Yesterday I spent a couple hours before the show down at the Jersey shore. I love the Atlantic Ocean, almost more than anything else in the world. Unlike the calm, pristine blue of the Pacific, the Atlantic is cold. Wild. Rocky. Grey. It’s more interesting, has more character in my opinion. It was only in the mid-40s yesterday in Long Branch, but I still sat on a bench reading a book and looking out at the water. I didn’t care about a little cold.
And neither did the surfers.
Six surfers were out there in what must have been the frigid water, full wet suits, catching the waves. I realized this might have been the first time I’ve ever actually seen surfers. I find myself on the ocean most often in the winter or fall, where there tends to be a void of wave catchers. I sat and I watched them, prostrate on their boards, waiting for a wave to come along that was big enough and strong enough for them to stand, and ride it a few feet back to the shore. The waves weren’t big at all. I chuckled as I thought to myself what someone from Hawaii would say if someone said “let’s go surfing here!” It’d be paramount to someone whose grown up in the Rockies skiing in Minnesota. Sure, it exists, but the rides are shorter, and there are two kinds of people who ski in the midwest–those who don’t know better, or those that are so passionate and devoted to their sport that they don’t care how long the ride is; just the fact that they can do it is worth it.
I don’t know what category those six dudes fell into–but I admired them. The tenacity. The five second ride with an inevitable head dump into the cold water, followed inevitably by them once again lying on the board and paddling back out, looking for the next wave. They could quit. Finally admit the water was too cold. Or that early spring surfing on the Jersey Shore wasn’t necessarily prime conditions. But maybe that was their spot. Maybe they know that in the summer, come warmer times, that stretch of beach was the only waves, the only ebbs and flows they ever wanted. So their devotion to Long Branch, at the corner of Ocean Street and Brighton Avenue, is what they stuck by, day in and day out.
I’ve never had any desire to be a surfer.
But after watching those dudes yesterday, I realized I’m not all that different.
