Learning to Surf in Hawaii: Nobody Was More Surprised Than Me
From 1989 to 1993 I lived in Hawaii. Not visited. Lived. I worked at the University of Hawaii Law School, rode a moped everywhere I went, and spent those years soaking up a place that most people save up their whole lives just to visit for a week. The culture, the people, the smell of plumeria and salt air, the way the light looks at the end of the day over Diamond Head. I found a path along Waikiki beach that is behind the hotels and restaurants and generally crowded sidewalks. I walked it so many times I knew which restaurants had the best smells drifting out onto the sidewalk and which hotels had the best people watching from the lobby. Hawaii got into me in a way that has never fully left.
So naturally I was learning to surf in Hawaii. Of course I would. You live in Hawaii, you learn to surf. That seemed like the correct sequence of events.
What I did not anticipate was how the surfboard would find me before I ever went looking for it.
The Stranger on the Beach
I was attending a church during those years that was very “eyes-on” in keeping track of the members and how they spent their free time (future article coming). That meant finding any time truly alone required creative problem solving. One Saturday afternoon I rode my moped down to a beach park I liked, found a grassy spot away from the sand, and spread out my towel. It was mid-day, warm, the kind of afternoon where you intend to think about things and then the sun starts working on you and you find yourself thinking about nothing at all. There was probably a nap in my near future.
A man approached and startled me. He had a surfboard tucked up under his arm.
Hey, do you want my surfboard?
I looked at him. I looked around. Nobody else was nearby. What?
Do you want my surfboard?
Um. No thank you.
He explained that he was leaving Hawaii that day and this had been his final surf. He could not take the board with him. Did I want it?
I sat there processing this. A handsome surfer walks up on me and asks me if I want his surfboard, I said I was sorry to hear he was leaving, but I did not know how to surf.
He said okay, no worries. And he walked away.
Away from the surfboard.
He left completely. Just walked off across the grass and was gone, leaving a perfectly good surfboard laying against a park bench about ten feet from my towel.
I lay back down and looked at the sky and thought about this for a while.
Then I sat up and looked around carefully. Any white vans in the parking lot, which was about fifty yards away? Any suspicious cameras? Was this a Candid Camera situation? I scanned the area with what I felt was appropriate thoroughness. Nothing looked unusual. There were no white vans.
I looked at the surfboard.
I could not leave a perfectly good surfboard on the ground. That was not something I was able to do. So I took it.
Howzit Nalu
The next problem was getting it home.
I had arrived on my moped. There were no cell phones then, so I gathered up my beach bag and towel and newly acquired surfboard and walked to the payphones. I tried my roommates. No answer. I tried a few friends who had cars. No answer. Fine. I would figure it out.
Carrying it under one arm while driving the moped with the other was not going to work. Resting the board across the floorboard was not going to work either, unless I wanted to look like a very small and unconvincing airplane. Neither option was happening.
The next best plan was to leave my moped chained up at the park and walk the board home. I lived a few blocks from the beach. Or so I had always thought, until I was actually walking it and discovered that the distance was somewhat more than a few blocks when you were carrying a surfboard.
So off I went. A haole girl in a bathing suit with shorts and a t-shirt coverup, walking down the sidewalk past businesses and traffic and city buses, surfboard tucked under my arm like I had just finished a good session. People in cars at stop signs were giving me the shaka. Someone called out asking howzit nalu, which means how are the waves. I said gnarly. I had no idea if that was the right answer. I committed to it fully.
I walked my stick home.
When I finally got the board into my apartment and leaned it against the living room wall, my roommates started arriving home one by one. They looked at the board.
Whose stick?
Mine.
They stared. I asked if someone could drive me back to the beach to get my moped. Sure.
Two Weeks of Decoration
The surfboard stood against the living room wall for about two weeks. It looked very nice there. It was doing excellent work as an interior design element and I was respecting its contribution to the apartment.
Then one of my friends said it was time.
We stopped by the surf shop on the way to the beach. Found a spot with fairly flat water and he taught me about waxing the board properly, using the leash, and the general etiquette of being out in a lineup. There was no actual lineup where we were practicing, just the two of us, which was the correct amount of people for what was about to happen.
We paddled out, waited in the lull, and he grabbed the first set of waves to show me what I was working toward. Then the lull came and it was my turn.
I could not get up quickly enough. But now I understood the mechanics of it, so I practiced, and eventually I got my feet under me and surfed for about six inches before falling off and discovering firsthand exactly why the leash exists. It exists so the board does not become a projectile that travels a significant distance without you. This happened several times. The leash was very patient about it.
By the end of that session I was completely exhausted but I had actually surfed. It wasn’t far, but it was something and those 6 inches I counted as a success.
Learning to Surf in Hawaii: The North Shore Education
I kept the board for the rest of my time in Hawaii and went out several more times. What I discovered was that the board I had been given was not really a beginner board. It was the right length for someone who already knew what they were doing with it. I needed something considerably larger under me, something closer to kayak dimensions, to have any real chance of staying upright with any dignity. I could rent bigger boards at the beach and I did, and that made a meaningful difference.
I also went to the North Shore to watch surf competitions, because if you are going to live in Hawaii you go to the North Shore to understand what surfing actually is when it is done properly. Those waves were enormous. Watching the surfers navigate them was a completely different activity from what I had been attempting in calm water on a flat beach. The distance between those two things was educational in the most humbling possible way.
Eventually I gave my board to one of my surfer friends. He would know what to do with it. And that, in the most technical sense, is how I learned to surf in Hawaii.
What I Took Home
I left Hawaii in 1993 and I have never lived anywhere that felt quite like that again. Living somewhere that other people dream about visiting changes something in you if you let it. I let it. I learned to say things like gnarly at the right moment and shaka back when someone shaka’d at me and find my way around islands that became genuinely familiar instead of exotic. I ate plate lunches and Huli Huli chicken and shave ice from the good places. I walked that Waikiki path in the early mornings when it was quiet and in the evenings when the light went golden over the water.
The surfing was just one small piece of all of it. But it is the piece that makes me laugh the most when I think about it now, a stranger walking away from his board on a Saturday afternoon, me checking for white vans, walking a stick home down a Honolulu sidewalk telling strangers the surf was gnarly when I had never actually caught a wave in my life.
Hawaii has a way of handing you things you were not expecting and asking you to figure out what to do with them.
I mostly figured it out.
A Hui Hou (until we meet again).
If you’d like to read more articles about my time in Hawaii go check out how I napped Everywhere and Regret Nothing. Or what growing up on a pig farm taught me.
Jenny is a content creator, knitting teacher, Amazon Influencer, and former surfboard owner who once walked a longboard home through downtown Honolulu in a bathing suit coverup. She writes about life after 50, building income in retirement, and everything in between at BigLifeSmallSteps.com.
