I was a surf-obsessed teenager living in a Southern California beach town in the early 1980s when “The Endless Summer” aired on my local PBS station. Surfing was my escape, and a movie about a search for the perfect wave promised to be the ultimate escape. I set my parents’ VCR to record it and was transfixed by what I saw.

I didn’t care that the movie was already nearly two decades old. I watched it again and again — after school when the onshore breeze came up and it was too windy to surf, on winter days when I refused to tug on my head-to-toe wetsuit — until I’d seen the film so many times I’d memorized every line.

Each time I watched the opening images of shimmering orange sunsets and silhouetted surfers gazing at the waves, all of it set to the Sandals’ warm, hypnotic soundtrack, I figured I was watching a simple surf documentary.

That, after all, is how filmmaker Bruce Brown, who narrates the film, explains the ’round-the-world journey undertaken by the two protagonist surfers at the outset:

Many surfers ride summer and winter, but the ultimate thing for most of us would be to have an endless summer of warm water and waves without the summer crowds of California. The only way to do this is by traveling around the world, following the summer season as it moves around the world.

It sounds straightforward enough. And yet, looking back at the film now, surfing isn’t its sole focus. It’s only the means to a much bigger end.

The film celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and its power hasn’t begun to subside. It’s one of the few films I still enjoy watching as much as an adult as I did when I was a kid. I think I understand why. “The Endless Summer” is not just the best surfing movie of all time. It’s also one of the greatest wanderlust-inducing documentaries ever made. It’s a celebration of travel, wonder and discovery — an unlikely and seductive cross between National Geographic and Surfer magazine, writ large on the big screen.

Its appeal has always transcended geography. When it debuted, movie-goers in Wichita, Kansas lined up in the snow to see it, selling out multiple screenings in the dead of winter. In fact, it’s perhaps most powerful when viewed on a gray winter day.

The movie is beloved by so many because Brown is a master storyteller who revels in the journey.

Early on in the film, when many other surf-filmmakers might be obsessing over waves, Brown shows surfers Robert August and Mike Hynson preparing for their ‘round-the-world trip in front of a fire on a winter night, reading up on malaria cures and shark attacks. Subtle humor runs through the scene — the book covers’ titles are clearly hand-drawn — but viewers gets the point: The surfers are experiencing the kind of pre-travel jitters we can all relate to.

Moments later, our heroes are wearing suits and ties like good gentlemen travelers of the 1960s, aboard a flight to Dakar, Senegal. It’s a place I’m sure I’d never heard of the first time I saw the film, and just hearing the words ignited my imagination. Brown stoked the embers further.

“Would they find surf?” he wonders. “Would they catch malaria? Would they be speared by a native? They didn’t have any idea.”

Of course, they would not be speared. They score countless tasty waves. But between surf scenes, Brown celebrate the kind of curious, culture-clash moments that make travel so compelling. He shows the two surfers arriving in Accra, Ghana, for example, struggling to explain to a taxi driver that they want to tie their surfboards to the roof of the car. The taxi driver, who Brown suspects has never before seen a surfboard, isn’t hearing any of it.

Cracks Brown, “The driver kept muttering something that must have meant airplane wings go in the trunk.”

Then we see the taxi motoring through town with the surfboards sticking straight out of the trunk, extending at least six feet into the road.

“Can you imagine driving down a highway in the U.S. like that?” Brown asks gleefully. “They’d put you in prison.”

We watch as the two stars teach surfing to locals in Ghana — Brown clearly loves every minute of it — and explore empty New Zealand highways and beaches.

The film’s famous high point comes when the surfers happen upon the small waves curling perfectly down the beach at Cape St. Francis, South Africa. Here again, where another surf-filmmaker might have simply cut to the tubing waves, Brown revels in the surfers’ quest.

With triumphant horns playing, the star surfers are first shown hiking over sand dunes under a hot African sun, searching for waves with no ocean in sight.

“Half way around the world and halfway across the dunes, it seemed like a bad idea,” Brown intones. “It started to get pretty hot. The odds were against us finding surf. We didn’t even know if we’d find the water.”

It’s the most compelling moment in surf movie history.

In “The Endless Summer Revisited,” a retrospective made by Brown’s filmmaker son, Dana Brown, we learn that the surfers didn’t really need to hike over dunes to get to the beach that day, and that Brown, in fact, inspired by “Lawrence of Arabia,” ordered them to hike the nearby dunes repeatedly for dramatic effect.

Learning that was not unlike hearing that Santa Claus isn’t real. But when you’re a 14-year-old surfer without a driver’s license, much less a passport, watching those surfers hiking over the dunes and discovering those waves is enough to sustain you and fuel your dreams for years. And what sticks with you isn’t just the surf (though if you surf can’t help but salivate at the sight of those perfectly peeling right-handers). It’s the very idea of the quest.

In recent years, some critics have justifiably complained about the film, noting a neo-colonial attitude reflected in some scenes, beginning with the use of “natives” to describe Africans. It’s a movie of its era.

The world has changed much in the last four decades, for better and worse. As the march of globalization has shrunk the planet, surfing’s popularity has soared. Surf ghettoes have sprung up around the world in places like Kuta Beach on Bali. The notion of traveling the globe in search of the perfect wave will never again hold the kind of magic it once did. Perhaps that’s in part why “The Endless Summer II” didn’t live up to its predecessor.

So be it. The adventurous spirit of the original film endures.

Under a glaring April sun, perspiring crews at the Point Loma sportfishing landings work on the boats that line the waterfront, painting hulls, sanding decks and making repairs to ready the fleet for the upcoming season.

But when 83-year-old Bill Poole sees them, he gets antsy. If he were still captaining a sportfishing boat, he says, he wouldn’t be wasting time on the docks.

“We’ve had great weather for weeks, and nobody’s going out,” he grouses. “Somebody’s got to get the season started. Somebody’s got to go catch some fish. As I’ve always said: Fishermen don’t catch fish; fish catch fishermen.”

Poole’s get-out-and-fish spirit — and his firm belief that when you catch fish and the word spreads, anglers will come — has made him a giant in the sportfishing business, especially in San Diego, home of one of the world’s largest sportfishing fleets.

For more than half a century, he has pushed the limits, building bigger and better boats and motoring anglers farther and farther out to sea. It’s a legacy that has led many to regard him as Southern California’s godfather of saltwater sportfishing.

“He’s one of the real pioneers,” says Bob Fletcher, president of the Sportfishing Assn. of California. “It was always Bill Poole to make the next step.”

Poole, a tanned man with strong arms and a head of thick gray hair, isn’t one to discuss the pleasures of sportfishing. Either you get it or you don’t. But he’s sensitive to changes he has seen on the ocean that has provided him with an ample livelihood. He agrees with regulations designed to protect species from overfishing.

“We hurt the black sea bass years ago when we fished them real heavy,” he says. “We didn’t realize what we were doing.”

Poole doesn’t spend as much time on the water as he once did, but he still oversees his businesses, including Fisherman’s Landing in Point Loma and Marina Cortez on Harbor Island, where he is building a 100-suite business hotel. He also owns the Excel, a $3.2-million long-range sportfishing boat that recently returned from a record-setting trip off Mexico with 41 tuna, each weighing more than 200 pounds.

When he’s not working, he’s fishing his 1,000-acre ranch in Montana or hunting big game in Iran, Pakistan, Namibia or Mongolia. For Poole, such adventures are the payoff for the decades he spent building a thriving business.

Poole’s father, Herb, taught him to fish off Long Beach when he was 6 years old. Herb Poole owned a truck and hauled fuel for Signal Oil, moving the family up and down the California coast over the years following the work. When Poole was 9, he found his niche. He’d been fishing with his uncle from Oceanside Pier, reeling in more corvina and perch than anyone out there, when an envious angler asked what his secret was.

“Sand crabs,” Poole said.

“Where’d you buy them?” the man asked.

“I didn’t buy them,” Poole said. “But I’m selling them for 50 cents a dozen.”

So began his career. He went on to sell countless sand crabs. He also sold calico bass, and any other fish he caught, to his grandfather, who owned half a dozen butcher shops in north San Diego County.

But Poole’s serious entry into the sportfishing business came in 1946, at age 22, when he returned from military service in the Navy Air Corps and bought a 125-foot sailboat with his father. The two anchored the boat several miles off Oceanside and transformed it into a fishing barge, shuttling anglers back and forth from the pier.

Two years later, Poole and his father moved south to San Diego and invested a little more than $8,000 in a beat-up 50-foot motorboat that could reach the Coronados Islands on day trips.

Shortly after that he bought the Polaris, a 62-foot Navy boat that he quickly refurbished.

From April to September, Poole captained the boat day after day, taking anglers out in search of yellowtail, sea bass, albacore or whatever else happened to be biting, competing with more than a dozen other boats for passengers.

“For five months we beat our brains out, working around the clock,” Poole says. “You’d kiss your wife hello and goodbye at the same time.”

Back then, a chalkboard posted at the landing tracked the number of fish caught daily on each boat. Anglers heading out often checked the board, so competition was fierce. Fistfights occasionally broke out when a skipper was suspected of inflating his numbers. Poole says he never exaggerated his take, but worked hard to keep Polaris near the top.

“When we got our fanny kicked,” Poole recalls, “I’d go down to the dock, and the guys would give me a hard time: ‘The big green racer fell off today, huh?’ ”

When business fell off for other sportfishing boats between September and April, Poole began venturing farther out, chasing big fish such as bluefin tuna and luring anglers who would pay to join him. In 1951 he took his first payload to Guadalupe Island, 150 miles off Baja. It took him 24 hours to get there. “We felt we were at the end of the world,” he says.

But there was just one problem. At the time, the Coast Guard required sportfishing boats to stay within 50 miles of the nearest port. Legally Poole shouldn’t have gone that far south. So he took a low-key approach to the trips, spreading word quietly to regular customers. He eventually was caught and fined, but soon after, restrictions were eased.

In the mid-1960s the Coast Guard began to allow larger engines in sportfishing boats (until then, most boats were conversions) and Poole and others began commissioning more specialized boats with plush sleeping quarters, powerful engines and improved storage for bait and fuel.

In 1973 Poole launched his own boatbuilding company which soon built the 112-foot Royal Polaris, at the time was the world’s largest sportfishing boat. It allowed him to offer trips to Alijos Rocks, 500 miles south of San Diego, and Hurricane Bank off Cabo San Lucas. Today these destinations are popular fishing spots, but when Poole first fished them, they were little-known.

On a recent afternoon at his Point Loma home, Poole strolls among the nearly 200 animals he has bagged in three spacious trophy rooms. On one wall, a 140-pound leopard crouches on a branch, as if eyeing its prey. Nearby, a 9 1/2-foot brown bear stands on its hind legs. But there are some prize marine catches too. The head of a 922-pound marlin he reeled in off the Great Barrier Reef gazes out from one wall. And nearby is the tail of a 341-pound halibut.

“I caught that one off Alaska,” he says, smiling. “At the time, it was near the world record.”

Photo by moonjazz via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

As I studied the 5-foot-tall artificial wave known as the FlowRider outside San Diego’s Wave House Athletic Club, I thought: Riding this will be too easy. I will rip and tear this wave to smithereens. I will carve wicked turns and school all the kooks around me in the lost art of shredding.

Sure, I’d just signed a form stating that “riding may result in the flow of water picking you up and pitching you head-over-heels.” And yes, one veteran rider with a substantial lip piercing had warned, “It’s tougher than it looks.” But over the last decade I’d surfed tasty waves from Central America to Indonesia. How hard could riding a fake wave be?

As a dozen spectators, five FlowBoarders and a lifeguard looked on, I stepped onto a board at the edge of the swimming-pool-sized, foam-padded box and pushed myself onto the stationary wave. I crouched low, feeling a rush of white water under me. Then, as I was about to rip my first turn, I fell flat on my back. In a blur, I shot up the wave and straight into a foam wall, ejected. It was I who’d been schooled.

Riding the FlowRider is indeed harder than it looks. The machine at Mission Beach’s Belmont Park, one of nearly 50 of varying sizes around the world, shoots a thin layer of water over an incline composed of taut fabric. The resulting wave can be ridden prone on a bodyboard, which is the easiest way, or standing on a foam-padded fiberglass board roughly the shape of a big skateboard. Up to 10 riders take turns at a time.

A small cadre of hard-core stand-up enthusiasts has evolved around the machines, including snowboarders and wakeboarders, surfers and skateboarders. Most beginners need at least a few hours of wipeouts before they begin to feel proficient. Even professional surfers can struggle to catch on. The bottom is soft, but riders sometimes fall hard, emerging with bumps and strains.

“It’s unlike anything you’ve ever done,” says Brian Crecely, 20, who rides the wave five days a week. “It’s addictive.”

On its face, the idea of building artificial wave machines located only steps away from real waves sounds preposterous. Charging $20 or more an hour to ride them recalls the old joke about selling refrigerators to Eskimos.

The scene around the FlowRider is surreal. Tourists while away their time watching riders on the fake wave, ignoring surfers gliding across real waves nearby. It’s only a matter of time before a graduate student works up a doctoral thesis on the phenomenon: “Post-Modern Recreation and Meta-Surfing in the Age of NutraSweet.”

The irony isn’t lost on the wave’s creator.

“It’s totally absurd,” admits Thomas J. Lochtefeld, 52, chuckling.

A die-hard La Jolla surfer who has ridden some of the globe’s best breaks, Lochtefeld co-founded the Raging Waters theme parks in 1983. After he left as chief executive, he saw the potential for a wave attraction and soon began dragging hoses into his jumbo bathtub to experiment with designs.

“My wife thought I was nuts,” he says.

He knew he’d have to build gentle waves for families, but the surfer in him yearned to create powerful waves that put the wimpy swells found in many wave pools to shame. Thus, the FlowRider was born. And next month, it will have a bigger, meaner cousin: Bruticus Maximus.

On June 16, the $2-million Bruticus Maximus machine, which spent several years touring the world, will open adjacent to the Mission Beach boardwalk, complete with concert-style sound and lighting effects. Rivaled only by a sister machine in Durban, South Africa, Bruticus Maximus offers a free-standing wave 9 feet tall that enables riders to get completely covered by the curl — the Holy Grail of surfing. Compared with the smaller FlowRider, which offers a more gentle Waikiki-style wave, Bruticus Maximus is the Banzai Pipeline.

Strolling onto the oceanfront site where the wave’s framework is rising, Lochtefeld is equal parts mad scientist, giddy surfer and shrewd entrepreneur. He points to the machine’s water pumps, discussing “force potential” and “super critical sheet flow.” He crouches low where the curl will form, his eyes gleaming. Then he looks out at the spectator area, with its thatched-roof bar and hanging hammocks, and invokes the importance of “ancillary revenue models.”

With Bruticus Maximus and its commercial spectator zone, Lochtefeld has tried to package the California dream in a lot the size of a football field. If it’s profitable, he says, he’ll export similar operations to spots around the globe, including Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

He’ll get his first indication during the opening festivities next month, when veteran riders will perform dazzling flips and spins. I’ll be watching from the bar, a margarita in hand, nursing my bruised ego.

Photo by derekadk via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

By Jim Benning
The Los Angeles Times Magazine

To Pierce Flynn, for whom surfing is nothing less than a form of prayer, the rise overlooking Trestles is sacred. Early most mornings, he pedals through empty San Clemente streets, surfboard riding shotgun on his mountain bike, to this bluff above one of California’s most popular surf spots. On days with curling waves, he’ll cruise down the dirt trail, tug on his wet suit, paddle out and picture in the distance the big change about to unfold here. Soon, despite the intense lobbying of Flynn and his flock at the Surfrider Foundation, the Marine Corps will build housing on this chunk of coast within Camp Pendleton. “Our kids won’t be able to look down and see the waves breaking,” Flynn says. “It’s sad.”

In Flynn’s world, the act of surfing is linked to the battle to preserve beach access, clean ocean water and unspoiled coastlines. Waves, this mellow Southern California native will tell you, deserve the same protective status as gnatcatchers and condors. To promote this agenda, Surfrider practices a brand of environmentalism that Flynn calls “surfer-bohemian-hip.” It’s a term that also describes Flynn–a tan, youthful 44-year-old PhD who thwacks around the small nonprofit’s San Clemente headquarters in flip-flops and counts among his passions Zen and traveling by plane, boat and skiff to hell-and-gone surf breaks around the world.

These days, Surfrider is riding a swell into the mainstream, and Flynn is out front on the nose. Propelled by recent victories against polluters, Surfrider, now going on 15, has won the attention of many government and industrial leaders on the both coasts. Despite having taken some media hits for playing loose with the facts, Flynn has delivered Surfrider’s gospel to America’s masses. He has courted the support of–and surfed with–such recording artists as Chris Isaak and Eddie Vedder. Pearl Jam’s front man donated cash as well as tracks for one of the CDs that Flynn co-produced as fund-raisers. And Flynn helped smooth-talk MTV into airing a short video that coolly spelled out Surfrider’s causes.

All this hype has fueled a hint of fear that the organization is straying from its core, surf-inspired mission. But even the grumblers concede that Flynn is a charismatic, brainy, media-savvy leader, equally at home in the boardroom and on the ocean. Put him in front of a TV camera and he really turns it on. Says Steve Barilotti, a Surfrider member who writes a monthly column about the environment for Surfer magazine: “He’s the master of the sound bite.”

Surfrider’s headquarters consumes part of the second floor of a rustic three-story office building about a mile from the San Clemente shoreline. A stack of surf magazines teeters near the front door. Hanging surfboards cover one wall. Flynn, who moved around as a kid, living with his doctor parents in Westwood, Redlands and San Bernardino, recalls how he got to Surfrider in 1992. The organization had just won a major settlement from two Humboldt County pulp mill operators that had been dumping millions of gallons of untreated waste into the ocean each day. The group tapped Flynn, then a communications consultant, in part to relieve internal squabbling over how to spend a $300,000 windfall in legal fees from the settlement. He loved it. “I thought, this is a real good vehicle for me,” he recalls. “I can serve and give back. It was very meaningful.”

Drawing on his background in media relations and academia–he has a doctorate in ethno-methodology, or the study of knowledge, from UC San Diego–Flynn made friends quickly. In three years, he made the leap from communications manager to executive director, which pays $65,000 a year, learning about the ocean as he went. He met his fiancee, coastal scientist Melissa Gordon, at a meeting in Washington, D.C.; their wedding is next Sunday.

Flynn spends much of his time talking on the telephone to Surfrider constituents, discussing policy with board members and brainstorming PR schemes with record producers and entertainers. (His Rolodex includes Woody Harrelson and Tom Hanks.) In the afternoon, he might meet with a geographer or an oceanographer for a briefing on a coastal issues, then finalize a grant application. Flynn moves easily from the role of inspirational leader to stoked surfer. “We want to reinvent democracy,” he’ll say one minute. Then, the next: “We receive so many bitchin’ letters.”

Flynn wants the organization to become more sophisticated. “We’re probably coming into young adulthood from adolescence,” he says. “I’m trying to be a maturing agent.” His goals include adding to the membership of 25,000 and finding ways to make the chapters more self-reliant. “We’ve been reactive, putting out environmental fires,” he says. “Now we need to look ahead.”

While organizations such as the American Oceans Campaign and the Center for Marine Conservation focus on a broad array of issues involving the ocean, Surfrider homes in on the coastal zone, a narrow strip that begins 10 miles inland and extends three miles to sea. Its tactics are decidedly nonmilitant.

Since winning the second-largest settlement in history in Humboldt County, under the federal Clean Water Act, Surfrider has kept up the heat. Its lobbying efforts led to a finding from the California Coastal Commission that a rock groin built by Chevron Corp. in El Segundo had damaged the surf break. For the first time, some say, the government has recognized waves as a natural resource. All of this has been accomplished without loads of money, on an annual operating budget of about $1 million. Flynn attributes the organization’s impact to its nearly 40 grass-roots chapters–small but devoted bands in the United States and abroad that pick up trash, test ocean water for contaminants and fight developments they deem harmful. Of Surfrider’s membership, a “gnarly” 10%, including lawyers and scientists, are hard-core volunteers; the remainder are less active supporters.

But Surfrider has failed to stop development of the bluff overlooking Trestles, a popular surf spot near San Clemente. Citing housing shortage, the Marines in 1996 announced plans to build more than 100 units for junior officers on the Camp Pendleton site. Surfrider filed suit to kill the project, arguing that it would damage wetlands. Flynn repeatedly described the area as “the Yosemite of surfing.” Although the California Coastal Commission first sided with the surfers, it reversed itself, finding that the Marines had satisfied state environmental requirements and had explored alternative locations. Surfrider concedes that its appeal also may fail.

Flynn has a knack for enlisting the aid of rock stars. Besides Vedder and Isaak, dozens have contributed to two Surfrider benefit albums. Over the years, he has surfed with Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction and Beach Boys member Bruce Johnston. When Pearl Jam rolled into San Diego several years ago, Flynn paddled out at Pacific Beach with Vedder, who would eventually give more than $50,000 to Surfrider. Over breakfast later, “we just brainstormed about how we could affect popular culture,” Flynn says. “We plotted out the ‘MOM’ albums.”

“MOM,” or “Music for Our Mother Ocean,” is the title of two albums that since 1996 have raised nearly $400,000 for Surfrider. A third is in the works. Help on those projects also came from another Flynn surfing buddy: Surfdog Records owner Dave Kaplan. The San Diego producer often has joined Flynn on trips to meet with musicians. “It’s very difficult for an outsider who hasn’t been around music to be comfortable speaking to musicians,” Kaplan says. Not so with Flynn. When the Surfrider leader made his pitch to the musicians, Kaplan recalls, “it was almost a slam dunk. He’s oozing with spirituality and goodness.”

Surfrider’s rock ‘n’ roll approach to coastal activism has won the organization many fans, including Sierra Club board member and former president Adam Werbach, who complains that environmentalism is frequently a grim practice. But Surfrider, he says, knows how to have fun. “It’s lively, full of music and kick-ass,” he says. And sometimes, as Werbach learned, it can be dangerous. After paddling into big surf with Flynn and other members at a rally in support of the Clean Water Act a while back, the beginning surfer insisted on catching a wave–against Flynn’s advice. Werbach wiped out badly and washed onto the sand with a bloody nose. “It was one of the best days of my life,” Werbach recalls, laughing. “I joined Surfrider the next day.”

But as Surfrider becomes more accessible to the mainstream, it has left some members wary. Founder Glenn Hening says Surfrider is backsliding from its original purpose. “The idea was to really say something serious about the values of serious surfing as it benefits our society,” he says. Hening wanted to introduce surfing to inner-city children. But with the passing of time, he says, the group has become less concerned with riding waves.

Hening was particularly annoyed recently when Surfrider’s 15-member board of directors voted to remove a line in the group’s mission statement calling for the “enhancement” of surfing spots, which could mean using sand bags to create new wave breaks. Some in the group felt the move contradicted the group’s goal of preserving wild beaches. Flynn believes that more research needs to be done. Hening’s mind is made up. He still supports Surfrider–he recently helped raise $7,000 for the Santa Barbara and Ventura chapters. But to him, the vote exemplified Surfrider’s push toward the mainstream.

Flynn shrugs off the criticism. He’s used to hearing complaints about the group’s vision and educational materials. Some observers say Surfrider at times overstates health threats posed to swimmers and surfers. And Surfer magazine recently chided Surfrider over a press release calling the embattled Trestles one of the 10 best surfing spots in the world. “I guess that is a relative call,” Flynn says. “We don’t say we’re perfect, but we’re working to be perfect.”

The group’s commitment to protecting and restoring beaches is stronger than ever, Flynn says. Surfrider’s Blue Water Task Force program, which includes storm-drain stenciling to warn people against dumping pollutants, as well as water testing to monitor quality, has been widely praised. Republican Congressman Brian P. Bilbray of San Diego recently co-authored a bill to establish a national ocean-water quality standard, which, he says, was inspired partly by Surfrider’s activism. And the group is documenting physical characteristics of beaches around the country to help gauge changes along coastlines. “This is a first-of-its-kind grass-roots beach-mapping program,” Flynn says. “We’re arming the volunteers.”

Flynn, as part of that effort, is developing a program to teach the volunteers skills such as campaign planning, media relations and fund-raising. The program will lead to a greater show of force around the country, Flynn says. “These people are getting positively politicized.”

Another Flynn goal, doubling Surfrider’s membership over the next few years, might be hard to achieve. The surfer-bohemian mind set is antithetical to joining, some argue. “We used to joke that trying to organize surfers is like trying to herd cats,” chuckles former board member Ward Smith. Flynn says that although that may be true, Surfrider will sign up anyone who enjoys swimming at their local beach–or even carving up epic waves faraway, as he did recently. He looks across his desk and grins.

“Did you see it?” he asks, referring to a photograph of him in the curl of a Fijian wave on Surfrider’s Web site, http://www.surfrider.org. “That was the best barrel I’ve had in my life. I free-fell down the face and pulled into the pipe,” he says. He gestures wildly, forming wave shapes with his hands, struggling to describe the indescribable. “I remember the sound, the vortex. It was an awesome experience. I close my eyes and can feel the thing.”

Flynn leans back in his chair and shuts his eyes. “The longer you live, the more you realize that a {good} swell is a very rare and precious thing,” he says. “You don’t want to miss that.”

Photo by colmsurf via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

By Jim Benning

Steve Fleischli loves few things more than clean, clear water, the stuff known to habitues of the High Sierra and the South Pacific. But there isn’t much of the stuff in Los Angeles, so Fleischli has devoted himself to cleaning up dirty water laden with copper, lead, nickel and zinc residue; foamy ocean water strewn with fast-food wrappers and soda cans; rain runoff loaded with thousands of cigarette butts. Fleischli would like to be out of a job, but the bad habits of a growing metropolis ensure that he’ll have plenty to do for decades to come.

Which explains why, on this day, he is standing in an empty, industrial stretch of Carson, his head battered by a rainstorm, his blue jeans soaked, inspecting a stream of black, oily ooze flowing from the driveway of an auto dismantling yard. “What are fish supposed to do in that?” he snarls, anticipating the runoff’s journey from a nearby storm drain into the Dominguez Channel and, eventually, Los Angeles Harbor. Fleischli crouches next to the tainted water and grimaces as he collects a sample in a small beaker. “This,” he says, displaying the dusky liquid with satisfaction, “is evidence.”

If Fleischli were a cartoon character, he might be dubbed “Aquacop.” His real-life title is more nondescript–executive director of Santa Monica BayKeeper, a five-person nonprofit environmental group. But his pursuit is worthy of superhero status: protecting the Los Angeles coast from the never-ending onslaught of industrial grime, toxic slime and fish-killing filth generated each day by the area’s millions of people. Southern Californians love to brag to landlocked relatives about L.A.’s beautiful beaches and blue waves, but the reality is far less Edenic. Sea lions strangle themselves with fishing line; needles and dirty diapers wash up on shorelines; and even light rainstorms send so much bacteria and muck down storm drains and into local waters that health officials regularly warn swimmers to avoid the waves for several days.

Given all that, Fleischli’s task is downright Sisyphean. The books are loaded with anti-pollution laws designed to keep L.A.’s waterways clean, but the junk simply continues to mount. Officials can’t keep up with the growing population and its stream of detritus. As a result, enforcement is often sporadic. In setting policy, government agencies, under constant pressure from developers, must do a delicate balancing act and sometimes give business concerns priority over the environment.

Fleischli and the other BayKeeper staff choose to ignore the overwhelming odds and keep tabs on whatever their meager resources allow. The group doesn’t have the name recognition of Heal the Bay, which works to educate the public and beef up clean-water laws with an annual budget five times BayKeeper’s $400,000. But Fleischli seems content to think of BayKeeper as Heal the Bay’s scrappy kid brother, the one with the attitude. “We look at ourselves as the police enforcing the rules that Heal the Bay is working to create,” he says.

Fleischli and his colleagues routinely patrol Santa Monica Bay, peering through binoculars at suspicious tankers. They log anonymous pollution tips on a 24-hour hotline. And they investigate businesses and industries throughout inland Southern California, sampling the rainwater spilling out of industrial yards and filing lawsuits in attempts to stop polluters. “Urban runoff is the No. 1 problem for all Southern California coastal waters,” Fleischli says. It’s a sentiment echoed by Dennis Dickerson, executive officer of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. “It’s one of the most significant problems that we have,” he says.

That’s why, on this stormy day, when most Southern Californians are taking cover, Fleischli dons his jacket at BayKeeper’s Marina del Rey office, jumps into his Toyota pickup and makes a beeline for the Carson auto dismantling yard, one of many local sites the group has monitored. Over Tom Petty tunes and the patter of rain, Fleischli explains his urgency: Auto dismantling yards are vast graveyards for old cars. Dismantlers salvage the raw materials, but oil and heavy metals from the cars often collect on the ground, and unless owners take preventive steps, rainwater can wash the oil and metals onto city streets and into storm drains leading straight to the Pacific. Roughly 300 dismantlers operate in the county. Benzene, lead, copper, oil and grease all threaten the health of the ocean, Fleischli says.

Two years ago, after BayKeeper first found that the toxic goop flowing from this yard exceeded federal benchmarks, the group warned the owner, citing the federal Clean Water Act. When nothing changed, BayKeeper filed suit in federal court. (The group files five to 10 such lawsuits each year.) “We’re very hopeful they’ll settle soon,” Fleischli says as he nears the yard, “but until then we’ve got to keep gathering evidence of their contamination.” (Settlement can be expensive because dismantlers have to pay BayKeeper’s attorney fees, which can run as high as $100,000.)

Fleischli parks along the rain-soaked street and points to a long, thick, snake-like sock extended partway across the driveway. The device is designed to soak up oil and block runoff that has collected in the yard from washing down the driveway and onto the street. But it hasn’t been placed all the way across the entrance, so a steady stream of black fluid spills out. Fleischli shakes his head. “They still just don’t get it. Most of this stuff they have to do is really simple.”

As he collects his sample of dirty water running down the driveway, a worker in the yard walks toward the entrance, notices Fleischli and pulls the sock all the way across, stemming the flow. “I know that this is no good,” the worker says.

Fleischli agrees. “I just want to make sure you guys know that we’re serious,” he says. “If you talk to your lawyers, let them know we were here.” The man nods, and Fleischli hops back into his truck for the trip to a nearby laboratory, where he drops off the fluid for testing.

Weeks later, Fleischli gets the results. As he suspected, the copper, lead, nickel and zinc found exceeded government benchmarks. But Fleischli has even bigger news. The dismantler agreed to settle the lawsuit and make changes to comply with the law by installing a treatment system for the runoff. Fleischli is optimistic that the ocean will soon be spared this yard’s contamination. He proclaims it another BayKeeper victory: “I think the fact that we were down there showed them that we were serious.”

Government officials charged with monitoring industrial sites need all the help they can get. The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, a state agency, employs 19 inspectors to monitor roughly 3,000 businesses–dismantlers, metal recyclers, metal plating shops, transportation yards, construction sites–with industrial storm-water permits such as the one in Carson. Tracking all those sites to ensure they live up to clean-water laws is a daunting task, says Dickerson, the executive officer of the board. What’s more, “there’s a serious concern as to how faithfully those businesses are implementing those requirements.”

Some in the dismantling industry aren’t as enthusiastic about Fleischli’s approach. Wayne Rosenbaum, a San Diego attorney who has represented eight dismantlers in cases filed by Santa Monica BayKeeper, says the group’s focus on the yards isn’t making coastal waters any cleaner. He believes BayKeeper should concentrate on bigger issues. “Every time you put your foot on the brake, a certain amount of copper is going to end up on the ground, and when it rains, a certain amount is going to end up in the storm drain,” he says. “Ultimately, the goal of water quality is good, but you’re not going to get there by beating up on a couple of auto dismantlers. You’re going to have to tell everyone to get out of their cars and walk.”

Martha Bucknell of the California Auto Dismantlers Assn., a nonprofit trade group representing about 500 dismantlers, also believes that cars are to blame. “Licensed dismantlers aren’t the pollution problem,” she says. “The vehicles are the pollution problem.”

Fleischli acknowledges that Southern California drivers and their cars contribute to urban runoff. But he maintains that cleaning up the mess has to start somewhere, and officials aren’t about to outlaw cars. “If we take the tack that the dismantling industry takes, that everyone else is the cause of the problem, then we’ll never get to clean water.”

*

SANTA MONICA BAYKEEPER CAN TRACE ITS BEGINNINGS TO THE HUDSON RIVER in New York, where in 1984 a group of activists formed Riverkeeper to file lawsuits against polluters under the 1972 federal Clean Water Act. The group’s many successes led environmentalists to form similar organizations around the country. Six groups now operate in California. In 1993, Terry Tamminen, an entrepreneur and scuba diver who didn’t like the changes he was seeing in Southern California waters, founded Santa Monica BayKeeper with one basic belief: “You can be the person who stands at the stream of polluted water coming into your bay and draws a line in the sand and says, ‘No more.’ ” Tamminen held that line as best he could until early 1999, when he left the group to head Environment Now, another nonprofit, and passed his aquacop badge to Fleischli.

The clean-cut 32-year-old grew up in Nebraska; his interest in the ocean was sparked by summer trips to visit his grandfather in Cape Cod. Back home, he often dreamed about the West Coast: “You grow up in the Midwest and a lot of the fantasy is about Santa Monica and the ocean out here.”

At the University of Colorado at Boulder, Fleischli majored in economics, biology and environmental conservation. “If you don’t understand biology you’re not going to understand why things need to be protected,” he says. “And I studied economics because a lot of people say, ‘How are you going to pay for that?’ ”

Afterward, Fleischli earned a law degree at UCLA and landed a job at a Los Angeles firm, where he worked as an environmental compliance lawyer, defending corporations. He made good money and worked to pay off his $70,000 in student loans. But he hated it. “I realized that I was only perpetuating the status quo.” After a year and a half, Fleischli quit, sold his car and moved to San Francisco, where he lived in a boarding house with nine roommates and eked out a living at an environmental law foundation. In April 1997, he landed a job as a legal and policy analyst at Heal the Bay. “I think I had $15 in my account when I got the job.” Two years later, he went to work for BayKeeper.

Fleischli earns $50,000 a year directing the organization, less than he was making as an attorney five years ago. He operates BayKeeper out of a small office a mile from the beach in Marina del Rey, sharing floor space with BayKeeper marine biologist Brendan Reed, who oversees a project to restore kelp in the bay; programs director Heather George, who manages a water-quality monitoring project; programs assistant Angie Bera; and field investigator Aron Gould. The office decor, ranging from beach-chic to science-shabby, reflects Fleischli’s multifaceted approach toward environmentalism. Neon green swim fins rest on a chair. A Dewey Weber long board is mounted on a wall. And posted near the entrance, an aging map of Los Angeles is labeled, “Sewage Spills, 1994-1998.” Small red dots on the map indicate spills. The map is plastered with red dots.

Seated at a desk strewn with papers, Fleischli struggles to articulate BayKeeper’s massive environmental challenge. “In one rainstorm you can see 13,000 pounds of trash come down Ballona Creek,” he says. Nets block some trash from entering the ocean, but not all. “How do you get a handle on that? Eight hundred thousand cigarettes a month make their way into our coastal waters. It’s just mind-boggling. We’ve got to do something about it.”

He picks up a 2,000-page book titled “Federal Environmental Laws” and drops it with a thud. “This is the bible,” he says. “In terms of forcing change, a lot of it takes place in the legal arena.” Fleischli frequently puts his legal background to work. He gathers evidence of violations, then files federal and state lawsuits or works with attorneys at Heal the Bay and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Some suits take six months to play out; others take years. Most are finally resolved through settlements.

Over the years, Santa Monica BayKeeper has made its mark. The group has sued the city of Los Angeles, seeking better maintenance of the sewer system. The Environmental Protection Agency recently joined the still-pending suit. In addition, BayKeeper and the NRDC won a lawsuit against Caltrans, forcing the agency to conduct a five- year, $30-million study to find better ways to manage polluted highway runoff, which makes its way to the Pacific via storm drains. That study eventually will help prevent hazardous waste and heavy metals on California highways from ever reaching the beach, Fleischli says. And BayKeeper, Heal the Bay and the NRDC won a watershed agreement from the Environmental Protection Agency to set pollution limits for the majority of river segments and beaches in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

That victory, in fact, led to a landmark ruling last month by the Regional Water Quality Control Board to ban trash from entering the Los Angeles River and its tributaries. Under the decision, the county, cities and Caltrans will be required to cut the litter their storm drains contribute by 10% a year over the next 12 to 14 years so that, at the end of the period, no trash should be entering the river. “It should have an enormous impact,” Fleischli says. “The whole point of this is that it provides clear, definitive rules for water quality. It’s very clear and it’s very enforceable.” Ballona Creek is expected to win similar protection soon.

Fleischli revels in the legal sparring, but he also loves to get out into the bay that he works so hard to protect. On a warm, sunny morning in Marina del Rey, Fleischli heads out on BayKeeper’s 34- foot boat with 10 UCLA environmental law students, several of whom research BayKeeper cases. BayKeeper founder Tamminen, who now sits on the group’s board of directors, takes the helm and motors through the harbor. Fleischli gleefully points out a sea lion frolicking in the blue water a few yards away.

The boat passes the marina entrance, then the mouth of Ballona Creek. Plastic bags and foam cups litter the water. Fleischli frowns. “The majority of what you see here is from Ballona Creek,” he says, pointing at the flotsam. “The beaches around here can be unbelievable.” Tamminen hits the throttle and the boat speeds into the open waters of Santa Monica Bay. The view is magnificent. Fleischli stands near the stern and surveys the blue waters to the north, stretching out past Malibu. He looks south, toward the waves beating against the cliffs of Palos Verdes. At times like this, with the morning sunlight shimmering on the waves, the bay can seem idyllic. But if anyone knows that looks can be deceiving, it’s Fleischli. He raises his voice over the din of the motor and complains to the students about the thousands of cigarette butts tossed out of cars that eventually wash onto Southern California beaches.

Law student Derek Jones nods in agreement, then pipes up. “So if we see someone throw a cigarette butt out the window,” he says, “we should tell them that Steve Fleischli of BayKeeper will kick their ass?” The aquacop looks out at the blue horizon and grins. “Yeah.”

Photo by rappensuncle via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

The Scouts of Troop 139 had hiked for seven hard days and the boys’ shoulders, knees and hips now ached. They had mastered 35 miles of the rugged Sierra Nevada mountain range, yet their objective, the 14,496-foot summit of Mount Whitney, still lay ahead.

All had trained hard and after a week were accustomed to the thin air at altitude. But when you’re sore and so tired that you don’t think you can hike another 10 feet, where do you find the strength to summit the tallest peak in the lower 48 states?

Troop 139 knew the key: Set goals.

Justin Field explained: “I say to myself, See that rock ahead on the trail? You’re going to keep hiking until you get to that rock. Then when I do, I say; See that rock over there? Now you’re going to keep hiking until you make it there.”

“I do that, too,” agreed Tony Truyoo. “It just sort of happens, and it works. You can always push yourself farther than you think.”

This Way Up

The strategy had already brought them far. But the boys knew tomorrow was the big challenge. They needed to cover six miles and 3,000 vertical feet to reach Whitney’s summit by midday. Then it would be another 11 miles down the mountain to civilization.

First things first. They all focused their thoughts on the thrill of summiting such a tall mountain.

“I can’t wait to get up there,” said Tony. “To think about how few people in the world get to stand on the top of Mount Whitney makes you feel special. If it’s a day like today without a cloud in the sky, you’ll be able to see forever.”

The boys awakened deep in the cold, moonless night, bolted down a quick breakfast of oatmeal and energy bars and strapped on their headlamps. By 4 a.m. they’d begun the long, rocky climb to the top.

“Breathing’s getting hard,” said Eric at their first rest stop, about an hour up the trail. “My shoulder’s and back really hurt.”

“I’m developing blisters on my feet,” said Nick Barton.

“We’ve really got to watch out for sprained ankles,” Eric warned.

Back on the trail again, the going only got tougher. The Scouts responded by setting new goals.

“We’re almost there,” said Andrew Field.

“After we hit the summit it’s basically over,” answered Bobby Gibbons.

“Never give up! shouted Eric.

Two miles short of the summit, the boys cached their heavy packs–they would retrieve them on their way down–and spread out single-file along the trail, each moving at his own pace. Their heavy exertions in the thin, dry air made them weary and thirsty. They rested often and took big gulps of water.

“I’m tired,” Tony said as he leaned against a rock.

Success at Last

The summit, however, was finally in sight. Tony saw some of the boys were already up there looking around. He took another deep breath and continued on.

Minutes later, all the hard work finally paid off–in a big way. Tony reached Whitney’s towering top. The day was perfectly clear, and just as he predicted, Tony could see for miles and miles.

“This is awesome!” he shouted.

The other Scouts, exhausted, sprawled themselves across the summit’s giant boulders, resting. But Tony was too excited to be still. He leaped onto the biggest boulder and thrust both arms in the air.

“This is the highest point!” he shouted. “I’m now the tallest person in 48 United States!”

To put an official seal on their accomplishment, the boys signed their names and added comments in the Mount Whitney registry, which is kept in a small shelter at the summit.

“All pain leads to success,” penned Matt Jacobson.

“Woo!!! Hoooo!!!” wrote Ben Caffey.

This Way Down

Then came time to go, and the bone-jarring 11-mile hike back down the mountain. The Scouts needed a new goal, but what could match reaching the top of Mount Whitney?

Justin grinned.

“Pizza! Pizza!” he began chanting.

The other Scouts joined in. “Pizza! Pizza!”

After days of dull, just-add-water trail food, freshly baked pizza sounded like a perfect goal, well worth the effort. Fortunately, there was a pizza joint waiting for the Scouts just a short drive from the trail’s end.

Eric leaned back on a rock and smiled.

“I’m going to get pepperoni with olives and mushrooms,” he announced.

With that, the Scouts hit the trail. There was a long, hard downhill hike ahead, but they’d make it. After all, they had a goal, and they could almost taste it.

-End

TIPS FOR THE TRAIL

Scouts whose troops select Backpacking As their activity theme next month will Find it fun and challenging. Here are four Tips for a smooth trek.

1. Mountain hiking requires strength and endurance. Be in good physical shape.

2. Pack intelligently. Remember that when you hike long distances you’ll feel every extra pound on your back. Take everything you need-but not an ounce more.

3. Keep your sense of humor. Accidents happen. Bad weather can occur at any time Stay cool. Be patient.

4. Do as Troop 139 did: Set goals along the way. Before you know it, you’ll reach the top.

–Photo by Corey Rich.

SINCE THE dawn of the shortboard, surfers have launched themselves off waves–inspiring later generations of skateboarders and snowboarders to violate a little airspace of their own. And while waveriders eventually went the way of scale–pursuing ever-bigger, meaner, gut-wrenching faces–the landlocked Young Turks perfected style, in the form of spectator-friendly (and, conveniently, sponsor-friendly) acrobatics. It was only a matter of time before the circle closed.

“People want to see blood and guts, and surfers are really going for it,” says professional surfer Jason “Ratboy” Collins, 26, a leading proponent of “progressive surfing” –a mutant derivative of the sport in which riders take off the lips of waves, pull flips, and attempt action-packed, generally whacked-out maneuvers straight from the half-pipe songbook. “It’s pretty cool to watch.”

Indeed. At Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz and Rocky Point in Hawaii, among other breaks, progressive surfers are now launching as high as eight feet (no kite strings attached), pulling airs, alley-oops, and extraordinarily difficult rodeo flips. Surfers debate when this new school took hold — some credit a mid-1990s Kelly Slater — but most agree that only recently has progressive surfing really taken on a life of its own. After years of complaints from pro surfers, the Association of Surfing Professionals, the sport’s rulemaking body, voted last year to tweak its traditional judging criteria to reward more cutting-edge maneuvers. The now five-year-running “Airshow” tour will spotlight the sickest moves at Southern California’s Salt Creek, April 18 to 22. “Surfing is one of those cool things that keeps evolving,” explains ASP board member Ian Cairns. “It’s the continuum of change.”

Photo by Lanpernas 2.0 via Flickr, (Creative Commons).