Flux and Inspiration

Cori Schumacher hosted a special screening Saturday of the new short film FLUX: Redefining Women's Surfing. It was like Miss Representation but focused on surfing. Sadly, the teen surfer featured in the film lost her Roxy sponsorship after appearing in it.

Cori also unveiled The Inspire Initiative.

The Inspire Initiative is a non-profit that seeks to enrich and empower women of all ages through participation in surfing while emphasizing education, media literacy and building a core community of leaders that will effect positive change in the world.

A big part of the Inspire Initiative will launch in November: a comprehensive history of women's surfing. I'm looking forward to seeing it, and the other initiatives ii has in store.

Breath of Life

This morning I gave back by serving as a "catcher" at the Mauli Ola Foundation's Hans Hagen Surf Experience Day in Del Mar.

"Mauli Ola" means breath of life in Hawaiian (and I think it's interesting that "ola" means wave in Spanish). The MOF takes kids with cystic fibrosis surfing because the salt air provides natural therapy for their often-congested lungs. I didn't know any of that before last week, when San Diego Surf Lady Gina posted the volunteer opportunity on Facebook.

This little girl went for tandem rides on a bodyboard.

Each kid was paired with an instructor in a blue rashguard, and I was one of the wetsuited volunteers standing in the warm shallows to catch wayward soft-top longboards and help the children get back out through the first lines of whitewater.

My other duty was cheering - lots and lots of cheering.

Blue lips but he kept going back for more (photo from Mauli Ola)

The kids were so stoked! One little boy was reluctant to come in, even though his lips were turning blue.

I think this is Lola, getting some pre-surf instruction.

Me and Gina

Little Lola was about 6 or 7 years old with black-polished fingernails, and she was having a blast. I cheered her ride as I caught her surfboard. She hopped atop it again and I pushed her back out, but she'd ridden south, away from her instructor, who was too far away to call and not paying attention as he chatted with another. So I nervously turned the big board around - the windswell didn't leave much time and I didn't want to get her caught broadside and dumped - said "Ready... Set... Go!" and pushed her toward shore ahead of a little broken wave. She popped up and rode until the whitewater faded over a trench, then I fetched her back again, still waiting for her instructor to notice us. He seemed to have forgotten her entirely. When I saw him leave the water and with no other instructors in the near vicinity, I pushed Lola into one more wave and then took her in to the beach. She said she was not done surfing; she wanted to go back out for more! Her first instructor by then had left the beach, so I enlisted another blue shirt, who took Lola into the water for more surfing and smiles. What a great morning!

P.S. I didn't find out until later, but (in)famous Hawaiian surfers Sunny Garcia and Kala Alexander were there too. Gina even got a photo of me with the "Toughest Fucking Man in Surfing" just after he launched a quadcopter.

San Diego Surf Film Festival 2014

Front row two nights in a row, for a couple of movies that were great for entirely different reasons.
I'm glad I went, although it was hard to stay up till midnight when my internal alarm clock is stubbornly set to 6 am for dawn patrol.

Someone in the audience asked Switchfoot, "If you had to choose between surfing and music, which would you pick?" Lead singer Jon Foreman had an intriguing and mildly profound answer ready. I can't remember his exact words, but it was along the lines of: In surfing, you have to ride finite, existing waves, but in music, you create the waves, which makes music a much broader experience.

Switchfoot answers questions after the Fading West screening

I'm writing an article entitled, "Why Aren't There More Surf Gay Surfers Out in the Lineup?" Stand by for that.

Out In The Lineup producer Thomas Castets and world champion surfer Cori Schumacher

Sold-out show

Surfing With Unicorns

In Out in the Lineup, Cori Schumacher says that male gay surfers are mythical beasts like unicorns. You hear about them, but no one's ever seen one. That was the case for me until this morning, when I met up for a surf with the film's producer, Thomas Castets, and his friend Steve from Florida.

When I moved to the Bay Area and began surfing in earnest eight years ago, it seemed for a time that all of the women I met in the water were gay. I didn't think much of it, since it was San Francisco, after all. But the guys? None of them were gay - as far as I knew.

Now at Avalanche in Ocean Beach, I was out in the lineup with two guys who were out in the lineup, and they were both pretty good surfers. When I asked Thomas what inspired him to make the film, he told me to watch it and see. Although I did once get stuck inside for a grueling while and had to return to the rip to get back out, I held my own on the chest-high waves and pulled some fun lefts from the crowd as we all drifted south toward the pier.

Gray with a Splash of Color

The water temperature has been all over the place lately as upwellings come and go in Pacific Beach. Four days ago I wore my 4/3 wetsuit and wished for booties and a hood as sequential duck-dives gave fleeting ice-cream headaches. By yesterday the ocean had warmed so that I was comfortable in just a 3/2. And then this morning I was glad to be wearing a new Billabong Salty Dayz chest-zip 4/3.

My sleeveless Billabong Salty Jane long john fits well and has nice colored panels (so nice to not look entirely like a black seal!) but I don't get to wear it often in San Diego. I took a chance that Billabong's 4/3 would also fit and ordered the same size online from Swell.com, using a $50 gift card reward for participation in the Surfer Health Study. Unfortunately the only difference between the two wetsuits - sleeves - really is different. I've got tiny wrists, only 5" in circumference; I have a hard time finding bracelets because the standard is 7" long. But Aussie girls must have even skinnier arms because the wrists of the 4/3 are tight on me. I made the mistake of putting the wetsuit on for the first time during the Santa Ana heat wave before an afternoon surf, and thought my difficulties in pulling up the sleeves were due to sunscreen and sweat. But as I found this cooler morning, they're just small. Bearable, but definitely tight. No flushing there, for sure!

As the chilly ocean lapped at my feet soon after dawn, I was glad of the new 4/3. A storm front's heading our way, and twilight calm at my house seven blocks from the beach yielded to a light south breeze that quickly grew stronger and chopped the sea surface. On the plus side, the crowd was light and the waves were a decent size, bigger than the last few days. Short- to mid-period windswell meant many wet slaps in the face but it wasn't too hard getting out on my trusty 6'2" Rocket.

After a few short whitewatery rides on the north end, I left the growing pack of longboarders there and moved south to the Pumphouse peak which held just two shortboarders. I ate it a few times but also found joy on a couple of shoulder-high plus lefts with fast fun rampy drops and a little bit of face-time. Confidence is building!

I found this little guy below the high-tide line and moved him up to the dune.

Hot Air and Cold Water

My old surf buddy Luke came down from NorCal and we had a fun late afternoon surf yesterday at Tourmo, after he fixed a couple of broken things on my new freelance writing website (check it out here). Yesterday was crazy windy, with a maximum gust of 39 mph recorded at my home break, Crystal Pier. The Santa Anas have been blowing strong, hot and dry, and the normal afternoon onshore seabreeze couldn't counter them until partway through our session, which thankfully was after the worst of the wind.

The swell dropped overnight and the day started calm, but the hot offshore breeze turned on before we met up for another surf mid-morning. I checked breaks from Bird Rock to Reed Avenue south of Crystal Pier.

I was stopped in a red zone at the end of Reed and had texted Luke to meet me at Law Street when a tourist asked if he could take a picture of my MINI Cooper at the beach, for his wife. I stepped out of frame to let him snap it, then got back in the car in time to see a nice set roll through with peeling lefts and rights. "Changed my mind," I texted, "Come here instead." I'm glad I said yes to that picture.

Under a hot sun with the air temperature already over 85°, I sweated in my 4/3 wetsuit while I waited for Luke. He'd gotten cold in his sleeveless long john yesterday and donned a 4/3 himself. I wished for booties and a hood too once we paddled out; an upwelling has dropped the ocean temperature to 55°, which brought on short ice-cream headaches after a few duck-dives.

The waves were up to shoulder high and held open by strong offshores that made paddling into them challenging. I didn't get into any green until my last wave. I had to hold the nose down hard against the wind as I popped up and then rode left as my buddy watched from the beach. Stoked!