstances of our separation that I prefer not to ruminate too much (I do anyway) about their excising me from their lives.  Regardless of their ill feelings towards me, I was, and remain their blood, and will so for time eternal.  It’s my hope that someday they can find a way to forgive me for being less than perfect, a flawed human as much as anyone.  Perhaps when they have their own children they might gain some insight and understand that a parent will always hold their child in her heart, no matter the circumstance; I love and worry for them daily and pray that they not only find happiness in their lives (not an easy task for any of us) but grow and mature into good human beings.  For now, that’s all I have…

 

I struggle to define myself sometimes these days.  My job as a nurse’s assistant affords me a title and role of sorts.  I’m a comforter to the ailing and dying and go about my duties in that role with a measure of pride.  There is something uniquely intangible but very rewarding about caring for others, even though the job is difficult, emotional, stressful, and usually thankless.   But though I’m proud of what I do, that role doesn’t wholly define me.

 

So, like most of us, I continually search for my place in this world, my role, my title, my purpose.  As I move into the latter part of my middle-aged years, it becomes increasing apparent that I may never find true love in this life, that the title and role of lover, partner, spouse, or even simple girlfriend grows further from the realm of possibilities for me…it hurts to think that this is so, but I can’t let it cripple me; there has to be another position for someone like me who has so much love and compassion that I am desperate to share…

 

The Hawaiians have a term of endearment for elder female members of the extended ohana: Auntie.  One doesn’t necessarily have to be a blood relative to earn this title, but simply embody the essence of a loving aunt towards not only her own family but all members of the tribe, young and old and all in-between. One of the Hawaiian women who most personifies this trait of care and love is the famous Rell Sunn, “Queen of Makaha.”  Rell was more than only a surfing champion but a lifeguard and all around waterwoman adept at all forms of ocean activity.  Rell also sponsored menehune surfing competitions to help impoverished and troubled local keiki.  Rell travelled around the globe as a roving ambassador for surfing and Hawaiian aloha and when she was later diagnosed with breast cancer she became a champion of that cause as well.  After her passing to the disease in 1998, she continued to spread her love and influence with not only an educational fund set up in her name but by inspiring so many who have come to know her story.  Her loving spirit continues to bloom on this earth even though her body has passed on…

 

So I think that is the title, the role, I wish to pursue.  If I can’t be a mother, grandma, wife, girlfriend, or any of that, I would not be displeased to become “Auntie Mo” to not only those who are directly connected to my life but maybe through deeds and actions I can spread my message of love and caring to all I encounter in this life…maybe I can’t earn the level of esteem and reverence of someone like Rell Sunn, but it is certainly a worthy aspiration I think…

 

Caught Inside

I posted this photo on my Facebook page yesterday.  It's a surf shot; not a particularly interesting pic at first glance, just a guy caught inside on a good size day at my local spot during a hurricane swell last summer.  I posted on FB with the short blurb about how photos take us back to a place we've been before.  But today I found myself staring at this particular photo, as so much memory and emotion swirled through me as I was brought back to that day, that moment.  And as I studied it I saw so much more than might be seen in a casual glance, by an observer who was not there in that moment, was not there for that day.
 
First I can see the shadows in the foreground and the slight golden hue on the whitewater; the shot was taken in the late afternoon, the sun perhaps minutes from setting, the foreground shadows from the vegetation and high bluff overlooking the spot.  There's no beach sand visible which reveals that the tide is incoming and the beach here has already flooded over, yet the wave is still breaking with some authority over the sandbank.  The surfer is caught inside, fighting the incoming tidal surge, and his arms are probably spaghetti from hours of paddling.  Yet he's still out there, preparing his duck-dive, probably muttering an expletive, and hoping there's no more waves after this one.  He just wants to get back out to the lineup; there's probably another half hour of light left in the day and the others have all taken their last rides.  If he's lucky, he'll catch a few more before he too lets the sets sweep him in.  And in that short window, he'll have his pick of the sets, and he'll have his solitude...

The Look Back

 

 

He told me his name was Mike and he’d driven almost 2 ½ hours from a small town on the western NH border, near Keene.  The main, East/West route 101 would have delivered him to Hampton beach in almost an hour’s less time, but he said he didn’t like surfing the Wall so much, that he liked the wave and the vibe better at my local spot here in Maine.  So he’d turned north at the NH coast and made the extra 45 minute trek up to the Rivermouth in Ogunquit.  While I snapped a few more shots of the lines still rolling in, I chatted with him about surfing and surfboards.  I told him I build my own boards and showed him the two displacement hull boards I’d brought with me in the back of my Subaru.  I explained the nuances of the design and contrasted them with the twinzer fish he’d been riding.  Different design concepts, but both very valid vehicles for the long walled up, reeling sandbar waves at the River.  The long period swell was still dredging up some shoulder high sets and both he and I had managed to catch some long rides on the bumpy (too much north,) NW, kinda almost side-shore faces.  I’d watched most of the short-board tri-fin crew struggle with the wind on the take-offs, and when they boosted attempted airs, most often they’d get left behind while the wave reeled off without them.  Mike told me it was only his fourth session of the year, that he was really more a skier than a hardcore surfer.  But I could tell he had experience.  Like me, he was older, and a bit stiff and slow on his takeoffs, but once he’d made that first turn, he seemed to settle into a flow with the wave, garnering speed and flying across the almost closed out waves with minimal input to his board.  His style didn’t seem formulaic or homogenized like too much of the surfing I witness these days.  Like me, he rode “Old School;” surfed the wave more than the board.  Aesthetically pleasing; more ballroom, than hip-hop.

 

While Mike and I chatted, I looked a few cars down in the parking lot as two girls from Quebec suited up.  They didn’t seem to notice that they’d really kinda missed the tide, and that it was mushing now as it filled in.  Neither was properly equipped for the cold, wearing 3mil suits and no hoods in the barely 50 degree water.  I knew they wouldn’t last long, yet I had to smile as both, skipped…yes, skipped down the street with their boards under their arms.  Tide, wind, insufficient rubber…no matter.  They’d driven 6 hours down from Montreal and they were going surfing!  How could you not admire their exuberance? 

 

As I drove away, I thought about those girls, and Mike.  I live a 5 minute drive from the ocean and 15 minutes from two of my favorite breaks.  I can sometimes smell the ocean from my bungalow, 3 miles from the coast.  Mike had driven over 100 miles; the girls had driven 6 hours.  All for a day in the 50 degree ocean!  Something is special in that. Surfing, and the ocean have a mystical draw to those who are addicted to it.

 

Culling through the photos I shot that day after my own session had ended, I came across this one shot of Mike, looking back at the waves after he’d exited the water.  It’s something all surfers do; we ALL look back after leaving the water.  You don’t see tennis players, or football players, or golfers, pausing to gaze and reflect on the court, the field, or links, not unless it’s their last game or match before they retire and they take one last nostalgic look back at the arena or stadium.  But surfers, all surfers, we ALWAYS look back.  Hell, last summer I even broke my toe, stubbing it on a rock, as I climbed the bluff and turned to look back at the hurricane swell that was still pumping in overhead sets.  Even after I’d cursed and danced around in pain….I looked…back.  Because in surfing, it’s all ABOUT the arena!  Of course, the rides, the ritual waxing of the boards, the euphoria of exiting a tube, the adrenaline of duck-diving a big set, the giddy anticipation of driving up to the break when you know there’s a good swell…all these aspects can be compared to the rush of any athlete in any sport…but surfing is way, way more than just another sport.  It’s more than a “lifestyle” or “art form” or any of that drippy crap that it’s sometimes described as.  Surfers, and surfing, are not like any other people, or any other activity.  When it gets into you, it grabs hold of you like nothing else you’ll ever experience.  And each time you finish a session, and you turn your back to the ocean, and begin to leave, there is something about it, something visceral, that compels you…to turn one last time…and look back…

 

 

Ungently Going

“Do not go gentle into that good night…
…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

                                    Dylan Thomas

 

                                               

 

I ate shit in the water yesterday. Took three waves in two hours. Two late drop lefts where I barely made the bottom turn before I was quickly swallowed by closeout sections; the last was a steep right where the board flipped vertical under me and the rounded-pintail narrowly missed impaling my buttocks, glancing instead off my upper thigh first before I bounced off the deck and skittered down the face before the lip drove me under.  Pissed, I immediately hauled myself back onto the board and started paddling back out, raging to redeem myself.  But a five wave closeout set caught me and swept me to the inside before I could make it back to the lineup. And that was the end of my session; my watch read the stark reality that I had to exit the water immediately if I hoped to get to work on time.  It was an ignominious, humbling, and even somewhat humiliating session.  Ate. Shit.   

 

There are those who will tell me that at 54 (FIFTY-FRIKKIN-FOUR,) I’m old.  That I’m too old for playing in the surf.  That my broke down body is a by-product of that aging process, that it is inevitable, and that I should just give it up.  Some of these people are the same ones who told me almost four decades ago that surfing was frivolous and a waste of time.  I even think they take some glee when they hear me whinge about my bad knees, back, my aches and pains, and how it inhibits my surfing; they tell me that it’s just the process of aging, exacerbated by all my time in “that cold water,” and that it’s no wonder my body should be falling apart…and that I should give it up.  They always want me to give up, give in to it…be old and fuddy like them.  They can eat shit. 

 

My body IS old.  But cold water doesn’t break you down.  Surfing CAN break you down.  Most of my contemporaries, and those who were a few years older than me when I started, have had back and neck and hip issues; some of these surfers have given it up and I never see them in the water anymore.  I understand why they don’t surf anymore, but for me, even though I can’t perform the way I used to, and on some days when I’m really KOOKING, like yesterday for example…I want to cry and scream and rage against the body that is betraying me, the slowed reflexes, and stiff joints…but I won’t, I can’t, it is inconceivable for me to quit.  I’ve always said: “I started on my belly, belly surfing little slabs of Styrofoam…and if it comes to it, I’ll end my surfing days on my belly.  If it comes to it.  I’m not there yet.  My age, the cold water, the bullshit that other people, (non-surfing people always,) want to heap on me…none of that is real, and none of that will make me quit.

 

I have an auto-immune condition.  Ankylosing Spondylitis.  AS for short.  I won’t bother with the specifics, that’s what GOOGLE is for.  Suffice it to say, like many auto-immune diseases, it mostly manifests in achy, creaky joints, and chronic fatigue.  The rheumatologist I used to see would always ask about “morning stiffness.”  If you saw me crawling out of bed each morning, stumbling around on stiff and painful limbs, unable to bend or squat or turn my head without the whole body coming along for the ride because my neck won’t turn, you would never believe that I could even put my wetsuit on, let alone paddle out and try to surf.  And what is surfing like? Imagine Oz’s Tin Man trying to surf…all those clumsy, clanking, stiff and metallic appendages… 

 

I have bad days, and I have better days.  I never really seem to have GOOD days anymore, and that hurts.  My AS is of course exacerbated by other orthopedic issues in the way of old injuries and surgeries I’ve incurred from a lifetime of playing sports.  People told all the time when I was playing those sports and getting hurt and blowing out knees and shoulders, that I was too old then too.  That I should give them up. But I didn’t listen to them then either.  Soccer used to be a passion but I no longer play because of my knees.  I miss it.  A lot.  But I live with it.  It doesn’t kill me like giving up surfing would.  I can’t, I won’t give up surfing.

 

What DOES kill me about my surfing is when I can’t perform the way I used to.  I understand that the glory days of my youth are long past and that an erosion of skills IS inevitable with age.  But this is more than an erosion; this is a cataclysm.  I’m a kook most days.  The young surfers paddling around me, looking right THROUGH me as if I’m invisible, a non-factor in the lineup…I want to slap them sometimes.  I know what I must look like, a complete beginner, a kook…missing waves, and then stumbling to my feet and sometimes not even able to make it to my feet, like I’m a total beginner, flopping off the side of my board as the wave engulfs me because my hips and my knees and my back just didn’t want to cooperate and allow me to draw my feet under me smoothly and I stumble and fall…I just want to slap them, because I KNOW that I’m NOT a kook, that I used to be a better surfer than they will ever be… But my body betrays me now.  AS robs me of surfing’s most basic, but critical skill, the pop-up.  Timing is everything on a takeoff, and because of my slowed reflexes, my stiff joints, I’m often in the wrong place at the wrong time and my body just won’t do what I ask of it; my pop-op is more like a groan, push, slog, drag and stiff crawl to my feet; usually the wave passes me by before I get that far…it is maddening.  I want to rage and scream…somedays, like yesterday, I just drive away from the beach, crying…

 

 

I have a friend.  A dear friend.  After a thirty year career as a nurse’s aide, and raising four beautiful and wonderful daughters, she has embarked on a life-long dream of becoming a nurse.  Currently she juggles nursing school, still working as an aide, and ongoing motherhood to her four daughters.  My friend taught me everything I know about being a nurse’s aide and she is the most caring and compassionate aide I’ve ever worked with.  All her residents, all her patients, absolutely ADORE her.  I do too.  She will be an AWESOME nurse. 

 

My friend has a hearing disability.  She wears a hearing aide but still struggles to hear things clearly.  Being a nurse, hearing is vital.  Especially when using a stethoscope to take blood pressures and listen to lungs and all the rest.  Normal stethoscopes do not work for my friend so she ordered a special one for people with hearing issues such as hers.  When she received the instrument however she discovered that she still was having trouble hearing properly with it.  Hearing is critical in nursing.  And recently, as my friend confided to me on the phone yesterday--as I got home from my aborted surfing excursion, still crying inside--she overheard two of her nursing classmates talking about her, saying she had no business trying to be a nurse, on account of her hearing disability…

 

My humiliation and tears quickly transformed to rage as my Irish temper flared inside.  Bitchy cattiness is rampant in nursing.  And these two bitches sparked that flare in me.  How DARE they say something so mean and cruel and bitchy… They don’t know my friend like I do.  They don’t know that she is destined to be an AWESOME nurse, that she will be ten times the nurse they can ever hope of being!  How dare they.  Fucking bitches.  But people say mean and hurtful and cruel and insensitive…and incredibly fucking stupid things sometimes…

 

I was never in the military but I did grow up in a military family.  My dad and two brothers were career military officers.  Sometimes growing up, I wondered if Dad didn’t understand that our large Irish American family was not his own little platoon to command.  But as trying as it was sometimes, growing up in that environment, there was much teaching and leadership and wisdom that came from that military way, that approach to life…  In the military they have a saying that they employ when encountering a problem or obstacle that seems insurmountable; Clint Eastwood once uttered it in a somewhat sappy military movie called “Heartbreak Ridge,” when his platoon was whinging about how they could possibly find a solution to an obstacle.  “We improvise, we adapt, we overcome!” Eastwood growled in his gritty way.

 

Improvise, adapt, overcome.  Good life words there.  As I spoke to my nursing friend I remembered them.  I suggested a few improvisations, adaptations, and possible ways of overcoming her hearing obstacle.  And even as I was trying to help her, to be a good friend, and hopefully in my small way, assist her in realizing her dream…the back of my mind was registering those same words, the wheels began spinning, as I conjured ways of overcoming my own obstacles in the surf… 

 

There are no shortages of mean, stupid, insensitive people who will demean, ridicule, and tell you all the things you can’t do, things you have no business even attempting.  There are no shortage of people who in their own misery, their own failures, their own lethargy and defeat, will try to ensnare you and pull you down so they can confirm that resignation and giving up, the paths THEY chose, were the proper ones.  But there is no problem where a solution cannot be affected.  There will be setbacks and retreats in life, but if you keep paddling, if you don’t give up, if you keep improvising, adapting, overcoming…you will leave all the gutless quitters in your wake. 

 

And as every surfer who has ever exited a tunneling wave, spit blasting across your back, you will realize a nobility and glory that the masses will never know…

 

 

 

Lone Wolf

            Our restaurant of choice was named: “The Ham & Egger” and on weekday mornings they served an: “All You Can Eat” pancake breakfast special.  They hated to witness us crashing through the door, emanating the odors of wet neoprene, salt and rockweed, seawater still dripping from our hair, beach sand flinging off our flip-flops with every step.  We were loud and boisterous and most certainly annoying, and perhaps even vaguely intimidating to the mostly elderly or young family clientele.  Nothing turns heads quicker, freezes eating utensils mid-air more effectively than a pack of surfers, fresh from the ocean, ravenously hungry, whooping and talking story, even as they commandeer a few booths to pillage innumerable plates of heaping buttermilk flapjacks, oiled with viscous native maple syrup. 

            Catering mostly to tourists and long established local townsfolk, we were a noisy rabble of rude young outcasts, as welcome at their tables as a marauding incursion of barbarous Vikings, storming their peaceful sanctuary with intent of loot and plunder.  But the sign out front stated they would keep proffering their pancakes as long as we could keep ingesting them.  And anyone who has ever hung with a platoon of hungry surfers, knows that we can ingest a lot!  To the best of my recollection, despite their grim stares, tight lips, and searing looks, the owners never turned us away.  The cooks kept flapping and the wait staff kept lugging, while the other customers usually ate quickly and silently and made for their hasty exits.

            Of course we talked mostly about the surf we’d just left.  Hands and arms gesticulating and carving arcs through the air in simulation of turns.  White-toothed grins at the retelling of who kooked a wipeout.  Escalating tones of whomever might be verbalizing their lingering indignity at having been dropped-in on by one of the ruthless old-timers at our local break.  Between words, and sometimes even syllables, copious amounts of orange juice and coffee were quaffed, chews of pancake and bacon, and sometimes someone might even regale us with their tale out of one side of their mouth, while all the while a stogie of link sausage bobbed from the other side in their half-clamped lips.

            We were surfers, we were of a pack, and we were the coolest of the cool.  We not only didn’t care when we felt those disapproving eyes on us as we engaged our wild antics and orgiastic consumption of their food, we coveted those looks.  We rarely left sufficient remuneration for the poor waitress who’d suffered our invasion of her section.  The boys in the group usually had all smiled lecherously and offered lame pick-up lines and then leered at her retreat from our tables, ogling her body parts and judging and rating them, as boys do.  Myself and other girls who might be with us almost never offered any sisterhood like buffer of nodding understanding with the poor victim; on these excursions, we were “one-of-the-boys” and just as ruthless and lethal as any she-wolf might be to some poor lone soul outside her pack.

            We left the carcasses of our consumption scattered across the tables like so many de-meated bones at any kill site; plates with crumbs and syrup dribbles, wadded napkins, emptied oj glasses with only a few pulp tadpoles still clinging to the insides, mugs of cold dregs of unswilled coffee.  I’m sure the waitresses, the cooks, the owners, and especially the other patrons were glad to see us off, usually after having plundered in their presence for more than an hour.  We would crash back out through the door, into the light and warm sun.  Still loud, laughing, talking of the next adventure, we would pile into our cars and squeal out of the parking lot, off to late morning naps, and then the high-tide sessions in the afternoon.  It was the time of my surfing life.  That time when I was young, and fit, that time when I belonged to a pack….

 

            I’m a lone-wolf now.  Those days of my youth, when I ran with “the boys” are no more than a dim memory.  Marriage, child-rearing, divorce…and especially the cynicism that comes to the older surfer.  It’s not like it was.  It’s not as good as it used to be.  I drive alone in my car.  I arrive at the beach alone.  Surf breaks where there’s few or no other surfers.  I’m not as young or strong or as good a surfer as I used to be, and I don’t like to fight and hassle to catch the few rides I’m lucky enough to procure. When it’s crowded, I usually paddle further down the beach, away from everybody.  As alone with my thoughts as I can be these days when most spots, even the obscure ones, are overrun.  Surfing sometimes is more like a job or an obligation; if there’s swell, I feel I have to paddle out.  Often times, I’m hurting, wounded, lame…I’m not “surfing” fit and as a consequence, I don’t perform as well as I wish to, as I used to.  It hurts to be old and washed up sometimes.  Especially when I remember when I was pretty good and the days were long and warm and I ran with a pack and we were loud and obnoxious and we didn’t care about anything or anyone, except us. 

I miss that camaraderie; I yearn to be part of a pack again sometimes.  Sometimes I feel that call of the wild and I want to run with “my boys and my girls” and surf and feel the sun on my face and the wind in my hair and I want to crash through restaurant doors and be boisterous and obnoxious and surrounded by those I care about and who care about me, and all of us just wanting to ride the waves and hoot and holler, and just… howl!   

Vision Quest

In the wrestling movie, “Vision Quest,” when Matthew Modine’s character goes to the sidelines with a bloody nose…his coach wipes away the blood before looking him dead in the eye and challenging him: “Have you done everything you came here to do?” 

Louden Swain (Modine) has reached the pivotal moment in his quest, to beat the never been beaten, 3 time state champion Brian Shute.  Before he can even earn the privilege of stepping onto the mat with the imposing wrestler (whom everyone has told him cannot be beaten,) Louden has already suffered a desperate weight loss program just to drop down into Shute’s weight class.  Along the way, his familial and friendship relations are strained, and he struggles as well with his distracting infatuation with an older girl.  After enduring all this, after making weight, and stepping onto the mat with Shute, he proceeds to mostly get his ass whupped.  Right up until the moment the referee calls timeout for his bloody nose.  Then standing there with his teammates around him, a gym full of cheering students, his dad and grandpa and his girl in the bleachers, and his coach, dead-eye challenging him with the aforementioned quote, Louden responds, simply:  “Not yet.”   

Not yet. 

Not by a long shot.  I have unrealized dreams and aspirations myself.  I’ve been kicked around and knocked down too.  A couple of days ago I suffered the indignity of my 54^th birthday.  FIFTY-FOUR!  How did I get to be so old?  How have I not accomplished everything I set out to do?  I was gonna travel.  Surf the North Shore.  Ride the barrels at Burleigh and Kirra.  The long rights at Rincon and Malibu.  Maalaea and Honolua Bay.  I was gonna sail around the globe in my own sloop, hit all the major coastlines, the islands. 

But life got in the way.  Matrimony and child-rearing.  Divorce and depression.  As Bear says in the movie, “Big Wednesday:” “The whole damn mess.”  Recently too, as I’ve struggled with poverty and bankruptcy; working two jobs and too many hours, trying to save my house and keep my head above water… And relationship distractions too.  After my divorce, during a period of major, major change and disruption, I stumbled through a couple of relationships…I wasn’t ready; I should have figured out my own life out before I was ready to share it with another.  Yet I yearned…  And more recently, after a prolonged dearth of any kind of romantic inclinations, I decided to dip my toe again…I went “online,” searching… Ugh. How very, very unromantic.  Yet, there was a brief flare, a spark…hope? Maybe? Ha. No, that fizzled faster than a flicked ciggie into a toilet.

So, I come to where I’m at today.  At 54.  Time to assess.  Time to plan.  Time to set aside the distractions and embark on my own Vision Quest.  Oh, I will still dream for my writing goals, and still work to make them happen.  And I know I will still yearn for love, but I won’t waste my time chasing it; let someone else chase me for a change!  It’ll happen, if it’s supposed to happen.  In the meantime, I’ve got what’s left of my surfing aspirations to consider.  I’m old…but not dead yet.  My knees are creaky, I’ve a weak back, bad joints and I carry at least 20lbs of extraneous fat.  But, I’m still the athlete I’ve been my whole life; still a surfer.  And I know how to train.  And I’ve always said, if there’s only one place I can surf before I die, it’s J-Bay.  I want, no, I WILL surf J-Bay!  But not merely catch a wobbly ride on some mushy wall, no, I want to SURF J-Bay. 

Okay, go ahead, call me crazy, delusional, washed up, OLD!  I know I have to figure out a way to even GET there! And I know there will be struggles and distractions along the way…and I still have to go back to a place that humbled and almost drowned me (Big Fox Hill Pt.) and put that fear to rest. But that’s my Vision Quest.  I figure I’ve got at least another six years before I’m 60; and my body CAN still be whipped into shape.  So I’m going for it.  Queue the “Lunatic Fringe” intro…

Have I done everything I came here to do with my surfing?

Not yet.