How Surfboards Get Around

They Are Everywhere in Asbury Park

Sometimes they pretend they're zebras.

Surfing is probably not a good way to commute to work, but it is a mode of transportation. Admittedly the rides on the Asbury surf are not long, but they are rides nonetheless, and I think the riders go to happier places than an air conditioned office that quietly extinguishes any sense of the natural world.

If you're interested in how long a ride in the surf can be, have a look at the documentary movie The Endless Summer (1966). The protagonists are traveling the world in search of the best wave ever. "What every surfer dreams of finding is a small wave with perfect shape - what we call a perfect wave," says director/narrator Bruce Brown at 49:37. They find one at Cape St. Francis in South Africa. A small wave, with a perfect curl, and it just keeps going. "On some rides I timed them in the curl for 45 seconds," says Brown (50:44). 

Back to Asbury Park

Surfboards taking a shower.

Surfing in Asbury Park continues to sundown and sometimes beyond. And here we have a car wash for surfboards, just after sunset on a summer day. It also doubles as a shower for surfers (and other beachgoers). As with people, so with surfboards: It's best to leave as much sand and salt at the beach as you can.

Surfboards have travel costumes, known variously as bags or socks. I think the bags are made of heavier material, but I confess I'm out of my depth when it comes to clothes for surfboards. If you're interested, you could click here. Or you could decide that you know enough.

Surfboards Can't Walk to the Beach

Back in the sixties, surfboards arrived at California beaches strapped to the top of a Ford Woody station wagon. I've actually seen a Ford Woody (an old friend used to have one), but I haven't seen any woodies in Asbury Park lately. 

They also serve who only lie in the sand and wait.

The surfing beach in Asbury Park is located at the northern end of town, where the City has reserved a beach for surfing and fishing. There's even a parking lot called the fisherman's lot. It's popular with anglers and surfers and others. I live near the surfing beach, so I don't have to work hard to watch surfboards arrive at the beach and, at the end of the day, depart.

I think the surfboards generally arrive strapped to the roof of a car, or jammed into the back of an SUV. I've seen them dumped into the back of a Ford F-150 pickup truck. And, of course, a person who lives close to the beach can walk and carry the board under an arm. But I think the boards are happiest riding a bike. Some people just carry the board under an arm while riding the bike, but others have surfboard racks mounted on their bikes.

End of the day.

Here's a large van with a man strapping down a surfboard on the roof. On the other side of the van there is a sign that says Jeremiah's Amish Doughnuts. I hunted around online; it appears there may be a connection to the television series Breaking Amish and Return to Amish. I decided to stop there, because this is a story about surfboards and not doughnuts. 

Doughnut truck.

Waiting and Action

Like cars, surfboards spend most of their time not doing anything. Even when a surfboard is in the water, it is mostly waiting, quietly and patiently along with its rider, for a good wave.

And then, like a thoroughbred horse at the racetrack, it explodes from a standing start to catch the force of a wave and ride on for as long as it can. Which is not very long. But the surfers are happy, and so, I suppose, are the surfboards.

As an observer, I have wondered whether surfers find the waiting for a wave to be tedious. I've decided that many of them just enjoy being on the water, much as some bathers, down on the bathing beaches, enjoy standing quietly in the water or perhaps floating on their backs and gazing at the sky, amidst the hurly-burly of splashing and frolicking.

I'm particularly struck by this meditative aspect of surfing at the end of the day. Some surfers will linger, even if there are no rideable waves, just floating on the water as the sky puts on its light show. 

All the photographs in this story were taken in 2023. 

See also Umbrellaville, Precious Cargo, The Uncertain Eighties, Layers at the Beach Front.