June 5, 2013 Wednesday

Bolinas	Groin
9:10 am to 10:40 am	1’ to 2’, sets to 3’
Mid upcoming tide	Slight NW cross breeze
Overcast – June gloom	Exercise session

I met a new friend out in the water this morning – Archie from Mill Valley, older guy, exactly my age, longboarder. He was out at the Channel with Mary, DB the Safeway checker and Bill from Berkeley on his wave ski. That’s Archie on a set wave at the Channel in the above photo.

After being out at the Groin by myself for a few minutes, Archie paddled over from the Channel to join me.

“Did you give up on the Channel?” I asked.

“No, we realized we were in the path of the fishing boats.” A couple of local fishermen had passed by them, kicking up a huge wake and messing up the waves. Mary exited the water when I entered it. DB left a few minutes later and Bill paddled from the Channel to the ramp, and now Archie and I were by ourselves at the Groin.

He introduced himself and asked if I was regular here, of course I am. I started surfing here in 1988. That started off a conversation of trading our surfing histories. Archie and I have a lot in common. Both of us are 68 years old, we both starting surfing as kids, then had a long gap of several years of not surfing and then returned to the sport.

Archie grew up in San Diego and learned to surf at Ocean Beach (that’s Ocean Beach, San Diego, not San Francisco) and surfed there everyday for years. I’m familiar with Ocean Beach, my son used to live there, it’s a great beach town with a big sandy beach, a strand and lots of funky little shops and eateries, similar to Hermosa Beach in LA.

He moved to the Bay Area to go to college at SF State in 1962. That was the era of lousy wetsuits, no leashes, and tons of drugs. All the surfers were into drugs – including the hard stuff like heroin. Archie didn’t want to be associated with those creeps, so he gave up surfing. That started a 38-year gap in surfing where marriage, career and family intervened.

He returned to surfing in 2000 when on a business trip to Hawaii. At this point I stopped him. I had heard this story before. Archie and I had connected one morning a year ago at Linda Mar. I remembered it. It was just before the Kahuna Kupuna Surf Contest and I was at Linda Mar to tune up for the contest. He was considering entering it. That got us talking and he told me his story. In fact I wrote about him in my July 12, 2012 Surf Journal post.

During this business trip Archie had a room on the 20^th floor in one of the big hotels at Waikiki. He sat up there watching the surfers having a ball in the water. That took him back to younger days. The next day he rented a board, paddled out at Waikiki, was out for four hours and had a blast. On his flight home, he had an epiphany to take up surfing again. He stressed about how he was going to announce to his wife and grown-up kids that he was going to take up surfing again. They thought he was nuts. But since that moment he has been surfing for 13 years and loves it.

Most of his surfing has been at Linda Mar and points south. He has recently discovered Bolinas. I welcomed him and encouraged him to join us. If you see him out at the Channel or the Patch, say hello and share some waves with him.