Its pretty simple on the east coast: there are either waves, or there aren’t. When you’ve been wave starved for weeks, even months at a time, the slightest ripple produced by the ocean will appear a glorious wave- sort of like a mirage to a thirsty soul in the dusty desert. Where on the west coast, all sorts of factors typically determine whether or not one will surf- like the wind, swell size, crowd, and pollution, the east coasters just head on out there. We do still succumb to driving endlessly for an hour trying to find ‘better’ or ‘bigger’ waves(you know, the ones you can tell your friends later, you should have been there yesterday) but eventually we get in the water.
After returning home from months of traveling in warm water and countries with nearly perfect waves, Gary and I headed to one of the local surf spots to ride a few nuggets and see what would happened over the course of the day. At this one spot, it didn’t seem to matter how many people were in the line-up, or how few waves they were catching, or the fact that even with mittens on your hands felt the effects of frostbite- cars packed with surfers kept piling in and paddling out. It didn’t matter that there were already 20 people on a peak with a 3 wave set every thirty minutes, they were out there!