This would be a good time to know the cure for ice cream headaches. Photo: Lars Jacobsen
Rochester, New York. The south shore of Lake Ontario. February 6, 2013. I switch on NOAA for the day’s surf report. West gales to 50 mph developing in the afternoon. The near-shore water temperature off Rochester is 36 degrees.
Yeoow! I figure the surf’s gotta be building; a good time to field test my new Quiksilver 5.4.3 wetsuit with a dip in the Big Lake. I needed only a modest “shorty” down in Cocoa Beach, and I climbed into that to avoid sunburn. It’s a loathsome sartorial ritual I lay directly at the feet of Jack O’Neill, the suit’s clever inventor. One day in the 1950s after surfing in Cali with his chums, he returned to his office job and, his sinuses still filled with salt water, managed to dribble saltwater through his nose as he leaned over, drenching some important paperwork. For this ill-timed nasal discharge, O’Neill himself was discharged. Another door eventually opened for him, however, and we are blessed now, in the wetsuit’s sixty-first year, with these neoprene bondage outfits, the result of O’Neill’s wimpy reluctance to watch his feet turn blue and suffer ice-cream headaches in northern California’s cold surf. He oughta come to the Great Lakes. In the winter. Then too you have to question any dad who would force his children to model his early wetsuit vests while perched atop blocks of ice at sports trade shows! This, he explained limply, so folks could see how they withstood the chill. Hmmm.
It’s a love-hate relationship, of course, the one we have with our wetsuits. While O’Neill (understandably) smiles from his perch overlooking Santa Cruz surf, I’m intent on contorting myself into one of his evil spawn. I naturally remember the story of the little penguin, “Pierre” at the California Academy of Sciences. At age 25, he was going bald, and minus his feathers, couldn’t swim in chilly water with his mates. A tiny wetsuit was fabricated for him by Oceanic Worldwide in San Leandro. Once velcroed into his new duds, he could dip beautifully in the buff. I take cold comfort in this minor triumph, but first I have to drive the 20 minutes up to Lake Ontario.
Here’s how the morning went down: After 15 minutes of struggling into my new full wettie, I traipsed in my booties out to my Honda, wedged the 9’ longboard in through the trunk, stowed my gear and drove north to the twin jetties lining the outlet of a seven mile bay emptying into Lake Ontario. It’s a popular spot with our local Frozen Snot Surf Club. As I pulled into the parking lot, lake gulls waddled between a fleet of bright-red Rochester Fire Department hook-and-ladder trucks positioned bayside for an ice-rescue practice. A dozen or so firefighters in their Crayola-yellow drysuits stood by as a crew member edged out onto dangerously thin ice in a simulated rescue attempt. A “victim” (perhaps someone ice-fishing), had plunged through and was dramatically flailing about in the frigid water, even as the ice cracked ominously about him. Gosh, I thought, how often do you get to see this kinda thing? And me, yanking my neoprene hood over my aching ears rapidly filling with puffs of snow.
Collecting my surfboard by the car, I pulled on the first of my gloves, the easier of the two to get on. A woman, reining in her slobbering pitbull, smirked, “You’re gonna have a fight out there!” I managed to flip my wetsuit sleeve down over the second glove. Dang, why is this always so hard?
To reach the shore, I trudged, board under one pit, through a small thicket of trees shorn of their leaves this time of year and to the beach beyond–its sand frozen and crunchy in midwinter like caked brown sugar. Alas, the lake, beyond 50 feet of dirty, mushy ice, was flat! Not even a wavelet in sight. Farken sheet!
I loaded stuff back in the car, headed west through Major County Park, its rolling hills and dogwoods a wonder in summer, arriving at another desolate shoreline. For two miles, not a soul in sight. Scanning the water, parking, a better place to wade in, see how my suit feels at 36 degrees. Across more slushy, filthy snow then tiptoeing into a rivulet of water, runoff from a nearby park pond, I stepped slowly through floating plates of ice. Deeper and deeper into the water, trying to avoid falling into a storm-carved pit until I was up to my neck, the frigid water beginning to tingle ominously. Maybe I shoulda ordered a 6mm? Or be lobotomized. Those Cocoa Beach surfers don’t know what they’re missing!
Neck-deep and suddenly, the urge to purge! I had to let loose. Ahhhhh, the warm release. A moment to savor. Then, brushing through several sizable bergy-bits, I sloshed back up the embankment to my car where a jogger eyed me. “Out for a swim, huh?” she panted warily, as if she had spotted the creature from the Black Lagoon. Wetsuit now totally soaked, my aloha drained, I eased into the car, ramped up the heater and ripped off my balaclava and headed home, anxious to dunk my wetsuit in the bathtub with a dollop of Rip Curl’s “Piss Off” wetsuit shampoo.
On the expressway. High point of the day: van speeds past me, spots my Ron Jon Surf Shop decal on the window, flings me a shaka, the universal greeting of aloha. I speed up alongside him, his window now down, we shaka and wave smiley greetings, his big decal reading “Learn to Surf the Great Lakes.” Totally made my day! Seriously. Doesn’t take much.
