Old School Surfing

Aloha Tribe,

I'm an "old school," surfer girl, being trained by famous big wave rider Darrick Doerner (DD) as a Classic Surfer, and with a very special board custom shaped by Gerry Lopez. I also have a custom shaped board made specifically for me from Robert August. I find the style and historical times both romantic and truly beautiful. You see, to me, the graceful, seductive, alluring, soft movements freely flow along gentle curving lines which sing to my soul, and to me, that is what surfing is all about.

Clearly, the longboard is the only way for a surfer girl like me to go, after all, as we chicks always say, "size matters"  :)

I like my boards long and my fins big, firm, and sure. Okay, granted, I might not have the cutback performance of the more modern new school riders out there, but, I can more than make up for it with softness, beauty, and the pure feeling of the flow, and, if such movement offers passion, what greater?

The way energy or chi works in the body, it flows from place to place. The movement is soft and gentle and rhythmic.  And to me, that is what the feeling of stoke is all about. It's a feeling inside the body that you can just ride forever. And even years later, thinking about it, the same feelings come back to ride gently through your body. That's one of the really awesomely neat things about the field of Chi Gung, it truly lets you feel in ways you never imagined, even, years later.

It's sort of hard to find "old school," boards to a certain degree, and more so, "old school" fins, aka the skeg. But, if you look around, you can find them. And it's the search that makes the hunt so very exciting. It's the anticipation of waiting, once an order is placed, bringing me back to the feelings of being a little girl and waiting patiently, second by second, for Christmas morning to arrive to see what Santa brought. Such a feeling can still live in all of us, though, most of us have lost it. Yet, we have a connection, you see, surfing, the very thing we love to do  and the lifestyle many of us have chosen is all about the Christmas morning waiting to see what Santa brought kind of feeling, that is, the stoke.  It is the feeling of anticipation and excitement and wonder and mystery and mostly magic. Such feelings give us pleasure and joy and happiness and make us smile, though most who see us have no idea why.

Surfers live in a different world from everybody else, we are a Tribe, unique to the world, living in a passionate way that few dare. We know the secret to keeping our inner child alive, the secret of spontaneous in-the-moment joyfully exhuberant play. The secret, is simply to love what we do, and, in surfing, that love is based on what we feel inside our muscles and bodies. We, the surfer's of the world, have got to be the luckiest people on the face of the planet for what could possibly be funner than surfing?

I love a return to the "old school," style of surfing. A time when surfing was fun and done just for the joy and love of it. A time when people shared waves as Party Waves and helped each other no matter the risk or cost. I long for a time when we surfers just hung together, with our own language,  our own non-verbal communications, and our own special looks in the eye of being stoked, a look, that we all recognize in each other. Surfdar, if you want to think of it that way, it's a look that is unmistakeable, and, we simply know eachother merely from a glance.

Sure, those times in some ways have passed by to a certain degree, the "old school, replaced by the new school" but, it will always live in my heart as it does with many of you. And with every wave I ride, with every stroke of wax I rub on my board, with every fin I tighten, I keep that spirit alive and dancing within my heart and upon the waves.

Bodaciously Stoked,


Lily of the Valley