Nightglow Window

SIMA Surf Summit, Day One

It's easy to forget that San Jose Del Cabo is such an easy day of travel away.

The 1,000-mile peninsula of Baja, sticking out like some arthritic pinky finger from the hand of North America is indeed long and desolate, threaded by a two-lane road extolled on maps as the Trans Peninsular Highway.

Rubbish.

It's a county road where around each bend you expect to encounter a tire eating wash out or, even worse, some pie-eyed bovine in the middle of the road. It's sketchy in the day; near suicidal at night.

Even the process of crossing the border is a psychological shell game, a slow sink into the paranoia of the constantly aware and vaguely afraid.

But at 41,000 feet the view changes entirely.

The maze of dirt roads far below take on the guise of some fun intellectual puzzle as I sip on my Diet Coke.

Oh, it still looks vast and beautiful and achingly remote, but the eye is free to roam across the desert and around that headland on the coast there and down the smooth sweep of beach where only a few fishermen tread.

And then it's over. Instead of two days of driving, the flight lasts less than two hours. The Sea of Cortez is an azure blue of forgetfulness where lost beaches glimmer gold, fringed by turquoise shallows. Then the wing digs slightly to the right and you begin you descent, heading into the Airport as Los Cabos from the NE.

The air is roiling, the first sign that desert heat waits below, and the ride down through 10,000 feet is bumpy enough to get your attention. A mountain range is on the right -- probably less than 4,000 feet high, but rugged. The flaps extend and the landing gear is lowered and the cabin is filled with the roar of wind, slowing the descent, as the plane continues to buck and weave.

The airport is on a plateau, and on final approach it looks like you're going to crash into a hillside. The landing is bumpy enough that a few people clap when the brakes and reverse thrusters finally slow us down to highway speeds.

The end of the runway is built wide, giving the planes enough rooms to turn around and head back to the airport and terminal.

It's an outpost feeling.

It's a nice enough airport, but small. There are no jet ways or other high-faluting nonsense. Instead, two rolling stairs are pushed up to the front and back of the plane. Very Orange County airport circa 1978, before the expansion and The Duke came into the picture.

The doors of the plane are unlatched and the heat descends like a hammer. It's about 90 degrees and so bright. The crowd without sunglasses descending the steps of the plane all wince when they first see their destination.

I'm now in serious difficulty. If I don't find a bathroom and right quick there's going to be a problem.

By the time I find relief Billy and Liam are far ahead in the line for customs that's stacked deep and getting longer by the second as two more planes disgorge. As politely as I can I worm my way past people and back up to my crew.

Billy is from Long Island, was a defensive linebacker on his college football team, and is built like capital V, all shoulders and back. Like most good surfers, he's not tall – maybe 5' 9". He's one of the newer sales guys on the TransWorld SURF staff and is a great guy, super likable and not a blow hard.

Then there's Liam, the great white hope, the Irishman from Compton with his white skin and blond hair and calm, measured, calculating demeanor. He was ASB president at Long Beach State and remains a statesman. He's usually a great guy until he's not and then he can be terribly frustrating.

But today it's all good.

We all get the green light through customs. The final step of the process after collecting your bags is to push a button, much like you'd find at a crosswalk across a busy street.

Red light and you get the rubber hose strip search. Green light and you're done.

It's all completely random. Liam and I, however, have been telling Billy that it has sensors that sense hand perspiration and that you have to push it with certain firmness. Sweaty palms and a weak push and it's the rubber hose for you. I think he almost buys it as he wipes his hand on his shirt and give the button a mighty mash. Liam flashes a quick clandestine smile in my direction as Billy gets the green light.

As usual we're getting a Suburban for the week, and since he's the new guy Billy gets to put the Avis bill on his Corpo Card. It's a steep bill for a big car – but pretty much a mandatory expense with all the people and surfboards we'll be schlepping.

We circle back to the airport to pick up Adam, who's just fresh in from Hawaii where he lives and helps run Town & Country – a surfboard label, a clothing brand, and a retail chain that's huge in Hawaii.

I grab a beer and hand it to Adam as he comes out of the terminal and into the sun. He's an interesting guy. His head is shaped vaguely like a bullet and he has the hard stare of a lot of Hawaiians.

He runs with a heavy crew back home and counting him among friends can get you out of a tough spot with some of the heaviest enforcers. He's seen stuff that would make most squeamish.

But he's no dummy. Far from it. He got his law degree from Northwestern and handles most of T&C's international business, including licensees spread out across Asia and Europe. We haven't seen each other in a while, but the beer helps his memory. We head back to the car where Liam and Billy are sitting in Air Conditioned comfort.

The Royal Solaris resort in Los Cabos is an all-inclusive deal, which means that when you check in they give you a wrist band that basically grants you all the food and drinks you want. Mine is black and too loose and found at the end of a slow check-in line. But that's okay because the Reef crew are in front of me. Kevin and Mitch and John are all taller than 6'5" (Kevin is 6'9" and was a starter for ASU in the final four a decade ago).

Seems like you have to be a giant to work there.

For the first time this trip, but certainly not the last, I feel pretty average standing next to these tanned and beaming skyscrapers. Thank god for their Boss, Reef CEO Dave Gatto, who's also in line. He's shortish and bald but is absolutely brilliant.

We all give each other the basic surf-industry handshake which goes as follows:

1) Open your hand and raise it to chest level.
2) Make eye contact and say something like "hey!" as you bring your hand, still palm open and thumbs up at chest level, to your side.
3) Smoothly and cleanly slap hands with the other person.
4) Immediately make a fist and touch knuckles with the other person, making sure not to be too enthusiastic or timid as you wrap knuckles.

For closer friends, eliminate the knuckle touch after step three. Instead slap and then briefly clasp hands, like you're going to arm wrestle, give a quick shake and then release.

For buddies or even better friends, bump chests during the shake. And for people you've known for a long time, reach around with your free left hand and give a short smack-on-the-back hug as you bump chests and clasps hands (which of course comes after you slap hands and say "Hey!" or "What's Up!").

Just make sure this is mutual or you'll be going all "Brokeback" on the poor guy and will probably be back to knuckle wrap or (god forbid) standard handshake from then on.

So with Reef, I slap-knuckle VP of sales Mitch and John, slap-bump-hug Kevin (who I've worked closely with for years), and slap-knuckle CEO Gatto (a little awkwardly, but he's getting it.)

It's all part of the crazy dance and fighting it ain't gonna get you nowheres.

The hotel staff tries to pit me upstairs with a "City view" room, which stinks and I say so. He looks awkwardly at me but I stand my ground. There's no way, I tell him, that I'm going to be stuck with a city view for seven nights. He relents and puts me ground floor. Outside my sliding glass door is grass and then the pool. No surf view, but at least I'm not looking at the parking lot.

I slather on my sunscreen and grab my board bag, scarf a Clif Bar and a bottle of water, and head out back to the lobby where Billy and Liam and Adam are waiting.

Cabo San Lucas and the rest of the built up area of the tip of Baja is immediately to our west (Remember the ocean is due south), but to the east the buildings quickly give way to rugged hills and isolated houses and a long dirt road that I'll get to know very well in the next seven days.

In this direction is the East Cape, an amorphous area that contains some of the most beautiful beaches and incredible waves I've ever see first hand. The road is vital-organ jarring though, especially one rough patch over hills before you join the coast road.

There's a little bit of swell as we round the bend to Shipwrecks, the first East Cape surf spot. Four guys are on it and it looks meager. There are a bunch of cars and tents on the beach and it looks like a big crew of desert rat surfers are waiting for the next swell (Oh, how they hate it when 400 surf-industry shredders fly into town).

It's not even an option.

It's 3:00 now with the hour time change (mountain time), but we've hours of light left so we push on east.

The next stop is La Fortuna or more commonly known as Indy Rock or Industry Rock. For the past couple of years a small crew of TransWorld employees have been coming down early and camping Lord Of The Flies style there on the beach for the two days before the conference begins.

Each year it's grown and we can see about ten cars and twenty tents on the beach while six guys sit in the lineup and about twenty more watch from shore. It's an inviting tarpit and we know we'll never get out of there it we stop now. We push on knowing we'll be back near dark.

The next spots are SOBs (named by the TransWorld Crew after yours truly after I claimed it so hard four years ago. It was incredible then I tell you.)

Next up is Distilladaros, which has a new big gate across the road.

The whole East Cape is getting ready for a huge real estate boom and it breaks my heart. There has always been a few homes, but they were stretched out and discreet and numbered no more than 200 or 300 along a twenty-mile coast.

And what a coast it is. It's like a desert Laguna Beach but with the clearest blue water and golden beaches and fish and rays and whales breaching offshore (seriously). The sand is large grained and at the tide lines there's no trash. Instead there are purple and orange pea-sized pebbles and old lobster shells and dead puffer fish (all spiny and sharp, so watch where you step). The water is clear and warm and all shades of blue and green as you look down at the reef and sergeant fish swarm my fins.

In other words, it's a place too good to last.

We idle the car in front of the new gate, debating whether we want to run the 300 yards to check it or head farther up the coast. The air conditioning wins and we gun it, heading for the aptly named Punta Perfecta.

Eek gads! They've erect condos in the vacant lot we once parked in. Huge two story obnoxious red condos. In the middle of the desert where there's only about a dozen other homes.

Oh well, the surf is as good as ever, with only two guys on it and a nice head high swell pushing around the point. Everyone else piles out of the car as I carefully put my contacts in so I can see in the water, then we head past the hole in the barbed wire fence and down the steep trail leading from bluff to beach and then up a quarter mile to where we deposit our towels and board bags and lube up again with SPF 30 (never forget this step). I opt for a surf shirt even though my back needs sun. Plenty of time for that and a sunburn on the first day stinks.

The rest of the guys are talking board lengths and fin configurations as I make my break.

The water is so warm and clear and clean and green and blue and perfect. I stroke out and get into my rhythm, fifty strokes followed by 50 kicks (being that I'm a kooky bodyboarder). My orange fins are attracting fish.

It's a long paddle and the wave is really long too.

The two guys in the lineup know the jig is up, that their solitude is over. I beam my best, "Ain't it a grand day and ain't you just rad (bro!) for making me feel welcome" smile and it works.

Still I sit inside a bit and let them catch the next few set waves. Then I'm alone at the takeoff spot and it's one of those moments Norman McLean describes it in "A River Runs Through It" as the moment when river and fisherman fade into one to the four-count rhythm of the cast and the hope that a fish will rise.

He was talking about fishing but the feeling is the same. I slow my stroke as a perfect six-foot wave swings my direction. I'm in the perfect spot, no need to paddle left or right or in or out. I'm lifted by the swell and drop in with the slightest of paddle, just two easy strokes. And then the feeling of acceleration and power as the wave builds beneath and behind me, a long open wall rising in front of me 150 yards long.

I come off the bottom and gain speed in the upper half of the wave as it bends over a shallow spot in the reef (green and blue and green then gold where sand is as it races by). I come out into the flats and make a smooth cutback, leaving a fan of spray that arcs high into the air, before I rebound off the oncoming whitewater and head into the next race track section. I hear a hoot from a distance (Liam?) and my heart swells.

Hot diggitity, the wave is standing up again.

A few pumps through this next section and then a hard aggressive snapback, a ninety-degree off the top turn. Another fan. Now the wave is feeling the shallows and demands speed and 30 yards race by. It hits deeper water and backs off and I lay it over again and spray Billy as he paddles past. Heaven! Finally the wave is spent and I pull out, the takeoff zone a long paddle away.

It was pretty damn fun, but humbling too. I'm such a kook it's not even funny. Adam rips (of course) and Liam is decent, but Billy is a complete terror, smoothly ripping apart the waves on his backhand on a wide board called fish that floats through the slow sections of the wave.

I've never surfed with him before and I'm super impressed. The other two guys who were out before us catch a wave in and we have the spot to ourselves.

I get about another five waves before the cramps start. The paddle is just relentless. My calves lock up first and then the muscle on my shin on my left foot. I should have stretched before I paddled out. I try to paddle more and kick less but it's no use. Massaging them helps a bit but the simple truth is I've should have been surfing and swimming more in the last few months.

The strange thing is though when I get on a wave all the cramps stop and the pain is gone. It's not until I kick out that I'm doubled up in pain. At least it's not my hamstrings, which are the worst cramps of all. I catch a few more waves and paddle in. The sun is still warm and I spread my towel in this perfect rock bowl with a floor of deep sand.

Liam paddles in then heads off for a run up and around the point – a tradition of his down here in Cabo.

Adam comes in and then Billy. A few other guys have paddled out, including a friend of Adam's that he met in Nomotu. His name is Whitey and he's a lighter captain for Exxon (A lighter is a smaller super tanker). We head up to the house they are staying in and he tells us how he unloads crude from Persian Gulf supertankers out in the channel between Long Beach and Catalina and then pilots the smaller ships (which are still massive) into San Pedro.

It's interesting but we are really hoping for a beer, which he promised.

The house is incredible. A large thatched palapa covers three bedrooms and a central open-air kitchen that looks right down on the point.

But what about the beer?

We make small talk with his buddies and compliment them on the cool house and look at the propane fridge with expectant eyes and parched throats but no dice. We trudge back to the car cursing ol' Whitey.

"Damn Whitey," lampoons Adam, "You've changed!"

Finding a beer is not a problem back at Indy Rock where Camp Run-a-mucka is in full effect.

It's an incredible cast of characters. Everyone is surfed out and baked red and needs a shave. Everyone is relaxed and friendly. Everyone wants to talk.

The whole TransWorld crew is here with stories of their two-day drive down the peninsula. It's slap-bump-hugs all around.

The surf is so so here, but there's still a crew on it until Aaron Checkwood, a former intern of mine who's now a marketing director, spots a six-foot shark about twenty yards away.

He's nonchalant but Jamie Stone our sales manager freaks out, which freaks Checkies out and soon the whole lineup is paddling in. Everyone except Jardine, our special events coordinator (and my babysitter). She's just paddling out in the fading light and can't figure out why everyone is paddling in.

Now surfers try to be nonchalant about sharks, it's true, but as Jardine paddled right over the boil where the fin was just a few seconds ago the beach exploded and about a dozen people (yep, even me) ran down to the water to tell her to get he skinny ass out of the water NOW!

Can't be losing good babysitters, now, can we?

Jardine, who used to be a pro snowboarder and a snowboard camp counselor, is an incredible and strong woman. She paddled in all easy like and didn't make a fuss. In this cliquish world that I orbit, I could see new looks of appraisal for her from the rest of the crew.

A fire is started and I got more true work done than I do on a lot of eight-hour days behind my desk. Everyone jokes about the Sean O'Brien tapeworm diet, which is nice. Finally at around 9:00 we head back down the dusty road to San Jose Del Cabo and grab dinner at this awesome restaurant called Tropicana. I get my usual seared Ahi with veggies and more beer and Billy, being the new guy, picks up the check.

I head back to the hotel and hit the pillow, and drift off to sleep almost immediately.