surf-matic

Graham Ezzy goes down south from umi pictures on Vimeo.

Mexico is like jail; easy to enter, hard to leave. At the end of July, the waves in Baja were so good that even though I’d left my passport at a friend’s house in New York City, I crossed the border into Mexico in search of good windsurfing without a worry about how I would return. On the drive down, we were three: Brendan, videographer and friend; Clark, driver, photographer, and friend; and myself, windsurfer and student. Our red van was packed with my windsurfing gear, food to last a week, and camera gear. Traveling south in Baja is like traveling back in time. At the border, everything is fairly modern- there are pharmacies, billboards, and men on the side of the road selling statues of Jesus and Mary. But farther south, the towns start to mirror the stages of Wild West movies with dogs, chickens, and cows roaming the dirt streets. After driving 10 hours south we finally reached our destination, Punta San Carlos, home of the legendary mile long wave, located in the middle of the Mexican desert, without a village, a road, or even potable water.  It is ‘stuck in the desert’ to the max but with wind and waves.

Isolated in such extreme wilderness with perfect waves, I soon fell into a meditative balance with the ocean. By the third day of riding wave after wave, I was in sync with the swell, the wind, and the Baja wildlife. I remember saying to myself, “this is what windsurfing is about. I’m not thinking of anything, just feeling and reacting”. It was great; well, it was great until I got to the beach and tried to have a conversation with Brendan. We were sitting on some rocks, he with his camera beside him and me still in my wetsuit. Our conversation started on windsurfing (something I know a bit about) but it quickly transitioned to the philosophy of music, specifically the significance of lyrics. I had some interesting ideas brewing on the subject, but when I tried to speak, words seemed foreign and distant as if I were looking through a telescope backwards. I managed to stumble upon a few meaningless strings of words: “Well, that then this … ahhh… repetition… emphasis… fewer structural restraints … yeah… aahhh…. “. The left side of my brain was hibernating due to inactivity! Riding a wave is like painting or writing poetry, and I was so far in the zone that coming out was difficult.

I thought that I was alone in using only half of my brain, but then I overheard a conversation that made me think different. One of the other campers, let’s call him John, was listening intently to Brendan’s story about a bad car crash years ago. Brendan duly noted to John that he cannot windsurf any more due to his injuries from the accident. The cars collided head on at full speed leaving just twisted metal and broken bones. After Brendan finished his story, John, his eyes wide, his ears open, and his curiosity genuine, asked, “Did you die?” Brendan was understandably a bit shocked by the question but after some time, he managed to answer, “Well, no.”

It seems that John, like I, was also thinking with just half of a brain. And I probably will never again hear anyone ask “did you die?” Honestly, I’m not even sure I know what he meant. Was he asking whether Brendan’s heart stopped causing him to technically be “dead”? Or maybe he wondered whether Brendan had made a deal with god to return to Earth in order to film the perfect windsurfing film. It’s possible that he considered Baja heaven, and while Brendan had chosen to get there through a fatal car crash, windsurfing was another possible route. After all, is that not what we are trying to do on the water, get to heaven?