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The Johnny Appleseed Surf Tour…Part 4 Aloha and welcome to the final act of my summer of 1966 surf tour of the East Coast. A summer spent surfing and teaching surfing to hundreds of young beginners from New Hampshire to South Carolina. I was scheduled to surf in some contests in Florida, but as you will discover that never happened. If you have followed this story, you will remember that I had just finished second to Dewey Weber at the Seaside Heights contest in New Jersey. A contest that I thought I had won. I didn't get the $100 prize, but I was able to sell a couple more boards due to my performance, thus postponing a call to papa Dave for backup. It's amazing how far a couple hundred dollars went back in '66. I had a week to kill before the Bros and some other members of the Monmouth Beach surf team were to caravan down to Virginia Beach for the next leg of the East Coast U.S.S.A contest circuit……..Once again featuring some of the best California talent to a fledgling Atlantic surfing crowd. The Bros, my guides thus far, had commitments so I spent the week with a young surf chick that also surfed for M.B. I'll call her gidget. Anyway, we cruised up and down the Jersey shore hunting for waves. I would coach her surfing during the day, we would teach each other things at night when we retired to my van. No great finds in the wave department………I never caught Belmar (or Belmont) with that perfect little noseride again. It was always either too small or too windy. But a nice week, nonetheless. When it was time to head for Virginia, we had three cars of Jersey surfers and my board covered VW van, only three of which still belonged to me……err Dave. The Bros' parents, the surf shop owners, and Gidget's mom came along as drivers and chaperones (a curious concept considering the freedom that we'd enjoyed thus far). I guess there actually were a couple of younger shavers along for the outing, too. We'd be parting company after the contest as I headed further down the coast. So I just said my good-byes to the many great people who were part of the Monmouth Beach area that couldn't make the trip. I wonder how many of them became good at the dance and passed it on to their kids? Guess I'll never know. We left late one afternoon and headed south. Parts of that trip are fuzzy in my memory banks, but I remember taking the Cape May Ferry and then the Chesapeake Bay Bridge………..was there a tunnel involved with that bridge? Gidget's sitting next to me and the two Bros are in the back passing up beers. We've got the Ventures cranked to the max and the whole drive was a mobile party. When I drove up to the pier at Virginia Beach on Saturday morning, the beach was bustling with activity as organizers and contestants were going through check in and onlookers were growing in numbers. And the surf……….as the early morning sun started to grow in light we were greeted with the first real waves that I had seen in two months. The day was going to be a blazer, the water was so warm that I had a hard time keeping my paraffin on my board and the waves were a perfect 8' to 12' on the north side of the pier. It reminded me of the south side of Huntington Beach pier during a big north swell. There was a large peak breaking right next to the pier and another somewhat smaller left breaking about 75 yards north. On the larger sets these two waves would wall up and meet each other, leaving a reform to either the left or right. These were absolutely beautiful waves and nobody out. Before the contest the organizers decided to let just the Californian visitors do an exhibition for the crowd which was heading for the 4000-5000 mark. They had also set up an enormous sound system with speakers on the beach and the pier. We got to surf to a brand new album by none other than the Rolling Stones who had just released Aftermath. So there we were, a bunch of California professionals (before the term was used) with perfect surf, the booming strains of the Stones and thousands of awe struck easterners. Truly a Nirvanic situation for a pack of beach boys. And we shredded the place. There was Dewey, Jo Jo Perrin, Flea Shaw, McRoberts, Purvey, Harrison, Frye………….and others that are hiding in the fogs of my memory banks. Everyone got to do their thing to Paint It Black, Under My Thumb, Lady Jane and the pulsating (and homesick awakening) rhythms of Going Home. I was able to do every trick in my repertoire………..whip turns, drop knee turns, bottom turns, nose tricks, backward turns and tricks, everything clicked. And they played the whole album! For the crowd it was like being at the filming of a Hotdogger movie. I know we planted some surf seeds that day. The contest is merely a brief memory to me, which seemed to be my modus operandi whenever I blew a heat and made an early exit. I do remember my first wave of the heat, simultaneously taking off on a 2X peak next to a goofyfooter, Claudie Codgens. I said, "which way". He said," I'll go left." I yelled, "bottom turns." We stood up and dropped down the face of this perfect 12' wave, side by side. Half way down I turned around backwards. We reached the bottom and he swept left as I planted my left foot and swung around with my dropped knee right leg in a perfect backward bottom turn. We could hear the crowd roar. I turned back around, set my rail into the wall with a little stall and went to the nose. I arched under a section, took a half step back and turned around and pulled off a backward arch for about 20 yards until the wave closed out and I did an island pullout while facing the tail. Here's an example of the turn I just described from another contest later in the year.
Was I feeling cocky? Oooh, yeah! Readers that remember the New Hampshire contest that I won might recall that new little knee spinner maneuver that I pulled off. Now, anyone that has ever competed knows that you don't try new tricks in a contest until they are perfected. So, what do I do on my next wave…………exactly! I'm back out to the peak and find myself alone for the second wave of a new set. I decide to take off from a knee paddling position and somewhere in my command center the bravado light was flashing and the caution button was dimmed out. Half way down the face I decide to try a little spinner on my knees. In New Hampshire the waves were 2'……….this one was 10'. I got 3\4 of the way around and caught a foot in the water that tweaked my spin and threw me off the left side of my board. All I had was my right arm around the tail when the lip met us. My board surfed in, to rest on the shore, while I spent a fair amount of my heat diving under white water and swimming. By the time I got in to the beach, grabbed my board and paddled out, I was only able to get a fairly decent head high inside tip ride before the heat ended. Two waves and a wipe out don't win many heats. In those old contests, one lost board often assured disaster. I cannot tell you one more fact about the contest except there was a raging beach party that night that ventured into the wee hours. I did manage a bit more excitement, but chivalry prevents me from too many details. The New Jersey clan had rented a large beach house that was like a mini-hotel that was in walking distance from the pier and that was our base camp and where I parked my camper. After my disastrous heat I hooked back up with Gidget and we went back to the house for a late lunch and some beer consolations. From there we proceeded up to her Mom's room and spent some time saying our good-byes. She was a sweet girl. We were going to write and keep in touch. Who knew the future? After we finished our nap, we headed back to the pier where the party was starting to rage. I also met and talked to Gary at the party, but more on him later. I danced a bit, got separated from the Gidget, found someone with some demon rum and generally partied myself into a righteous buzz. Around 8:30 I headed back to the house to seek out Gidget, but instead ran into her Mom, who was about two sheets to the wind. Her Mom told me she wanted to show me something (I never fell for that line again) and led me up to her room where I had spent the afternoon. Well, she showed me something all right. She showed me that a 38-year-old professional dancer could be the most limber woman I had ever seen and she showed me she was not a qualified chaperone and that she had an extremely healthy sexual appetite. I was compromised, but performed with valor. She yelled away more than a few knocks at the door by some of the clans curious who apparently could hear her exuberance beyond the walls of the room. Unfortunately, one of the knockers was Gidget. Let's just say that when we were finally finished in the room, the situation outside was chilly and awkward. There were a couple of serious chaperones and the adults decided to have a conference. I slipped off to my van and slept like a baby till the next morning. I awoke to the Bros beating on my door. They said things were pretty testy inside the house so we said our good-byes. I told them to keep in touch and to extend my good wishes to those that I had gotten to meet. I never heard from them again. When I returned to the contest area I ran into Gary, who had hitched up from Charleston because he heard there was going to be a party. When I told him I was following this surf circus to Florida he asked to go along. Hmmm. Another guide. So, I figured I would get a head start and we headed south. Some weird driving through the Carolinas in the 60's. Swamps on each side of the highway in some places. Miles of swamps. And the folks started looking at my van in a different manner, more suspicious. Gary wasn't a surfer yet so he didn't know too many secret spots. We did find Nags Head, but it was deserted, stormy, and blown out. In fact, the farther south I was getting the more stormy things became until we reached Gary's ocean front mansion in Charleston. Gary's folks had money. When we got there the servants were closing up the house in preparation for an oncoming hurricane that was getting ready to hit Florida first. Charleston had 45-mph winds. I know you East Coast guys that surf live for your hurricanes, but I was a California kid in a VW van and wind was not good. Plus I was homesick for some familiar surroundings. I pulled the plug on the trip. I think the hurricane pulled the plug on most of the rest of the contest circuit. I believe most guys came back before Florida. Free flowing Gary, in the matter of a day and a half, decided that he would attend Orange Coast College in California and help me with the drive back to the west. So, armed with a new eight track of Aftermath we headed west in the middle of the night, leaving 50-mph winds and a lot of rain behind. To the repeated playing of Going Home at max volume we traversed some of the darkest, spookiest highways in Mississippi and Alabama, never taking time to mingle with the natives at gas stations where we were viewed as some form of aliens. Texas took forever and a day to drive across. We danced on the middle of the Colorado River Bridge entering California. And I threw myself into the cool Pacific as soon as I reached Newport Beach again. A beautiful experience with great memories, but sooo good to be home.
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