jackassworld

Compared to skateboarding and snowboarding, the first time surfing experience is a far more grueling and frustrating experience than the other two combined; that said, it’s also the most anti-climactic of all from a gawking bystander’s perspective. Hence the non-inclusion of this surfing safari with Johnny Knoxville and Chris Pontius in Bali, Indonesia, on Wildboyz in 2004.

I can somewhat relate to Knoxville’s experience here, what with the two of us not being fortunate enough to have grown up within spitting distance of an oceanic body of water. In fact, I still vividly remember the first time I ever attempted to surf. It was in early 1990, somewhere in the nether region of California’s seasonal excuse for a winter, and I’d been on the West Coast for just over a year at the time. I had yet to enter the Pacific in just such a sporting manner—mainly due to a staunchly Middle American upbringing with such psychological mindfucks as the Jaws series firmly lodged in whatever hemisphere of my brain houses the more culturally-ingrained aspects of fear—but Jim Fitzpatrick, legendary Malibu surfer and my Powell-Peralta co-worker then, assured me that I’d have fun and offered to pick me up on his way down to a spot in Ventura one morning.

Fuck, I thought, how hard could it be, anyway? I have no problem balancing on a 9 x 32 board, so what would be so goddamn difficult about doing the same thing on a 9-foot long board—aside from simultaneously battling off sharks, of course, which I spent the better part of my night imagining how to do so while stylishly dragging my fingertips in the “green room” and impressing all the hot and tastefully tanned girls lounging on the beach.

California dreaming indeed.

What Fitz neglected to tell me was that we’d be going out at the break of dawn in a water temperature of 58 degrees and to prepare myself accordingly. Ignorant Midwestern fuck that I am, I had no concept of the wetsuit and thought I could just give it a go in my trusty cargo shorts. Following a few tips and pointers from Fitz, who soon abandoned me in the shorebreak and I would not see again for quite some time, I vainly attempted to get down and commune with nature. But after a prolonged series of floundering paddles to make it past the initial whitewash, I soon realized that nature didn’t necessarily want to commune with me —actually, I’m pretty sure it hated me and wanted me dead—and that I was using muscles in my shoulders that I had no idea even existed up until that point in time. Ten minutes later I was violently shivering, physically exhausted, and seriously hating and fearing for my life as I lay clutching the board out in the freezing, murky water.

When my “wave” finally came in, I furiously started to paddle toward shore, dead set on catching and riding it all the way to the blessed sanctuary of the beach, when all of a sudden my fingers struck and clawed into the sandy bottom. This whole time I’d been thinking I was in water well over my head in depth and it took a second or two for my stunted and somewhat frozen senses to comprehend this adjustment in sea level … just before the wave crashed right on top of me.

So there I was, caught up in a vicious spin cycle of water and sand, as nature treated me to a 25 grit rub down. When the tide finally retreated, I was left gasping for breath and sprawled out in three-inches of water with sand stuck in places I’d never before thought possible. Fuck surfing, fuck dolphins, fuck those dicksucker Beach Boys—my California dreams were dashed and I vowed never to surf its coastal swill again. And I haven’t. I’m a surf snob. If it ain’t of a tropical nature then I ain’t doing it. So I can’t say I feel too bad for ol’ Knoxville here. At least he had the first time benefit of flailing about in a true paradise.