Winter is Coming

Every year it happens. You’ve spent the past few months surfing loose and free. Less rubber, more sunshine. Hot water wax and sunscreen, crowded parking lots full of girls and boys scampering around in trunks and bikinis living that endless summer life. This is why you started surfing, you think. It’s so nice! Then out of nowhere, quite literally overnight (last night in fact) it blows in with the northwest wind: Winter.

It's a day sacrificed to poor surfing — stubbed frozen toes, slippery rock hard wax, *brutal sun glare on every right you take off on, offshore winds and your old 4/3 feeling like a suit of medieval armor — all a harsh reminder that you are ill-prepared for what happens next.

Your body will creak and ache and shrivel and you’ll daydream about how well Billabong’s “Furnace” marketing is working — you’ll undoubtedly be buying a new 4/3 later, along with booties, a hood, a huge ass jacket, thick socks and a new, bigger to-go coffee mug. You will only be caught off guard once.

With this embarrassing and jarring bad surf is hope for the future. You have to remember The Endless Summer was actually a search for winter waves (check the hemispheres). And the doldrums and south wind of summer are gone and swept away by the power from the north: this is actually our favorite season.

Over here we spent most of the first week of November (how did that happen?) grinding through these first days of cold north wind preparing for this inevitable day and today it arrived and it was no less shocking. And kind of awesome. There is optimism in this misery. We pulled our hoodies on and ordered something with a little more length. This weekend we’ll turn the clock back and find that block of cold water wax we stashed in the freezer, it’s the beginning of the most wonderful time of the year. And now we’re ready. —Travis Ferré

*Yes, we write to you from California, but we’re sure your hometown has a seasonal pattern that changes so channel that when reading and apply as needed. Write to us if it’s different than this and maybe we’ll publish it. And maybe not, but we’d love to hear from you.

[Artwork: The Q Symphony by Leonora Carrington, 2002]