Surfing Waves

Hi folks,

48 year old life-long primary kneeboarder/crappy stand up surfer from Seattle here, nice to meet you all!

Grew up in Del Mar CA, surfed all over SD, Blacks a whole lot, lived at Wind and Sea, PB, OB, Cardiff. Then moved to San Francisco and surfed Ocean Beach for many years in the early-mid 1990's. That break is still my primary love (for sure the best wave of my life happened there in 1996) but no longer able to handle that sort of punishment that often. Then Seattle and let off surfing to an extent to snowboard 50-100 days and mountain bike. Surfing a lot more lately, Westport, The Strait, little Oregon trips.

Being a kneelo I'm a fairly eager tube rider and have learned a few new tricks in barrel riding in the past few years by watching how younger kids tube ride nowadays. Recently had a knee surgery and trying to change my snap-style from hitting the top a little bit out front and cranking super hard in a tight radius (which irritates my repaired knee but I've always liked throwing buckets, and torque-crushing the lip like an angry gorilla tends to get you left alone in crusty line-ups). Now I'm trying to roll through top turns more and stretch the rail turn down the face. This hasn't been greatly, successful (think lamest JJ Florence impression ever then falling into whitewash), but something's gotta change because the old body can't hang anymore with the full-on power game.

I like cold water, enough power that you don't have to make your own speed, meat and potatoes north-of-Santa-Cruz surf styles. I like that up here in the PNW mostly people surf for the love surfing because it's too cold, too much driving, too many time burned by bad conditions to surf because you want to think about yourself as a surfer. Also kind of easy picking getting waves since it's so hard to get really good if you grew up surfing up here - 15 guys out at a point break up here feels like Lower's with 3 guys out. Surf up here is fickle big time but size is almost never the issue. It gets really good sometimes but it's not Ocean Beach.

In general been slowly getting worse at everything sport which is a drag and has me in a bit of a an identity crisis. Been stand up surfing more for a change but I'm really pretty awful and it's hard to go from mostly respected to total kook. But still stoked like a little kid mostly and since I started in the innocent 1970's I refuse to put on the grim football-face in the water - I smile and chat and hoot for people and generally surf stoked and happy.

Started kneeboarding to be able to travel with my high school surf team, which needed a kneelo for NSSA comps and I was NEVER making the traveling team stand up surfing with Brad Gerlach, Doug Silva, Jeff Baldwin, 3 or 4 other guys who turned pro, and about 10 more other guys who were absolute killers in the mix. I had an old Skip Frye Fish already so and became the token kneelo. When Doug Silva felt like it he'd kneeboard a heat on his surfboard and beat me every time. I'd like to think nowadays he'd have no chance but did I mention getting worse at everything?

I'm a lecturer in an English Department up here, married to an awesome woman with a solid career, sweet little kid who's the real focus of my life, mortgage shrinking, 401k growing, friends, stuff to do etc, but still kind of a void where there could be more surfing life. YOLO right? But don't want to be a baby and make my family slaves to my desire to surf all the time so here I am, lots of 4am rising to get to the beach in 3 hours then surf and 3 hours back to take care of my kid, work, etc. It could be worse

Anyway that me in some approximation. Hello! Hope life's serving you up plenty of green room, he shouted into the electronic void.

Welcome to Surfing Waves forum. Sorry to hear about your decline but I guess that is the same as all the old surfers I know except me because I quit for several years and restarted so even though I am 62 years old I am still getting better but I have a long way to go to get back to where i was long ago and at this rate I will be dead before that happens but it's fun trying. Lots of older surfers I know do Stand Up Paddle because of repeated use injuries. Have you tried that?

Thank for the reply! I do SUP a little, on my huge flat water SUP when it's tiny, and I stay well out of the way of everyone. I like it and might get into it more but SUPing is sort of an antithesis to kneeboarding - conspicuous vs under-the-radar, always far from the face of the wave vs always close to the face, unless you're a killer better on sloping waves vs made for hollow waves. I like the SUP but it feels way different! I should invent Knee-Up-Paddle maybe and start my own weird little sport ....

All the older SUP guys I see are for sure in great shape and having fun; definitely won't act like I'm too cool for that if that's where the surf gods seem to be sending me as the old body breaks down!

Interesting so does the knee problem make it bad to kneeboard? I always thought there are not many old kneeboarders because of wear and tear on the knees but maybe it's just because there aren't many kneeboarders around to get old. I paipo boarded and kneeboarded long ago before surfing. When I was learning to ride waves on an SUP I started by kneeling on the board then popping up. It's a very common practice. There is a thing called a wave ski that that is paddled into a wave while sitting, that might be something for you if it is something no one else does that you want.

Interesting I'm 67 this year, my knees have been cantankerous over the last twelve months, and. Have been designing and shaping a bonzer version knee board .
After all the knee boarders back to George Greenough , pioneered tube riding , the pig dog tube stance is a direct evolution from those kneelos!

Here in Australia kneelos were known as cripples, my eldest son wears the badge with pride, recently amazing surfers in Portugal who has never seen a cripple

I still kneel in some pretty slabby waves I couldn't do on my long board.

If your knee surgery will bear it , remember the late John Lennon's words " one thing you can't hide , is when a cripple's inside." Pardon the paraphrasing
Surf the way that works for you.

Guys thanks for the support! Knee problems do make it hard to kneeboard - swelling in the hnee gets in the way of the deep flex you need. But weirdly kneeboarding itself doesn't seem to give you knee problems. You're resting on the gnarly boney part of your shin so there's not a lot of impact-related damage, and the patella's not really involved at all. The general script is you hurt your knee doing something else (in my case getting t-boned by a speeding drunk who i'd really like to strangle most days still) and then your knee riding suffers. I'm getting right though, and the inner-cripple does run deep so I think I'm still pretty far from enacting plan B (that is, turning into the worst surfer in WA State from my current position of top 5 out of 5 kneelos

Cheers to you both!