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August 29, 2005
Chicks on Sticks
My friend Iz recently told me about a camp she went to in South County, R.I. Surfing camp. Not as a kid, but now as a grown-up woman. She was so beaming with it and full of sun and heat and enthusiasm that I wanted to sign up for next year’s camp already, even though I never had a moment’s real interest in surfing heretofore.
Sounds like a totally cool operation, run by volunteers pretty much, the leader a single 43-year-old mom who does it “for karma,” and a very low fee which gets you Friday night intro and Saturday and Sunday clinic in surfing from the ground up. Chicks on Sticks is the name of the camp and the organization that puts it on, in affiliation with the Rhode Island chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental nonprofit focused on preserving oceans, waves and beaches.
This particular camp is for women only, as the name implies (though some of the instructors were men). Iz tried to capture for me some of the 40 or so women campers there: There were eight girls ages 9 to 14. Then there were a huge bunch of 40-plus-or-minus-three year-olds. And then there was Sandy who picked up surfing at 50 and has been surfing 10 years; all her vacations are to surfing destinations. One woman was an aesthetician by trade and was slathered completely with zinc oxide—“Geisha gone bad” Iz called the look.
I had Iz and her family over for dinner after her last day of camp. She was sun-, sea- and learning-drenched. “Sorry I’m not helping you,” she said as I set the table. “I just want to not move my neck for a minute.”
All that paddling and looking up, watching for a promising swell. The fast, twisting push-up of the “pop-up” from prone to standing on the board. I envied her the beautiful exhaustion.
There is always something new to be learned and tried, no?
22:20 Posted in Water Sports | Permalink | Email this