Body Surfing

A good surf, like a good woman, is hard to find. You've probably seen documentaries about professional surfers waiting around, even in surf glamor places, for good waves. Well, I'm not a board rider, I just ride on my tummy, arms beside me, head down most of the time riding the 'lady' to the beach: Heaven, delicious, voluptuous pleasure, and heathful too.

Without bragging I've body surfed in Santa Monica Bay Will Rogers State Park Beach, A long stretch of beaches just North of Sydney harbor Australia, Hawaii, and 'Mexpipe' in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico where every year in November the surf is big enough to attract big name board surfers for competitions. The name Mexpipe is meant to bring to mind "The Pipe" in Hawaii.

My next surfing adventure will be with my son, age 10, when we bike, wearing our swim suits underneath our shorts in lieu of underwear, on the Santa Monica bike path from Venice to Will Rogers State Park. We'll chain our bikes to a fence, and surf just a few yards from the path. I've done it before. The surf isn't much, but when you're an addict you can turn the plainest wave into a worthwhile date.

I watched a professional surf board competition at Playa Zicatella, the beach at Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. It was sponsored by a French clothing manufacturer who complained to me about the lack of support from local merchants. He didn't know the score. Puerto Escondido is on the edge of what is virtually an Indian reservation in a Mexican State that is 58% Native Mexicans. If truth be told the surfing is taken as an affront. Mexican tourists from Mexico City swarm to Puerto Escondido every summer and many of them drown in the quick moving Pacific Ocean. They'd never seen the ocean before. There are plaques commemorating the dead cemented into the sides of huge rocks half in the water at high tide.  But generally the drownings, an annual event, is denied.

Playa Zicatela, three miles long, from Christmas to New Year, is densely populated. Every year a casual walk, and back, will reward one with sight of some of the most splendid and inspiring nudes you will ever see, and yes, in very Catholic Mexico. Women,and men, nude. Takes your breath away, partly because it is so unexpected.

But, of course, it's the health benefits that count, right? Good clean air, exercize, vitamins from the sun, resulting in pure thoughts and god-fearing ways. Summertime... and the swimin' is easssssy...

Barry