Drivin’ South Part One

As teen-dom found me, I’d found my happy place. I was set for life, wanting nothing more than the safe theme park thrills The Jetty provided. But in the lineup, between the heckles, I’d heard talk of somewhere beyond – barren, unruly, possibly deadly? It’s nickname, after all, was “The Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Such is life; just when you think you’ve figured her out she issues a new challenge.

My only experience with Cape Hatteras was a long ago family trip, where the highlight was Derrick bringing along a skimboard that he thought was a boogieboard. One floats, one doesn’t. He paddled a few strokes from shore and promptly sank.

Now that I knew what Hatteras was about, I begged my dad to take me. He agreed but told me to pick a day with clean, worthwhile surf. I could do that. Surfers are inherently skilled at reading the weather.

I religiously pored over The Virginian-Pilot weather section day after day. After two weeks of relentless crap winds, Mom Nature offered a reprieve. “Dad, it’s time.”

We grabbed my friend Chris and headed south. The camera was loaded with film and the conditioned air pregnant with expectation. Visions of sugar plum peelers danced through our heads. After ninety minutes that felt like nine thousand, we pulled up to the beach, sprinted over the dunes, and…ohhhhhhhh, fuuuuuudge!

Not only was it as flat as Nebraska, an onshore breeze punched me in the face for good measure. I’d checked and rechecked the paper. It clearly said northeast winds, but these were blowing FROM the northeast.

Thus came valuable lessons about getting skunked and about the weather. The morons don’t tell you which way the wind is blowing; they tell you where it’s coming from. I was a wee lad, but I knew this made no sense. “It was the paper’s fault, Dad. They’ve got it all backwards.”

We made a day of it, sliding at the waterpark and running all over Jockey’s Ridge. Finally we got back in the car and made the drive of shame back to VB.

The next day at The Jetty, I found real shame. Another surfer was raving about scoring head-high waves in Hatteras, lying through his teeth. I don’t usually speak up, but I had to butt in. “I was down there yesterday, and it was flat!”

“Yeah, I know it flat was in Nags Head,” he said with a knowing look of derision. “Around the corner in Frisco it was offshore and firing.” I had lots more to learn.

The Jetty

If I could revisit any time in my life, I wouldn’t have to think about it for a second. Roaming the hood on bikes with my afro-ed brethren was my first taste of adventure. Traveling the East Coast, then far beyond, to surf and compete and write, played like a dream. Those experiences, while mind-opening and full of wonder, cannot match what came in between, the years of becoming so enmeshed with one spot that it will always be my adopted home, the place that shaped my own Wonder Years. First Street Jetty.

Forty-five minutes of early morning, back road pedaling and this wide-eyed, wide-stanced freckleface with pale skin and a faux punk sneer was in a new realm. My BMX bike-turned-surf-mobile, with the jerry-rigged rack that would come loose and smash the tail of my board on the street, lifted me from suburban blandness toward teenage nirvana.

The First Street Jetty was built in 1968 alongside what was already the best surf spot in Virginia Beach, the old Steel Pier. By the time I arrived, the pier had been torn down, and nothing but a few stray shards of pilings remained, marked by four buoys in the middle of the lineup.

My boys and I would get there early and take any wave we wanted. At least for a little while, until the real crew arrived. Then it was nothing but scraps for us as we settled in at the bottom of the pecking order (Yes, there was such a thing; longboarding was still in remission from the late ’60s transition to shorter boards). Grommet abuse was dished out as needed – dunkings, boards paddled out to sea, kids stuck in trashcans or taped to poles. We silently grumbled through sunburnt lips and lapped up the leftovers.

The last thing we wanted to do was make a mistake in front of the crowd. Blow a wave, and the entire peanut gallery let you know about it. Heckling at the jetty was an art form. You’d be so embarrassed afterwards that you wouldn’t want another wave if someone gave it to you.

Since the VCR had recently revolutionized surf movies by allowing us to watch at home, we all mimicked our favorite pros in the lineup. For me, the image of Tom Curren’s seamless arcs at Rincon was blazed into my soul at age 14. I’d found my god.

At the jetty, there was no shortage of talented locals to pave our path. Those who had the biggest influence on me were Quest, Pills, Joe Don, Twig, Big Island, Kochey, and the most talented surfer of my generation, the great Pete Smith, Jr.

Occasionally, even the established guys had to give way. The dark blue Ford Bronco would pull up to the concrete slab alongside 2nd Street, and fresh off the plane from some faraway venue, out stepped a nine-foot tall, John Wayne deliberate, real live surf star. OMG it’s Wes Laine.

Wes was in his world tour prime while I was learning the basics. Any time he showed up at the jetty, the session became an event. Months before I could read about his latest competitive adventure in the mags, I eavesdropped in the lineup to hear who won and how Wes finished. More importantly, I got to see what was possible in crappy VB waves.

This was the scene that sucked me in. I spent every moment of my teenage summers and most evenings after school camped at First Street. While the waves attracted me, what happened on land made it memorable. The camaraderie, the creativity to endure endless flat spells, the pranks. But that’s another story.

Game Change, Part Two

To be honest, I don’t recall consciously trying to become a better surfer than my brother Derrick. I don’t recall the first time I stood up on my board. Nor do I recall much of anything from my first summer in the water. It was over 30 years ago.

What I do remember is the instant that redirected the course of my life.

I was bobbing around at First Street, the primary spot in town thanks to its proximity to a rock jetty that juts a couple hundred feet into the sea. The name is a misnomer; there’s no such thing as First Street. The “first street” as you head northward from Rudee Inlet is 2nd Street. I don’t know if the city planners screwed the pooch on this one or what. Regardless, sand builds up alongside the jetty, and as a result the waves there typically break better than anywhere else in the state.

Many people avoid First Street at all costs, citing an overzealous crowd packed into a small lineup. The guys who stayed away liked to call themselves “soul surfers” as if to say their reasons for riding waves were purer than ours. Apparently, they’d managed to find God not only in the anemic Virginia Beach surf. To me the shapelier waves at First Street were worth the fight, and the proximity to skilled surfers gave me plenty to strive for.

The crowd on this day was different. Rather than being aligned in an elbow-to-elbow, Rockettes-style chorus line extending the length of the surfing area, everyone was spread out. Small waves popped up throughout the lineup. They’d peak and crumble way out near the tip of the jetty, then fizzle and form again halfway to shore. This reform was about to deliver my sunburnt little body to a place of ecstasy.

In my month or so of surfing I’d stood up on dozens of waves, if you could call them that. Everything to that point consisted of wading into waist-deep water, eyeing an approaching line of whitewater, laying atop The Yellow Sub and throwing a few furious strokes before impact, then gripping the rails to keep from getting bucked off, followed by a tenuous leap to my feet and a few yards of squatting through some minor turbulence before either running aground or tipping over. My surfing was hardly the “Winged Mercury” stuff of Jack London’s 1907 depiction from Waikiki. I looked more like an epileptic monkey.

The Wave That Changed Everything likely raised not a single eyebrow other than my own. What occurred was nothing discernibly noteworthy. Paddling as fast as my spindly arms could move, I benefitted from a dying surge of whitewater from the outer bar and managed to roll into an actual unbroken wave. The thing was no higher than a cat sitting on its haunches, but my first real wave nonetheless. The final remnants of whitewater dissipated as I jumped to my feet, leaving me gliding, make that flying, across a smooth, greenish-brown mound of liquid energy.

If that last bit of wordiness disgusted you, you’re not alone. I threw up a little bit as I wrote it. I wish there was a better way to describe “the feeling” without sounding like a fruitcake, but I’m afraid there’s not. Writers far better than I have tried, and failed. I was never one for heavy drugs, but perhaps the sensation of shooting up is comparable to what I was feeling. I don’t know. Either way, I promise not to get so sappy again.

The next few seconds were unlike any I’d experienced, and the hook was set. Nothing else mattered except replicating that experience. Then again, I’m probably remembering it all wrong. More than likely, the sentiment was actually, “Take that, Derrick!”