The science behind it was nonexistent. No one really understood why anyone would want to do this: a surf trip through our own backyard, Southern California, during a soberingly average surf forecast. We brought no super stars, nor departed with a corporate credit card and a team manager to book hotels. There certainly wasn’t a shop tour attached. All we had was a rented 12-passenger van and a biodegradable Igloo cooler full of Saint Archer beer and some friends who happened to be good surfers. There was just enough why not? spirit in the post-summertime air to jump in and have some fun. Maybe we would catch a glimpse of a rising Lemuria off the coast of one of Southern California’s beachside communities. Our purpose, if it can be defined, was to intertwine ourselves with the coastal labyrinths where white and blue-collar workers comingle with wettie wearers, the work-from-home set and the retirees in the line-up - a quintessentially So-Cal tapestry stitched together by above ground electrical wires, telephone poles and torn up alleyways.
Colin Moran from Newport Beach, freshly home from three full months of scoring waves in Indo, joined us in the van. He said he “liked the idea of doing a fun trip and not ‘score lording’ all the time.” Surfing faster than anyone on the West coast was Noah Schweizer from New Smyrna Beach, Florida, though he currently resides in LA. We brought along Ventura native Micky Clarke, a young Dane-influenced youth with a power game to match his air game. Finally, we convinced Mauro Diaz, from Puerto Rico, to come along and his presence was a throwback to a time when showing up during swells around the world garnered you a global pass to even the most regulated lineups. But he did manage to persuade some friends on his inbound flight to LA from Indo to drop him off straight at the van, which had made its way to La Jolla. Maybe the global pass of surf comraderie hasn’t yet disappeared. Or maybe it was just Mauro. He’s a legend. He’s the type of dude who makes you want to go out of your way. A few handshakes later and his bags were in the van. Mauro hopped straight into a fun NW windswell at Windansea, where he unsurprisingly ran into two Puerto Escondido locals who recognized him straight away and greeted him with wide smiles.
We were a whole van full of guys all too familiar with Southern California’s image: the birthplace of surf culture, an overcrowded abyss of freeways and traffic and smog and beaches. But we were all willing to take a chance. We were all willing to take a rented van straight into the heart of it to see if our perception held.
And as we’d later find out, road trips have a funny way of showing you a place in a whole new way. No matter how many times you’ve been or lived somewhere, seeing it through the window of a van with your friends make it miraculously new again. Foreign. Fresh. Even fast food regains its appeal, which is why our first meal together was at an Oceanside Del Taco, where we happened upon the chance to sample its latest offering: a vegan burrito. An apt beginning to a “So California” pilgrimage.
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All original surf entertainment, a little art, philosophy, music, food, drink and travel mixed in for good measure.
7 сен 2024
