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Salon Wanderlust | Longboard surfing women ![[Salon Wanderlust]](http://archive.salon.com//wlust/src/wl_logo.gif) ![[Salon Wanderlust]](http://archive.salon.com//wlust/src/wl_logo2.gif) T A B L E_T A L KVisitors to Japan share their cultural experiences in the Wanderlust area of Table TalkR E C E N T L YPassagesBy Marie Winn A wildlife adventure in Central Park(03/26/98) Foie gras dreams By Melinda Bergman Burgener Foie gras: Tastes great, but you don't want to see how it gets that way(03/25/98) Boogie or bustBy Dawn MacKeenHosting spring break is a deal with the devil(03/24/98) Insider's guide to AmsterdamBy David DownieThe best places to eat, stay and play(03/23/98)Festival time in KathmanduBy Jeff GreenwaldA prayer, a pickpocket and a Penis sadhu(03/20/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives   BY LISA PALAC | CAPITOLA, CALIF. -- "Green is up!"It's a few minutes after 6 on a cold, clear winter Saturday morning and it's still pretty dark. But there's an orange glow on the eastern horizon, bright like a cosmic flare, and soon the sun will climb over the Santa Cruz Mountains and light up the Pacific Ocean. "Black on a wave!" A young guy, suited up in neoprene and sitting on a surfboard in the water, is using what looks like an orange parking cone as a megaphone to shout out the identity of the contestants to the judges. Oops -- wipeout. Black off a wave. It's hard to see exactly what's going on in the pre-dawn, but I know from looking at my schedule that it's the first 20-minute heat of the surfing contest, and that there are five young women, age 17 and under, in the icy water, each wearing a different colored nylon jersey over their wet suits and paddling for what little bumps of water come their way. Things are off to a really flat start, but that's not unusual. Waves on the day of any given competition are typically mediocre -- nature does what she wants when she wants to -- and champion surfers often get to be champions because they know how to shred in the smallest, crappiest conditions. What's unusual is this: women and longboards. Even just a few years ago, seeing women in the water was an anomaly -- and longboards, well, they were totally uncool. The Second Annual Capitola Women's Longboard Surfing Contest is being held at the one and only break in -- where else? -- Capitola, a small Northern California beach town, one over from Santa Cruz, about 100 miles south of San Francisco. Co-sponsored by the Capitola Chamber of Commerce and the West Wind Surf Club, it's an amateur contest that benefits the Surfer's Environmental Alliance, a nonprofit devoted to saving the California coastline from the likes of Big Oil, overdevelopment and golf, and the Women's Crisis Center, a local 24-hour shelter for abused women and children. Kicking off at 6 a.m. and ending at 5:20 p.m., just minutes before sundown, the contest is split into three divisions -- Juniors, Women and Masters -- with surfers ranging in age from 10 to over 40. This time there are 80 women competing, nearly twice as many as the last competition, and the entry roster has been filled for weeks now. The sun rises and, in anticipation of the long day ahead, I walk back along the boardwalk to the beachside parking lot and retrieve an XXL thermos of hot coffee from the trunk of my car. I'm bundled up in polar fleece pants and jacket, covered with a Goretex shell, gloves and a floppy, fun-fur hat. All around me, though, are lots of half-naked girls with -- swear to god -- long, blond hair. They're doing the classic "surfer change": towel around the waist while you squeeze in or out of your wet suit. (Getting out of the suit is always worse, especially at this time of year: fingers too cold to work the zipper, teeth chattering, and you can't get your dry clothes on fast enough because they're sticking to your damp, saltwater-coated skin.) Suddenly I get this rush of wanting to know everything about these women. I feel like running up to every single one and asking her how long she's been surfing and who taught her and why she's into it. I mean, who are all these ballsy chicks who've got the nerve to do what I don't? Which is, surf competitively. Two and a half years ago, at the age of 31, I went surfing for the first time at a break called Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz. A City Girl who sucks at all sports, I wasn't surprised when I didn't stand up and ride a wave that day. Or the next day. Or the next month. In fact, I spent more than a year in 54-degree water going over the falls and eating shit. Initially, I stuck with it because I was in love: I met Mr. Right and followed him into the water. But soon, it became a love triangle: me, him and the sea. I was, as they say, stoked. I felt so alive in the ocean, and it connected me to the world in a way that shoe stores and cocktail parties didn't. Surfers always talk about the spirituality of the sport; they'll call someone who's fluid and graceful a "soul surfer." But the truth is, it's pretty hard to tangle with the waves and not feel soulful. The ocean is primal -- it's just as heavenly and hellish today as it was thousands of years ago -- and it continually reveals the essence of being to me, in the most primal way. I know how corny and New Age that must sound, but all I can say is that life takes on a new perspective when you're face-to-face with the beautiful violence of nature. Yet despite all of the possibilities for personal growth that surfing offered me (not least of which were a hot set of triceps), I often felt this strange ambivalence about the whole business. "Ambivalent about surfing?" a friend repeated. She thought I was joking. "Don't you know how neurotic that sounds? It's like a really bad online pseudonym!" Simply put, surfing fucked with my self-esteem. It took me forever to stand up and ride a wave, and I hated myself for it. Like a giant magnifying glass, surfing showed me every pockmark in my persona. I suffered vicious attacks of "I Suck" and "I Can't" and couldn't seem to disconnect my performance in the water from my self-worth. If I panicked, which wasn't uncommon, I'd get so angry at myself for panicking that I committed the worst offense -- crying in the water. Since I never met anyone else who felt depressed after a surf session, I often thought: Give it up. C'mon, did I really believe that I could learn to surf? It wasn't just the paddling-standing-riding skills that I worried about, it was the constant confrontations with fear. Fear of sharks, of drowning, of a cracked skull, of public humiliation (because no one learns to surf in private), of competing with men in an arena where I felt utterly vulnerable and, oh yeah, the biggie: fear of failure. Quit now, I told myself, and spare yourself the inevitable ugly truth: You tried for months but you couldn't do it! My warped logic went like this: If I didn't believe I could ever do it in the first place, then I wouldn't be bummed out when it never happened. It's amazing the things we do in spite of ourselves. One day my board slipped down the face of a wave and I went with it, standing up. Well, at least for a few seconds. It wasn't a long ride, just long enough to change the course of my own history. If I can do this, I can do anything. Of course, I'm always the first to forget my own mantra. Three cars down from mine, a shivering girl with long, dark, wet hair is changing out of her wet suit. "Did you surf in the first heat?" I ask. She nods. Not quite 16, Melissa Perez has been surfing only a year and this is her first contest. "What made you decide to enter?" I say. She points to her dad, rolls her eyes and smiles. Her father taught her how to surf, she tells me, and at his suggestion, she signed up. "Our whole family surfs!" Dad proudly interjects as he straps Melissa's board onto the roof of their four-wheel-drive and gives it a hard slap. Melissa speaks quietly and tends to look at the ground as she talks. But when she tells me that she learned to surf at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, a fierce beach break famous for monster waves and life-sucking currents, I'm struck by her confidence. "Ocean Beach? Wow!" Still, she seems unaware of her own mettle. "I go out on small days," she says shyly. "It's no big deal." We talk and walk back into the action, stopping in front of a big brown bulletin board where the heat results get posted, and wait. About 10 feet ahead of us the boardwalk is blocked off, and only judges, press and miscellaneous VIPs are allowed behind the line. The five judges are nestled together at the dead end of the boardwalk, where the cement walkway juts out over the ocean and is enclosed by an L-shaped silver guardrail. Each 20-minute heat consists of five surfers going out to ride a maximum of five waves. They're scored on their three best waves, and the judges award points for skill, style and the length of the ride. The top three progress to the quarterfinals, semifinals and then, the moment of truth. Finally, the results from the first heat go up on the board. I find Melissa's name and shout, "Look, you got five!" I'm excited, thinking it's five points, the highest score. "Oh," Melissa's face drops. "Fifth. Last place." I spend the next few seconds silently telling myself I'm an asshole. But what do I know about surfing contests? This is the first one I've ever been to. Nine o'clock, heat nine, the throng thickens. As the temperature rises, I slowly shed my fleecy carapace until I'm in shorts and bare feet. The PA finally gets turned on, leaving the orange-parking-cone guy free to go. Surf tunes suddenly sail through the air -- there's something about hearing the theme from "Hawaii Five-O" at a surfing contest that makes you feel like you have arrived. Sponsor thank-yous, raffle winners and the names of the surfers in the Women's division (18-34) are being announced, but it's a female announcer with the look of Johnny Cash and the rhythm of Howard Cosell who's the real crowd-pleaser. "OK, wave of the day and three gals paddling to get it. Oooh! Party wave! Everybody's on it. Next one, steep take-off to the left -- look out! Yeah, she's workin' it. Hope the judges can see that hangin' five action!" People squeal as one surfer hangs five toes off the nose of her board. The familiar call of "Outside!" -- meaning look out to sea, there's a set rolling in -- draws hoots and hollers. OK, so it's a smallset, but the fact that ridable waves keep rolling in at all is reason to cheer. N E X T+P A G E+| My secret source_________- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Salon | Search | Archives | Contact Us | Table Talk | Ad InfoArts & Entertainment | Books | Comics | Life | News | People Politics | | Tech & Business | Audio The Free Software Project | The Movie Page Letters | Columnists | Salon PlusCopyright © 2000 Salon.com All rights reserved. |
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