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Yeah. I can definitely relate to this photo. My family celebrates Christmas at Folly Beach every year. This past Christmas season I enjoyed a few surf sessions. During one fine morning it began to sleet and snow while I was in the water. One of my favorite things in life is surfing a bitter cold swell in the morning, work up a sweat (somehow), walk back to the beach house, and sit outside on the deck in my wetsuit in order to cool off. It is unlike anything else. It is cathartic to me. I surf east coast waves mush. Swells are usually “consistent” and decent in the winter months. So for me, winter=surf.  This is a photo of Scott Ditzenberg who surfs in lake Erie in Ohio. Yeah. For over 10 years he developed a film of surfers in Ohio. He talks about how the few surfers of lake Erie are tight-knit and that it’s more about the experience with friends than the quality of the waves. This film is called “Out Of Place”.  This photo is significant to me for 2 reasons: 1. For said experiences every Christmas (winter) season.  2. Because my wife and I are planning to move to Chicago within the next 18 months (lord willing). Surfing east coast mush has never been about the quality of the waves as much as it has been about the experience. The people I meet. The wildlife I see. The journey to the ocean, be it short or long. Friends made. Memories created. Example: While surfing in the spring probably 3 or 4 years ago I paddled out near a few other surfers. One of them had a board that stuck out to me. It looked familiar. Then I realized it was my old surfboard. I had traded it in to a surf shop for a different board. I told him that it was my old board. I showed him 2 spots where I had repaired dings, and it even had the same fins I left on when I traded it in. He told me that during one of his surf trips with his buddies they had strapped 5 boards (including my old board) to the top of their car. On the highway a strap broke loose and the boards scattered all over the interstate. He told me that every board was destroyed, except my old board. He told me that he saw my board do several flips (end over end) in the air before landing nearly perfectly (like an airplane) right side up as it slid down the highway. What were the chances? The chances I’d meet this guy from North Carolina, who happened to have my old board, which happened to survive a surfers nightmare, on the same day I’d be surfing the same spot? It’s these experiences that make surfing so much more than riding a wave. …Reeling it back in, this photo gives me hope. Hope that maybe, one day far from here in a bitter cold city I’ll continue these experiences and maybe even create greater ones while being “Out Of Place” surfing the obscure, cold, memorable, and perfect rarely decent waves of the great lakes. 

Yeah. I can definitely relate to this photo. My family celebrates Christmas at Folly Beach every year. This past Christmas season I enjoyed a few surf sessions. During one fine morning it began to sleet and snow while I was in the water. One of my favorite things in life is surfing a bitter cold swell in the morning, work up a sweat (somehow), walk back to the beach house, and sit outside on the deck in my wetsuit in order to cool off. It is unlike anything else. It is cathartic to me. I surf east coast waves mush. Swells are usually “consistent” and decent in the winter months. So for me, winter=surf. 

This is a photo of Scott Ditzenberg who surfs in lake Erie in Ohio. Yeah. For over 10 years he developed a film of surfers in Ohio. He talks about how the few surfers of lake Erie are tight-knit and that it’s more about the experience with friends than the quality of the waves. This film is called “Out Of Place”. 

This photo is significant to me for 2 reasons:

1. For said experiences every Christmas (winter) season. 

2. Because my wife and I are planning to move to Chicago within the next 18 months (lord willing). Surfing east coast mush has never been about the quality of the waves as much as it has been about the experience. The people I meet. The wildlife I see. The journey to the ocean, be it short or long. Friends made. Memories created. Example: While surfing in the spring probably 3 or 4 years ago I paddled out near a few other surfers. One of them had a board that stuck out to me. It looked familiar. Then I realized it was my old surfboard. I had traded it in to a surf shop for a different board. I told him that it was my old board. I showed him 2 spots where I had repaired dings, and it even had the same fins I left on when I traded it in. He told me that during one of his surf trips with his buddies they had strapped 5 boards (including my old board) to the top of their car. On the highway a strap broke loose and the boards scattered all over the interstate. He told me that every board was destroyed, except my old board. He told me that he saw my board do several flips (end over end) in the air before landing nearly perfectly (like an airplane) right side up as it slid down the highway. What were the chances? The chances I’d meet this guy from North Carolina, who happened to have my old board, which happened to survive a surfers nightmare, on the same day I’d be surfing the same spot? It’s these experiences that make surfing so much more than riding a wave. …Reeling it back in, this photo gives me hope. Hope that maybe, one day far from here in a bitter cold city I’ll continue these experiences and maybe even create greater ones while being “Out Of Place” surfing the obscure, cold, memorable, and perfect rarely decent waves of the great lakes. 

#Wetsuit,  #Surfing  #Lake Erie  #outofplacemovie.com  #Frozen  
9 months ago on August 25, 2011 at 05:56am