Love/Hate/…

My parents hate the beach. I didn’t grow up in a summer beach house. I didn’t have friends with beach houses. I lived at least 1hr15min from the closest beach. There is absolutely no reason why I got into surfing.

The only connection to being interested in surfing came from my cousin who lived in the mythical land of California. He came east every summer and he’d show up wearing his OP or Quiksilver clothes and have his cool swooped over hair and way of talking, keep in mind this was the 80’s and 90’s so California was the pinnacle of everything cool.

But, we barely talked about surfing. Honestly, I don’t even remember a conversation about it. Here I was in love with something that I didn’t know anything about. I went to the local shops that sold magazines and bought Surfer or Surfing and read every article and put up every poster. I was the most legit poser. Like, I would make fun of me if I could.

Everything changed though when I was 13yrs old. My parents blessed, or cursed, me with a trip out west with my grandmother. We flew into LA and stayed with my uncle in Huntington Beach. He would have me believing that it was the best surf in the world…but, its the city where I got my first taste of what it meant to be a surfer in California. I paddled out on a boogie board, like a nerd, and immediately got yelled out by a guy at least 3 times my age because I was in his way. I remember him having bleach blonde hair and kinda looked like Warchild from Point Break. I didn’t give 2 fucks, and just kept going for it. If you can yell at a kid in the whitewater in 1ft waves, you’re a kook and deserve to get dropped in on again, which I did immediately following the first incident.

My time there was short but, damn, I was hooked.

I didn’t make it back out untiI I was 17. I was there for a month and lived the most insane month of my life up until that point. I was literally driving around LA blasting NOFX, Pennywise, Bad Religion and surfing and partying every single day. I found my new calling. Core memories were made on a daily basis. We would surf ALL day, I have no idea how we did it, but we did. After a surf in Bolsa Chica we would go to Jack In The Box or Jack In The Crack as my cousin called it, and grab the chicken tenders with the ranch sauce and an oreo cookie shake. I could still eat like that at 17 and not look like a beached whale the next day.
The best days were spent at Trestles walking the path and surfing super fun waves, usually at Church’s or Uppers. When we were done we always went to Pedro’s for a big ass chicken burrito.

Fast forward 30yrs and here I am, still surfing and still blasting punk rock, mostly blasting music now because my hearing is shot, while I drive to NJ looking for surf. This life is a blessing that I sometimes cannot stand. Day after day I watch my friends posting stories and videos of super fun surf while I’m over here not able to put my feet in sand. WHY do I do this to myself? I can’t give it up. It’s like a super toxic relationship that you just get pulled back to every single day when you’re being treated like shit. Some days I make plans to surf and wake up to realize the forecast was all wrong and it won’t get good until AFTER I have be at work. Some days I wake up at 4:30 and make the drive and find that the forecast was completely wrong and the ocean looks like a lake. WTF!!! How in 2026 do you still not know how to predict what the ocean is going to be doing?!?! That site sucks, if you surf you know which one.

But, there are days, hours, moments that hold me to this beautiful curse and I realize that no matter how bad it can be for my mental health, it’s still not as bad as NOT surfing. I’ve succumbed to the idea that I will always be mediocre at this. There is no way to be as good as I can be when I’m lucky to be in the water more than twice a month. But, the things I have seen, the colors, the shapes of water, the whales, fish, dolphins, birds, the sunsets and sunrises, (mostly rises), the friends. The feeling of water as smooth as a sheet of glass flying past you will never be beat. The way the world looks like a grainy black and white movie when the snowstorm moves over the water off of land. The sounds stop and everything looks like it’s in slow motion. You can put your hand down and feel the connection to something much bigger than all of us. Much bigger than all of the frustrations this beautiful curse can give you.

This past year my youngest daughter got hooked. I saw it in her eyes. She told me she loved it so much. I almost want to apologize to her, because if she loves it even a fraction of the amount that I do, she’s destined for a life of agony. For me though, this was one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever experienced with surfing. Seeing her try, and I mean really try, and paddle into waves all on her own was incredible. She was trimming left and right and jumping off onto the sand as she rode all the way to the beach every time. We made the drive over all summer after work and had our sunset sessions and gave me, and hopefully her, memories that will last forever.
In one of my favorite surf movies I heard an aging pro surfer say something along the lines of, “as I get older I don’t need many waves. I don’t need many waves to have fun” and for the first time in my life this resonated with me. I’m not old, but I’ve realized that my many trips driving over to Jersey for mediocre knee high waves was not for me. This was for her. It’s her time to learn and fall in love.

My experience is not out of the ordinary. If you live here in PA and snowboard/ski you see videos of insane powder days in much bigger mountains. Our skating is crusty and not the polished out streets you see out west. The mountain biking is meh, compared to the big mountain stuff out west and up north. Surfing in Jersey is not for the faint of heart. Our storms are unpredictable and sometimes we wait months for tropical storms only to get COMPLETELY SKUNKED. Not a damn hurricane to even talk about so now we have to hope for an active nor’easter season which ultimately means snow and horrible weather.

The point is, sometimes you’re forced to love something that doesn’t always love you back. Sometimes you have to let things play out and ride with it. I didn’t choose to love this. It chose me and I’m glad it did.