RIDING POWER

SEEING IS BELIEVING

    It's the look in their eyes or the tone of voice. When I talk with friends from elsewhere I can tell they just don't get surfing. 

    Maybe they are thinking of media "Hey Dude, gnarly man!" stereotypes, or they've never seen the extraordinary athleticism required.

    Tangling with 20 to 40 foot waves is serious business.

    An article in an Island paper detailed more than 120 serious spinal injures on Hawaiian surf beaches. Getting crushed in a wall of water like that pictured above can also kill you.

   The memorial near the famous Pipeline on Oahu's north shore pays tribute to those athletes killed there.

    Along with traditional surfers are boogie boarders, using flippers and a short board.  They too ride the wave and when successful, as seen below, flip up and over the roaring Pacific curl.

    On Oahu's North Shore we watched at the Banzai Pipeline, Sunset Beach and Waimea, three of the world's best surfing sites.
     I was surprised to see the scope and depth of the "surf culture" and joked about the traffic and jammed parking, "does anyone work up here?"

   At least some do, as professional surfers. Several "surf shacks" commercially owned homes housing professionals, sit along the Pipeline. 

    They compete, do product endorsement appearances and live only feet from some of the best surf in the world.

      A few of the pros are veteran champions.

  Followed by many young chargers

 During the winter on the north shore they are well observed

  Even watching can come with potential difficulty. The next two frames are a case in point.  I took the first shot at the end of the steps leading to the Pipeline. My friend Jim shot the second frame a day earlier when those rocks and stumps were being used by professionals shooting a competition. 

  The people above are unsuspecting of how quickly the beach can change.  The pros below will remember, and fishing for their gear.

Photo Courtesy of Jim Cahill

   So yea, it's exciting and the rides look thrilling, even appealing.  But this boomer knows his own limited abilities and respects the power of the sea.

    The best I can offer you are pictures, from a safe distance and my admiration for those who catch a wave.

   See you down the trail.

ICONIC COINCIDENCE

A WORLD CAPITOL

GROUND ZERO

HALEIWA

    1,860 miles from the nearest continent, further away from "mainland" than anywhere in the world is a funky surf town that is a premier sports capitol of the planet. 

   As fate would have it, just a few miles down the road is ground zero for an Industry that is now world wide. In 1899 recent Harvard grad James Drummond Dole came to Oahu and began what became Dole Foods, the folks who turned Pineapple into a major crop and built an empire in the process.

Dole

Courtesy of Dole Foods

Kahanamoku

Courtesy of www.nnbd.com

   The creation of modern surfing is attributed to Duke Kahanmoku, born on Oahu nine years before Dole arrived.
In many ways their lives paralleled. Kahanmoku was a champion swimmer, actor and a businessman. 
    Surfing and Pineapple-icons of the Islands. It is a cosmic coincidence these vastly divergent influences share roots on Oahu and both attract visitors from around the globe.

    At a Disneyesque location just a few miles down highway 99, people cue up to ride on the Aloha Express to view the red oxide volcanic earth that helped Jim Dole take the Pineapple from Paraguay and make it as Hawaiian as the North Shore has made Surfing.

     Dole is now about a lot more than Pineapple.

   Surfing is also an industry. Dole and Kahanmoku are revered. Their iconic legacies remain neighbors in North Oahu where Kings and Queens were once the royalty and where chickens strut on the court house lawn.

   Aloha!

   See you down the trail.