Confessions of a Hodad

Yesterday on one of our local cable channels here in southern California, I was watching one of my favorite movies, Riding Giants. It's a beautiful (and sometimes scary) documentary about surfers. Not just any surfers, mind you, but big wave surfers, that especially-nervy subculture of the surfing subculture that gets its thrills from the quasi-suicidal: surfing the world's biggest waves: Mavericks in Santa Cruz, California. Waimea Bay on the north shore of Oahu in Hawaii. Teahupoo, Tahiti, where the waves are so big and so treacherous that a surfing contest there was recently canceled --evidently it was decided that the surf was too dangerous for anyone except maybe the Lord Poseidon himself ... and most Greek scholars that I have talked to are unaware that Poseidon ever surfed. Gods are usually too smart to be daredevils; hubris and its twin brother stupidity are pretty much human foibles.  

The test pilots in The Right Stuff talked about "pushing the envelope" all through that film. The surfers in this film are a living testimony to pushing the envelope. In this subculture, the more frightening a wave gets, the more bound-and-determined some surfer is going to be to develop a new twist on the technology of the sport which will allow those who dare to ... well, dare.



Sigh.

I'm hooked on this stuff. Stoked, as surfers say. I will watch any surfing film that comes along. Another favorite is Step Into Liquid, in which some especially focused adrenaline-junkies go so far as to have themselves taken 100 miles out to sea off the coast of my native San Diego in a boat, there to have themselves towed via jet-ski to where they can zip down waves close to 100 feet high, some of them on special, hydrofoil-equipped surfboards that allow them to coast along just above the water as they ride waves the size of bank buildings.

Me? I don't surf at all. I don't think I could if I tried. Oh, I took a few lessons a few years ago. My teacher was a fellow named Randy Couts. Randy is actually well-known in the surfing world, or used to be. He was a competition surfer who was giving surfing lessons to kids one summer about ten years back, when I was a newspaper reporter in Chula Vista. I read about his surfing school in the San Diego paper, then called him up and asked if he might give me some lessons. He readily agreed, and we met at Coronado Beach on a few contiguous Saturdays, where he drilled me on how to lie on the board, paddle out to the line, watch for a set of waves, launch yourself upon one and then try to execute one of the trickiest moves this side of bowing a Stradivarius properly: finding the "sweet spot" on the board which will allow you to leap into a crouching position and then rise to a standing position on the wave without tipping over and falling into the drink.

I even bought a surfboard from Randy. I was that serious about this stuff. My board is long-gone; when my second wife divorced me it got left behind in her garage. I bought a wet suit, too; it's in a cardboard box in my sister's attic.

I'm a capable-enough swimmer, but I've never been able to completely overcome a fear of the ocean which has haunted me since I was eleven years old and got caught in a rip current at Silver Strand State Beach, just a mile or two south of Coronado. I damn near drowned on that summer day in 1967. An alert lifeguard saved my bacon, but after that I was always afraid to go out in the water any higher than my shoulders. Randy cajoled me into putting this fear aside for our lessons; as we floated on our surfboards within view of the famous Hotel del Coronado, he assured me that the water where we sat was only about eight feet deep.

It was early September: late summer, and the waves were still suitable for beginners. A month later, autumn was coming on and with it, bigger waves. Randy and I met at the beach one last time, sat there talking and looking at the sets from the shore, and did not venture out.

I tried to "solo" once, going out to Coronado with my surfboard and without Randy. That was a couple of months later. Failure: I rode in on a couple of waves, on my stomach, without trying to stand up on the board, and went home. I've never tried to surf again.

The surfing subculture defines a "hodad" as ... well, a phony. Someone who pretends to be a surfer but isn't. I guess I could give myself a not-guilty on the accusation of technical hodadry -- I have never tried to pass myself off as a surfer. I'm something much worse: a wannabe. I would love to be a surfer. I just don't have the nerve. (And, I'm 57 years old.)

Now, I have fantasised about being everyone from Beethoven to Ernest Hemingway. But not in my wildest imaginings have I ever tried to see myself as Kelly Slater, Mick Fanning or Matt Wilkinson. Even if I ever did work up the nerve to try surfing again, you would never find me within screaming distance of big waves. I'd stick to places like Imperial Beach and San Clemente, and even those places only on days when the surf was no higher than my head.

Good film. Let these guys (or their stunt
doubles) take the risks. I'll watch.

Oh, but the vicarious has its attractions, the safety of one's living room being only the most obvious. I'm never going to hang ten or shoot the curl, but I can by-god sit on my sofa and watch the pros do it. Nothing wrong with envy. I have seen The Endless Summer at least ten times, and while I laugh with the cognoscenti at such dopey sixties fare as Ride The Wild Surf or the Frankie-and-Annette beach romps, one of my favorite feature films is Big Wednesday, directed by John Milius in 1978. Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt and Gary Busey play a trio of surfing pals growing up before, during and after the Vietnam war, reuniting near the end of the story for the big waves of Big Wednesday.

I've never met legendary surf filmmaker Bruce Brown, who made The Endless Summer in 1966, but I can claim a six-degrees thing with him: his son Dana directed a film in 2005, Dust To Glory. It's not a surfing film, but rather a documentary about the famous Baja 1000 auto race. I've never met Dana Brown either, but one of the participants in the 2004 Baja 1000 was Scott McMillan, the son -- and grandson -- of two of San Diego County's most prominent realtors, and I interviewed Scott in 2005 for a newspaper article about the race and the film.

That same year I requested a surfing calendar as an office Christmas gift, and for a year I actually subscribed to Surfing magazine. That's probably as close to the Pipeline as I'm ever going to get. Oh, if I can swing it one day I might drive up the coast to Huntington Beach or wherever the hell it is they hold that annual surfing competition, just to watch. Or maybe I'll cruise up to Tourmaline, just south of La Jolla, and watch the weekend warriors go at it.



If I squint just right, this might be me. Those waves are about my speed.

I'd love to be out there with them, one of them, paddling to the line, talking surfing the way ballplayers talk baseball.

But I'm afraid a dream is what it's going to remain. That day at Silver Strand during the Summer of Love is not going to be banished from my memory, I fear. Oh, well. Facing our mortality is part of becoming more mature, as is facing the fact that we're never going to be what our heroes were. Maybe that's why they remain our heroes.

As Clint Eastwood said many years ago in Magnum Force, "A man's gotta know his limitations."

I think I'll just toddle off and enjoy The Endless Summer one more time. That's another advantage to being an eternal wannabe: in my living room, the surf's always up.