Letting Go In Estes Park
When I moved to Estes Park, there were four things that I had a tough time giving up. All my other possessions, other than my clothes and my car had been sold or given away. But sitting downstairs in the basement were my four surfboards.
I’ve always been a bit different from the rest of my classmates as was stated in my high school yearbook, “My Road Goes and Leads Me With It.” And come to find out, when I went back to my class reunion a number of years ago, I had experienced life quite a bit differently from many of my classmates…. but not all of my classmates. One of my best friends, Kenny, went to England in the 1960’s and never returned to the USA. He was born one day ahead of me and maybe it was the air that we both breathed that created our roads for the future. Almost all my classmates had somewhat of a typical life and were still experiencing a typical life. There was no sense of adventure and excitement to their stories. They went to work, made money, came home, ate dinner, played with their children, watched TV and went to sleep… only to awaken and start the next day exactly as the day before.
Maybe it really started when, one day in school, Kenny came to me and said, “Will Jacobs is going to open a surf shop in town and he is donating a surfboard to our school so that we can start a surfing club.” That is all I had to hear as Kenny and I were both skateboarding buddies after school (and the skateboards that we were riding were quite a bit different from the skateboards of today!) Will Jacobs came in with decals, a wetsuit top and a brand new surfboard to give to the club that consisted of Kenny, Dave, myself and a few other kids. As soon as I saw the decals and the surfboard I was hooked! I put decals on my books, on my mirror in my bedroom and any other place that would let the world know that I was a surfer!
Kenny’s mother was really a great person and I still try to see her or talk to her whenever I am back in Connecticut. She rallied to the occasion and drove us to the beach to surf (as we obviously didn’t have our licenses yet). I still can feel that feeling of riding my first wave to this day. As time went by, I decided to purchase my first surfboard… a 1958 9’ 6” G&S surfboard… a very heavy surfboard. What memories I have of that surfboard…. taking off at 12 midnight in Matt’s 20’ O’Day sailboat, sailing by moonlight from the CT shoreline over to Montauk NY with our surfboards on the front bow of the boat. Being invited on a business trip to Oahu & Maui and never attending one business meeting because I was surfing each day. All the other people attending that meeting could never understand (when going to dinner each night with the group) how I became so tan attending business meetings each day inside the hotel.
Surfing was not possible in CT and the closest place to surf was Rhode Island, about a 2 hour and 15 minutes drive. After a while, everyone that I starting surfing with in the club had dropped the novelty of surfing… but I was committed!
I would call my RI surfing buddies and also the RI surf shop every Friday evening, “How’s The Surf?” If they said that it looked good for Saturday, I would get up at 5:00am, drive 2 hours and 15 minutes to the beach. Surfing was not a sport. Surfing was a lifestyle and was bigger than any wave that anyone ever rode. And surfing is very difficult to explain to someone who has never surfed. Surfing was sitting on the beach with your buddies and telling the same stories over and over again… as the waves in the stories got bigger and bigger. Surfing is waking up the day after hurricane Gloria hit the East Coast, having the car already packed and ready to go as I knew that the waves were going to be huge that day. Surfing was paddling as hard as you can, looking back at the biggest wave that you could ever imagine and knowing that you might not come out of that turbulent washing machine of power if you were not as careful as you could be. Surfing was putting yourself on the edge every time you picked up your surfboard and paddled out. Surfing was sitting on the beach watching and listening to the loud crashing waves. Surfing was placing your mind into a different place.
Out of all the surfing stories that were told on the beach, the one talked about the most was, “I’m never going to stop surfing.” And each year, when all my surfing buddies sat on the beach together, one friend was missing. He had a new job, he had new interests, he had just gotten married…. and on and on.
Now, after surfing for almost 40 years and surfing in the Hawaiian Islands numerous times, it was time to say “Goodbye” to four old friends. With a tear in my eyes, I placed the four surfboards into my car (and one was my original G&S surfboard) and drove them to the auction house. It was tough “Letting Go” as a chapter in my life was over…. and all I had left were the memories.
|
