Stranded

A story about a surfboard

Whenever possible, though, I pedaled out to Steamer Lane, and watched actual surfers. I could get lost for hours just watching them.

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Occcasionally here at the Fool, we will share stories from our friends. Today’s story is by Joe Parkin, who is a former editor, long-time friend, and author of Dog in the Hat, as well as countless magazine stories. Look for Joe’s writing in the upcoming anthology from Mountain Gazette. You can pre-order the book here.

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By Joe Parkin

I own a surfboard that has never been in the water. It’s a beautiful blue and white Stewart longboard that has been a prized possession of mine for the past 13 years or so.

It would have been a perfect addition to my quiver of boards if I had one. It would have been perfectly at home in our sweet little California beach bungalow in the Trestles neighborhood on the south side of San Clemente, California. It seemed to me when I picked it out to be the kind of thing you’d see one of the old men at Old Man’s riding.

The thing about this board, though, is that I didn’t get it until I was on the way out of California, en route to the utterly un-surf city of Chicago, Illinois.

The other thing about it is that it’s really not the kind of board I ever envisioned myself riding. I mean, I really never imagined myself a longboard kind of surfer. Because I’m not. I mean I’m not a surfer—at all.

My first exposure to surfing came from watching dudes like Gerry Lopez on the North Shore of Oahu. I’d spent a fair amount of time in my earliest years on the beaches of Florida and South Carolina, but I was very young and very small, and my parents never took my brother and me to the beach when the waves were anything but nothing to speak of. So, my first vision of surfing was from TV.

It wasn’t till I was 10 or 11 that I saw a real live surfboard up close and personal. We moved from Memphis, Tennessee, to Thousand Oaks, California, and sometimes, on weekends, we drove through Decker Canyon or Kanan Road over to the coast. My parents were not beach people, though, so we never stayed for long.

But I still had dreams of becoming a surfer. I bought a board from one of my classmates for 20 bucks. If I remember right, it was a 6’ G&S with at least 4 inches missing from its nose. Beyond the damage, the thing was so brownish yellow from whatever kind of neglect it had suffered that it looked like the inside of a decades-old bong.

It was not a popular purchase with my parents. I had baseball. I had a BMX bike. What possible purpose could I have with a clapped-out board in a non-beach family?

I talked my mom into taking my brother and me to the beach one summer day. I used binder twine to secure the thing to the top of her car, and we were off. As a keen kid, this setup was not embarrassing to me, but I am sure my mom tried to hide her face on the way to the water.

I caught two waves that day—popped up, stood up and rode them in. From my perspective, I was amazing. I’m sure the reality differed a bit, but I didn’t really know any better, and I really didn’t care.

It felt to me as if we had just gotten there but, for some reason, we had to go. That is the extent of my surfing career. And it’s pertty much the last time I went to the beach for 25 years.

I made it back to California toward the tail end of my 30s. Santa Cruz. We lived close enough to the water to hear waves crashing and seals complaining about whatever seals complain about.

Santa Cruz felt like home from the start. And I guess I looked like I belonged, because random strangers constantly felt the need to offer me weed and ask me about surfing.

I never confessed the truth, but rather just shrugged and told them I didn’t know. I’d been busy. I hadn’t been out.

Whenever possible, though, I pedaled out to Steamer Lane, and watched actual surfers. I could get lost for hours just watching them.

On weekends, my girlfriend and I would paddle our stupid sit-on-top tandem kayak from the harbor out to the lineup—close enough to really see, yet far enough to avoid altercation with any of the bros who had cut their teeth on that wave.

Work took us to San Clemente, where I clocked in every day at the magazine group that owned Surfer and Surfing magazines. Since I typically beat most of the other editorial staffs to the office, my early morning routine began with a lap through the office to sneak a peek at the latest photos and layouts.

Leaving the office for lunch meant walking through a parking lot full of wetsuits drying on cars. I was always envious.

Weekends were for walking the 15 minutes or so to Trestles. If there were surfers in the water it made for a good day. If there was a decent swell, and good surfers in the water, it made for a perfect day.

So, when we left San Clemente for Chicago, bringing a surfbopard along, while seemingly stupid to some, was a no-brainer to me.

For three years in the Windy City, that board hung above our couch, low enough for me to rub my hands down the length of it from time to time. You could call it art if that makes it make sense, but it was much more than that. It was a reminder of another time, and a portal to memories of my California.

Work—hers not mine—took us from Illinois to Germany to Colorado, where the ocean is farther away than ever. Home, now, is the Arkansas River headwaters, in the Colorado county that has more 14,000-foot peaks than any other.

They dumped boulders in the river here and made a surfable wave. It’s a culture that has flourished since we first moved here, one that has progressed enough that the river boards actually look more like actual surfboards than the short, high-volume river SUPS they were riding just a few years back. The sight of kids in their rolled-down wetsuits riding bikes with board racks to the river has become more commonplace. I admire the effort, but the river is not the ocean.

My Stewart lives at 8,000 feet above sea level, 1,001 miles away from where it was born. It is just as shiny now as it was when I brought it home from the shop. It has no marks on it, no dings of any kind.

I wonder if a non-surfer having a surfboard is somehow selfish and unnecessary.

Every once in a while I wrestle with whether or not I should feel guilty for holding onto this surfboard that I am not able to ride. Here in the shadow of the Collegiate peaks, these massive and majestic mountains, I wonder if a non-surfer having a surfboard is somehow selfish and unneccessary.

These peaks, though, while awesome and life-affirming for many, can be utterly stifling for people like me who dream of looking out at the endless ocean.

So, when the mountain walls begin to feel like they are sucking the breath out of my lungs, I look at my board. I imagine being one of those old men at Old Man’s riding that big, long, slow wave, or hanging out and talking about whatever those old men talk about. And everything is cool for a bit.

I know I couldn’t ride that board even if I lived in a little California beach bungalow back in Santa Cruz or San Clemente. But I have a board.