DEPARTMENT:

Hanging Ten at Sixty

My first surfing wave was a five-footer off Manhattan Beach on a cloudy morning in 1963. I caught it on a borrowed nine-foot-six, single-fin Jacobs, standing up for maybe two seconds before the board and I unceremoniously went over the falls and slammed into a shallow sandbar.

It was the closest thing to flying that I had ever experienced except for leaping off a one-story garage when I was eight, pretending I was Superman. When I finally made it to the water’s surface, my hair, trunk pockets and body orifices were filled with sand. What an odd sight it must have been seeing this 17-year-old gasping for air, but smiling and screaming with excitement. For a brief moment I was a real surfer and not a “hodad” wearing a Pendleton shirt and blue corduroy Levis.

Later that evening in nearby Santa Monica I was sitting with a 30-year-old surfer with 10 years of experience and I told him in detail about “my wave” — seeing it coming, paddling for it, feeling the swell lift my board, springing to my feet, then the sudden rush of gravity sucking me and the board down with unbelievable speed, and then, of course, my “unreal” wipeout.

Above: Aina Haina resident Tim Ryan takes a break from surfing off the Beach Village at Molokai Ranch. Photo by P.F. Bentley. Below: Ryan rides the waves at Hanalei, Kauai.

“Well,” the surfer said looking me in the eye, “now you’ll never be President.”

Back then I didn’t know that surfing would become a major force in my life, influencing my occupations, where I lived and worked, the kind of person I dated and how I viewed the world.

Now, 43 years later, that same passion for the sport remains, although my body tires a heckuva lot faster and the initial spring to get to my feet is more of a slow climb with not nearly enough certainty about whether my knees — after two surgeries — won’t buckle.

When I turned 40, my wife said, “I knew you loved surfing, but I never realized you love it this much.”

When I hit 50, my mother-in-law asked point-blank, “So when do you think you’ll finally quit surfing?” as if I was going through a phase.

“Never,” I said proudly.

But when I turned 60 last October, I started thinking about how many more years I can play in the ocean. At a North Shore spot a few months earlier, I had taken a serious pounding that really scared me. My sliced eye socket and major thigh contusion took way too long to heal. I felt very vulnerable and stayed out of the water for a long time.

Sure, I gained weight so my seven-foot-six thruster had to be set aside in favor of my easier-to-paddle nine-foot-four Yater. But I did go back. I really had no choice. Hearing my friends’ stories of good waves, their not-so-gentle teasing about my absence in the lineup and just seeing waves brought me back into the fold.

These days, though, my bottom turns don’t feel as sweeping. When I try to hang five — stick five toes over the board’s nose — I have to get really close to the tip because I can’t stretch as far. Two hours in the ocean now feels like five.

But I love surfing more than ever — feeling the water, seeing the coral and fish beneath the surface, admiring the sun shining through a cresting wave and marveling at the honest-to-God miracle of being able to ride such a force.

I’ll never be as good a surfer as I was in years past, but that doesn’t mean anything at my seasoned age. That’s because surfing is much more than just riding waves. It’s the sheer joy of being out there. — Tim Ryan

Humorous, touching, inspiring, thought-provoking — we welcome your personal observations about Life After Fifty. E-mail your 800-word essay and phone number to Editor Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi at cheryl@tradepublishing.com.

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