Surfing is the Only Life for Me!

Growing up on the coastline in California I remember fondly the my first encounter with surfing. I had seen an old londboard in my older cousins garage and one day I mustered the courage to ask him to teach me to surf. He was a “cool” teenager at the time, and I was just a “punk” 5th grader.He reluctantly agree to show me some “moves” and we made a date to meet at Huntington Beach the following Saturday morning. I remember the day as it it was yesterday. The sun was already bright in the sky, promising to be a scorcher. The cool water felt refreshing and exciting as cousin Kenny gave me some tips on “standing up. It was the first wave I paddled for that I caught and rode quickly down the face into the white water, that I realized that life as I had known it was over forever.

From that day on I was completely drawn the the ocean and her waves. I spent all of my trying to get rides from my home, approximatly 25 miles away, to the beach . It not easy when you are only 12 years old. My dad, a good sport , bought me an old board and drove me every chance he had. But he was a busy music professor and didn’t have alot of free time for his surf starved son. My lifeStyle was all about surf gear, surfboards, surf music, surf food. In those days all surf supplies were very limited and in short supply. Surfing was still a renegade sport that few in the corporate would cared about. What a difference 30 years makes!