California Blog #30: Surfing

 Today, let’s celebrate the 30th blog entry with something that I’d like to call…hitting the waves.

That’s right, folks. It’s the sport of surfing!

In my future life in sunny California, I would like my cousin Brendan to teach me how to surf at the beach. I’ve watched a movie about two surfers searching for a perfect wave around the world. It was a documentary narrated by Bruce Brown called ‘The Endless Summer’ and that was the first surfing film I enjoyed. The second surfing film my dad and I watched was called ‘Out Of The Blue’. It was another surfing documentary about many surfers that lived the dream and rode the waves and became legendary. That other film about surfing I also saw was a penguin surfer named Cody Maverick in the family animated movie ‘Surf’s Up’. And it was “gnarly”!

My favorite parts of the movie was the scene where Cody and Big Z hang ten on the beach. It was pretty fun to watch. Always.

Now hear this.

When I wanna learn how to surf at the beach with one of my cousins, (That means you, Brendan.) I’d probably think about a little surf school. I figured that he’d give me a little thrill. So if you’d probably hang five, you would think about hanging ten.

My list of surfing tricks that I wanna learn are:

1. Bottom Turn

2. Snap

3. 360

4. Air

5. Cutback

6. Foam Climb

7. Tube Ride

8. Alley Oop

9. Carve

10. Rodeo Flip

11. Flynnstone Flip

But sometimes, it takes a lot of practice to do those kind of tricks. And at times, some of the tricks can be really hard to try while I’m surfing. Professional surfers know how to do these tricks too. And that’s how you hang ten in the water.

Brendan can find a place somewhere in the Northern California area to teach me how to surf. We can find a place to learn surfing in Santa Cruz, Monterey Bay, Mavericks, Ocean Beach, Pacifica, Capitola, or maybe Big Sur. (Fun Fact: Big Sur is also the name for the Mac OS X Model and a song from The Beach Boys.

You gotta be careful when you’re surfing. Some surf spots have sharks living in the water and some don’t. So when we find the right surf spot, there might not be many sharks there.

That’s right, zero sharks this time!

Zero!

Zilch!

Nada!

Phew…

Okay enough of that. Anyway about that. There’s a little bit more about surfing that I wanna talk to you about. Cause there’s a lot of surf going on in the movies and real life. There’s even TV shows that have surfing in it too though. One time, I saw Rocket Power on Nickelodeon and I saw everything in sports. Especially surf. There’s also skateboarding in it. I liked that show long time ago in my youthful days. 

Now I don’t know if you’ve heard about this but there’s another surfing film about Bethany Mitchell which was inspiring and touching. That film is titled ‘Soul Surfer’ and it touched everyone’s hearts in theaters and they loved it though.

Okay now, about that surf school. Where was I? Oh right… I wanna ask Branden if we can come up with our own surf school. Then he can teach me how to surf at the beach. Another idea that would also work is explore the beach and watch a little surf movies when I come over to Brendan’s house to visit. Maybe I can even visit Brendan’s house and hang out and talk, watch TV, or maybe go out to eat. That would also mean get together for lunch or dinner sometime.

My cousin Brendan would like to send me a couple of surf magazines and maybe some stickers in a package by mail so that I can read a lot about surfing and see some pictures of it. Won’t that be a new book for that one. I would suggest to him SURFER magazine, or maybe some surfing pictures, or The Surfer’s Journal.

My other idea that Brendan and I would come up with is maybe come up with a collage mural or maybe send my cousin a painting I made and a custom poster of my choice.

If one day you happen to decide on going to the beach and taking a walk around the neighborhood in Santa Cruz, and at least take a moment to look at the waves crashing in the ocean and feel the rush of the sunny day in the coast, there’s always a place we will always love called the beach.

My future for that will be enjoying the beach in the west coast. And this will also be one I won’t forget.

P.S.  This blog is for one of my cousins. And that is for Brendan Klaver.

This blog is dedicated to my Grandpa Earle and my Grandma Helen. Love you and we miss you.

Hope you like my blog and that we made you all proud.