2022 in Review: My Journey from Skinny Fat to Shredded and Shredding

Welcome to 2023 on the CSC blog everyone! Above is a video I compiled of a great majority of the surfing I did in front of a camera in 2022. I left out the SoloShot clips since it’s long enough already. As I have attested below and in my newsletters, I went through a radical diet and fitness transformation in 2022. By May (post Chile trip) I was in major lower back pain and I could tell my pants were fitting tighter than normal. I have one pair of chinos that are the litmus test for whether I’m losing, gaining, or maintaining weight. Do you have one pair of clothing like that? It’s weird it should be all the clothing, but there’s one pair in particular that really tells me what is going on. And in May they were uncomfortably tight. Then I went and got my yearly physical. The scale didn’t lie. 153, almost an all time high for me. I think 155 is the highest I’ve gone. I’m 5’6”. Truth be told, on a person of my height, getting near to 160 is going towards obesity. That may not be a popular opinion in today’s “body positive” social media climate, but it is also a scientific fact that I, for one, am not going to refute or deny. I am also aware that I was not obese during 2022 or any time before, and that I was doing some pretty damn fine surfing. I definitely made progress during the pandemic just by adding a daily yoga practice into my life. But yoga and surfing were not enough to keep me in optimal surf shape. I was in pain. And I had astronomically high cholesterol. So what did I do? I went vegan and hired a diet and fitness coach. The results fall just short of miraculous. Check out these side by side photos of me in January 2022 vs December 2022:

In the first picture I was pretty pleased with how I looked. I had some slight ab definition, and was drinking beer and eating whatever the hell I wanted. But you can see some extra fat around my belly button area, and those shorts are a size 32! In the second pic, the belly fat is gone, and the shorts are size 30. I actually can’t even wear those shorts surfing because they’re a little too baggy for that now. I’m now around 136-141 lbs (weight is something that fluctuates, not a static number), have a six pack, and those chinos that were tight? Yeah those are baggy on me now. Most importantly of all, I FEEL FKING GREAT. And I think you can see the change in my surfing in the video. Pop up is faster. Pumps have more oomph. Cutbacks have more wrap. Snaps have more snap. What’s not to love?

Is this mostly due to the fact that I hired a coach? 100%. I would never have been able to stay motivated enough to follow through. In fact am still with my coach Nathan at www.vegancoaching.com and will be through September this year. I message him every weekday morning at 5a EST (he’s in Wales so it works)! He keeps me positive, focused, and informed about the latest science in diet and fitness. He’s there when I’m feeling depressed about a higher weigh in, and when I’m pumped that I got to a new personal best in my workouts. He gives me a new workout program every 6-8 weeks so that I don’t get bored, and has helped me find affordable equipment online so that I don’t have to spend extra time getting to a gym.

How much do I think I can attribute this to going to a WFPB (whole foods plant based) diet? Some large portion of the 100% I ascribed to getting coaching. Overall this is a dietary pattern that favors sustainable, long-term healthy eating. Why? Because you get to eat higher volumes of food, which equate to lower calories overall. What more food and fewer calories? Yeah, that’s basically the WFPB life hack. It does take some training to get right. While I’m sure there are a few savvy autodidacts that can figure it out on their own, I recommend hiring someone to help you out, at least at first. My first recommendation are the folks at Vegan Coaching (please mention me if you go with them!), but after I’m done with their program, that will switch to me and the team that I assemble here. They’ll be second place! But my aim is to develop surf-specific dietary and fitness coaching to get you to do the best surfing in your life.

Stay tuned to the blog and newsletters for announcements of master classes in calorie tracking, exercises, and plant-based nutrition designed specifically with surfers in mind! If this is something of immediate interest to you, please do not hesitate to reach out to me personally through the site! I can design a coaching program for you to get started that will work with your goals, budget, and schedule. Early adopters will certainly get some percs!

Mastering A Midlength Series on YouTube

I have made a series of videos for YouTube titled “Mastering a Mid Length.” Anyone who follows my content or engages with my coaching knows that I’m a stickler for getting proficient at larger boards before you step on anything under 6’6”. My own surfing was built on a 7’2” Doug Haut swallow tail with three glassed-on fins. It was about 3” thick and I couldn’t duckdive it to save my life. Granted, I weighed about 70lbs at the time — I was 11-13 years old — but still my dad’s philosophy for my surfing was the same: “If you’re not catching waves, you’re not surfing.” He wanted me in early, setting up my rides, and with enough speed generated by the board alone to develop a smooth style before I learned to pump. As much as it wrankled me as a kid — this was the heyday of the “glass slipper” style shortboards in the 1990s — I now can’t thank him enough for curbing my enthusiasm to hack and whip and rip. If you can build fundamentals on a larger board the smaller ones should be easier. However the knife doesn’t cut both ways. Shorter boards, while seemingly easier to turn, are unforgiving with misplaced weight and thus can be slow and awkward if you’re not either a.) very, very light and agile, i.e., a child; or b.) already a pro surfer (in which case you learned when you were light and agile and you’ve probably stayed light and agile). For more in depth analysis of the physics of surfing a mid length make sure to subscribe to my newsletters and follow the YouTube channel!

Philosophy of Food Part 3: Didn't See This Coming: Vegan 2.0 Part 1: The origin story

I’ve done a 180! Or a 360, depending on how you look at it. For those who follow my weekly newsletters this is old-ish news, but I feel the need to update the blog-space with this vital info, especially because I’ve penned two “philosophy of food” posts here already, and since diet and lifestyle go hand in hand, my switch (back) to veganism will have a great deal of bearing on the future direction of CSC. Like most of humanity I had been living in various states of defense and denial about my body and my health (I’m sure that on some necessary level I still am, but for reasons I’ll explain below, I do feel I’ve overcome some of my worst defenses in this arena). I was a profound proponent of ominivorism and “fridge tetris.” From a purely “what our bodies can do” standpoint, I still understand that our bodies are indeed able to process a wide variety of foodstuffs. And I still adhere to a version of fridge tetris — don’t let things go to waste, eat what will rot first, don’t overbuy perishable foods, etc. — albeit with a whole new outlook on what exactly “lives” in my fridge, freezer, and cupboards.

First I want to admit that getting into the health and nutrition spheres on the interwebs or really in any sort of media is dangerous! Everyone is an “expert,” and there is an overload of information about what is best — keto, intermittent fasting, eat for your blood type, high protein, etc. — and what to avoid — soy, cholesterol, fats, salt, sugar, to name a few. As a philosopher I am more than well aware that what counts as “science” is a hotly debated issue. I have my own views on empiricism and the scientific method, which I cannot go into in the space of this post, but which I often dive into in newsletters. For the purposes of this post I’m going to lean heavily on personal anecdote because CSC is my business, and this is my story. And so here we go.

I became a vegetarian in 1996 after reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in highschool. That book made me conscious of the dangers and grossities of animal processing factories, and honestly I just became scared of eating human fingers and rat poison in my hamburgers. In 1998, at the age of 18, I went vegan for the first time and stayed vegan until 2003, aged 23. I was insanely skinny — so much so that it hurt to sit down — and really took a never healing broken wrist to even get back up to 135 lbs. I had dropped as low as 120 and looked like a herione addict. I was eating tons of food, but it was mostly just vegetables and water, which I now know has like zero calories, so despite the bulk of my intake, I was probably averaging 600 calories a day for quite some time. Not good. Then I started partying in San Francisco and late night pizza ended my vegan days. Cheese eventually lead to eating a little bit of everything else and then into full blown omnivorism for almost the next 20 years (I’m turning 42 in a few weeks).

The trip to Chile (see previous post) was a turning point for me. I was drinking beer or wine every day throughout the winter of 2022 and all through the trip to Chile. I always have eaten plenty of vegetables, but I was increasingly eating more meat and dairy. I had also been dealing with some really frustrating low back and hip pain for the better part of 2021 on through 2022. Yoga helped, but it wasn’t doing the whole job. I had also been in health insurance limbo after achieving my PhD (no more cushy gradschool Aetna plan), and finally secured some personal health care (ugh what a rip off for the sole proprietor) in February 2022. It was a busy, busy winter surf trip season (kinda went on a bender), and so by the time I was done with Chile in May I knew I had to start prioritzing my health. I lined up a bunch of doctors visits for an overdue yearly physical and some physical therapy to dive into what was going on with my hips and back. On top of this I knew that my pants felt like they were fitting a little tighter, and I could see a small paunch in my lower belly in my SoloShot video reviews. I was still fitter than an average American, but that’s not a very high bar. I knew I didn’t feel right or look my best (or up to my potential), and I certainly knew that non-optimal things were going on in my body. Pain is just a signal that something is out of whack.

When I went to my new PCP (primary care physician) I weighed 153 lbs and was diagnosed with super high cholesterol — the reading was around 270 total. She also noticed that I travel too much not to have travel vaccines, so she scheduled a follow up visit for 10 days later to get a new read on my cholesterol and to start my Hep A and B vax doses. She said, “I’d really like to see that number below 200,” and handed me a sheet about low cholesterol foods. I remembered that when I was vegan I basically didn’t have any cholesterol and said to myself, “Hey let’s just try it for 10 days and see what happens to that number when I go back.” So that’s what I did. I ate vegan for 10 days, went back to the doctor, and bam! Was down to 150lbs, and cholesterol score went down to 175. In. 10. Days. That got me thinking that I should just stay vegan, but how to do it and not end up like I did before? Or how about the other worries? Isn’t it all just carbs? Don’t I have to avoid soy so that I don’t get fat from “estrogen”? And then, is diet enough? I really should start strengthening my core to protect my lower back.

I started searching for #veganfitness on Instagram. In another first, this was my first time ever searching a hashtag on Insta! Loads of shit came up. Frutarian muscle builders. Anorexic women with 1 million followers (JUST NO). Then I found this guy Fritz Horstmann (@fritz_nutrition)’s posts and they spoke to me. He had these "Stuck Vegan” vs “Fit Vegan” split screen posts where the food on the left of the “Stuck Vegan” was the stuff I was beginning to eat to lower my cholesterol. I certainly wanted to avoid becoming a “Stuck Vegan”! Plus he has some very candid and heartwarming posts about his own journey to fitness. It’s truly incredible to see his transformation from a doughy young dude to a shredded, mature man after he sought help from nutrition and fitness coaches. To be fair, Fritz started off at a much doughier place than I was at when I began my journey. Surfing does give one a relatively decent physique to begin with if you just do it all of the time. Inactivity was certainly never my issue. But as much as I thought I had diet and fitness wired, I was way off the mark. Way off. And that showed up in the fact that I wasn’t at my optimal fitness or weight and also in my low back and hip pain. I literally couldn’t do an upward dog without searing pain across my lower back.

So I got on ye olde interwebs, found Fritz’s official website, and signed up for a free consult. 24 hours later I was on a call with a woman named Franzi who absolutely kicked the teeth out of my defenses. She asked, “Where do you see yourself in a year?” I thought for a minute about my lifestyle, how I do what I want for a living, and how I’m pretty happy and said, “Well I guess maybe the same is ok . . .” And she replied, “There is no the same. You’re either improving or getting worse. Time won’t stop for you.” That struck home. She was right. A flood of true desires allowed themselves to be conscious to me at that moment: Yes, I wanted a 6 pack abs. Yes, I wanted to get rid of my back pain. Yes, I wanted my pants to fit more loosely or even to be wearing different sized pants. No, I did not want to see a paunch in my soloshot tapes. No, I didn’t want my drinking to spawn into a full blown problem. And why? Not because I need to look attractive to potential mates. I am very happy with my love life. Not because I need to make money as a social media influencer (although yes, I’ll take the extra cash if that happens). And not because I’m trying to achieve some way off ideal body that has been sold to me through the media. Why then? Because I did not feel right, and I knew I was capable of looking better, feeling better, and being EVEN MORE satisfied with my choices in life and how my physical being reflects those choices. Pretty simple when you get down to it, but a very hard thing to accept on the face of it. Then Franzi asked if I would commit financially and mentally to the coaching. I’d have to stop drinking for 3 months and stay strictly vegan. The price tag resembles my products. At that moment I went through what a lot of people who are deciding to pay me go through. The commitment to pressing “buy” on an investment in your life skills through coaching is a daunting one. I said, “Yes,” gave her my credit card info, and immediately felt relief. I took the first step. I acknowledged that I can’t get to where I want to be on my own and that I need to pay someone to help me out.

And so I started with Fritz’s program, which is called Game Changer Academy on Instagram. Since starting in June (the pic of white, doughier Dion), I have lost 10 lbs (13 if you count the 153 I was at when I first went to the doctor) — I am now hovering in the 139-141 region. Fritz is not my personal coach. My personal coach is named Nathan. He gives me a weekly meal plan to follow and exercises to do. I am still able to keep up with my surfing and astanga practices because the exercises are only 20-50 minutes per day, 5 days a week. I do ALL of my exercises at home, so no gym membership fees have been required to grow my 6er! I have been on vacation in Mexico and was still able to make progress on my fitness with body weight exercises, resistance bands, counting my calories in MyFitnessPal, and gaining a new understanding of a TRULY balanced vegan diet, which pays attention to macronutrients. So much of this transformation is shocking and incredible to me, and I’m still only at the beginning of the journey. I’m going to list a few of my largest preliminary takeaways:

1. I’m eating a ton of food and losing weight. My alotted caloric intake for this “cutting” period is 2100 kcals per day. Vegan food is pretty low cal, so I’m super satisfied with how much I get to eat all day. I don’t feel that I’m starving myself and have zero hankering to binge on anything in particular.

2. There are zillions of low fat vegan protein options, and no, soy and wheat are not bad for you. Seitan, tofu, TVP, nuts, nut butters, nut milks, and legumes all have varying amounts of protein. The vegan protein shake powders on the market are copious, very tasty, and very easy to travel with.

3. If I ate this much protein — 140g per day — on any other diet I would have high cholesterol or at least high heavy metals from fish. It’s a lot of protein and it keeps me feeling satisfied and full and continuing to emphasize and optimize my lean muscle mass.

4. I get to eat carbs and that is awesome. Pasta, yep. Potatoes, yep. Rice, yep. Toast, yep. All in moderation of course, but a majority of my caloric intake is from carbs so that I’m never running on empty, which may increase my desire to binge.

5. Not drinking has made me think more clearly, be more organized, get more work done, and stay better hydrated throughout the week. My goal is to get to a place where I can have 1 bottle of wine per month. I’m almost there, but not quite yet. I do plan to collect and age wines as soon as I’m sure I won’t drink them all in one week.

6. I’m not participating in factory farming or direct animal cruelty. I thought I was over caring about that aspect of veganism, but nah, I’m into it. It feel like it’s a huge weight off of my shoulders that I don’t have to kill animals to be happy, fit, and in optimal health. I have always known that it would be better for climate problems if a majority of the world switched to a vegan diet, but had devolved into a pessimist attitude about that prospect. Well, fuck that pessimism. If I can make the change others can too.

7. The meals are easy to prep and aren’t taking time out of my productive days. I do have a more flexible schedule than most, but when I was in Mexico, Sophia, who has a full time 10a-6p job, was able to make the meals for herself. On that note, she has hopped on board with me, although she doesn’t have a specific GCA coach, she has herself lost 11lbs and 1 inch off of her waist just by eating what I make at home and following her own workout schedule. She has been working out 5 days a week for the past two years and hadn’t felt a big change until we went vegan. She looks healthier and more glowing than ever!

8. Diet and exercise go hand in hand. Working out on top of eating right, surfing and doing yoga works. I feel stronger in my surfing and more flexible. My back pain has reduced by about 90%. There are still some niggles I am working through in my left hip, but it no longer hurts to paddle, sit, do yoga, or work at my computer.

9. 10k steps a day is for real! That’s a big part of Fritz’s program. You just get on a walking pad and watch surf contests in your room. That’s what I do at least! You’re more likely to walk somewhere rather than drive or take the train, which further reduces emissions and a carbon footprint.

10. Weighing yourself every day is a good practice. You don’t want to get stuck on the numbers, but they’re a good guideline. If you don’t like the number you see it’s important to face it and deal with it. Pushing what you don’t want to see out of your mind, i.e., repressing it, doesn’t make it go away. It shows up somewhere else, and it’s usually not a pretty place.

11. There is no reason to starve or binge or do keto or even intermittent fast if you don’t have to. Sure some of those things kind of work, but they can also lead to yo-yo diets and to further weight gain over the long run. As far as intermittent fasting is concerned, it really just means having enough time for your body to not be digesting food so it can repair other things. I try to be done eating by 7p at the latest. Then I don’t eat again until 9-11a. I guess that’s kind of intermittent fasting. The point seems to be to let your digestive system have a break. This is obviously easier on a vegan diet overall because nothing you’re eating really taxes digestion too hard.

12. Paying attention to macros really, really matters. That was a huge takeaway from being off the meal plan while on vacation in Mexico. I was able to eat out at vegan restaurants and at home and hit all my numbers, so long as I paid attention. Also it shows me that previously I was never eating enough protein (not while vegan and not while on an omnivorous diet), and always eating too much fat.

And so, as of now, vegan fitness Dion is here to stay. I’ve never felt happier with who I am and how I feel in my body. I do plan to keep learning more and more and will probably start to learn how to rope vegan fitness coaching into my surf coaching model, for those that want it. It’s not that you’ll need to do vegan fitness to take surf coaching, but that a package with both will eventually become available when I have mastered my own vegan fitness journey and knowledge. There will be vegan fitness surf trips (as soon as Costa Rica Winter 2022/23), and I am sure I’ll write a cookbook one day too! I will end this post with a few pics of some stellar meals I’ve made and eaten so far.

Homemade seitan sandwich.

Tofu potato scramble in Mexico whilst editing vids.

Tofu stirfy with white rice for two!

Watermelon “crudo” tostadas and tomato soup at Forever Vegano in CDMX.

“Filets” of seitan from Miyoko Schinner’s fake meat cookbook.

The breakfast that almost made me late for my flight to Puerto Vallarta, but worth it: Fat Vegan’s breakfast sandwich and hashbrowns in CDMX.

Vegan fitness surf coach Dion 2.0 coming your way!!!

CSC Trip to SW Chile + Film Photos by Cheyne Bluhm

After seeing Volcom’s Psychic Migrations (2020) I was particularly intrigued by the spots where Ryan Burch is riding the self-shaped rainbow fish. Then I serendipitously met Jesse Faen in NY. Jesse owns the house where Ryan et. al. stayed while they were filming that part. I vowed that I’d one day rent his house from him and surf those spots. When Covid restrictions started lightening up in the fall of 2021 I started planning tons of travel. Most of it was spent going to Costa Rica to run retreats and plan things for the property with my brother, but I wanted to throw something else in the mix. April was ear marked because a long time client, Nelson Hume, had requested to do a trip in that time frame. I didn’t want to run a 4th retreat in CR, so I was like, “What about Chile Nels?” His response was overwhelmingly affirmative. I started looking into flights and WhatsApping Jesse about availability on the house. Allie Marsiello had also requested a trip in April, so I texted her next, “Chile?” Her response: “Yes! and Cheyne is jumping up and down saying, ‘Take me too!’” Everything was starting to green light. I mentioned the trip in one newsletter and our fifth trip member, Bonnie Stamper, got on board. I capped us at 5, since it was a new-to-me zone and I knew the waves were going to be a bit on the heavy side. We all booked our flights. I secured the house with Jesse. Then it took almost a full two months to clear all the Covid regulations for entry into Chile (there were a ton, but I think they’ve maybe chilled out a little now). We all arrived on April 15th. Nelson and Bonnie stayed until the 21st, and Allie, Cheyne, and I stayed until May 1. We surfed a bunch of different spots. A huge storm came just after Nelson and Bonnie left and changed all the sand around, so I’d say the best surf was the first half of the trip. We had one negative interaction with an American, but beyond that, it was all shakas and smiles and good times. No issues with the locals, who were just so friendly in the water and out. The waves were heavy and challenging for Allie, Bonnie, and Nelson, which I think was overall great for their surfing. It’s always good to push yourself! It was a huge pleasure going on a surf trip with Cheyne. Cheyne is our local ding repair guy here in Rockaway. He originally hails from Ventura, CA. He and I were tripping out on the Chile environment the whole time because it’s so much like home. Cheyne brought along his film camera and took some amazing shots that I’m going to share below with captions. He has his own website: www.cheynebluhm.com to see more of his excellent work from home and abroad.

Nelson with his 6’4” Barahona and me with my 6’6” Mencel.

One of the many, many lefts near Jesse’s.

Allie and Bonnie navigating “lanchas” on their way to surf the town beach in Curanipe.

Town beach inside sand bar.

Nels, all stoke after a great session in town.

Surfing Curanipe in the fog with the fishing boats landing is quite something. They have a tractor line up on the beach then they time the sets and plow through the lineup for a skid landing.

Daily catch. You could buy seafood directly off the boats after they landed.

The waves aren’t necessarily “perfect” in Chile, but they are powerful and fun.

Alain Wider lives 1km up the road from Jesse. He was our companion and guide for most of the trip. He is originally from Switzerland and has been living in Chile for the past 16 years. Excellent human being.

View from the deck at Jesse’s.

Coaching from the beach in clothing.

Coaching from the beach in a wetsuit. Gotta stay versatile!

Chile: the home of the medium size stray dog. They’re everywhere!

Signs of a scoring surf trip.

Allie, Alain, and me, family meal. Communal meals have to be the second best thing about going on surf trips.

Town beach double exposed at night.

Cheyne, by me, on his 6’2” Maurice Cole.

CSC Surfboard Test and OG Grom Crew Reunion in CA Dec 2021

On Dec 2-15, 2021 I traveled to my home state of CA for a few reasons. One was to escape New York flatness. A second was to see my family and friends. I normally go back 1-2 times a year, but that had been stalled for obvious reasons. My trip to Nicaragua in November was my first air travel since the pandemic started, and it went pretty smoothly in terms of Covid protocols. This gave me the confidence to fly again. Without the PCR testing, a domestic flight seemed even easier. And it was. The third reason was that after years of building a business I finally have all these incredible boards. In fact one of the motivating factors in starting CSC was to figure out a way to make investments in surfboards into a research project and tax write off. That’s not the sole motivation of course. First and foremost I love watching people unlock their potential in the surf. But these things are interrelated. I realized that in order to unlock my own potential I needed to experiment with new boards and expand my quiver. If I don’t practice what I preach myself, then I truly am an ill-fated sophist.

On the trip to Nicaragua I brought an all twin fin quiver, but this time I wanted to mix it up even more. I knew I was additionally guaranteed all day long surf sessions in quality waves (winds in CA in December tend to be pretty darn favorable for all day surfing, and it’s also not too tidally fickle — you can find something that works on any tide). I couldn’t decide between a few different boards, and knowing that the pros travel with 6-12 boards, I googled, “What do the pros use to take their quivers on the world tour?” The search yielded the Dakine “Tour Regulator” board bag, which holds up to 8 boards. I also found a few options by Destination Surf and Creatures of Leisure. The former looked like overkill and the latter was sold out. Evo.com had a sale on the Dakine, so I went for it, and packed 7 boards, 3 wetsuits, 1 pair of boots, 1 squid lid, two towels, a yoga mat, a small Pelican case filled with useful surf tools (leash strings, fin keys, a flat head screw driver), an empty Ikea bag for lugging camera gear and water, a Pilgrim Surf + Supply wet/dry bag for stanky suits, and 3 leashes. Most of the boards were in their own individual sock or bag, and I used the wetsuits to pad the tails and noses. I usually never use packing material that does not also double as a useful surf product when I’m on the road. My theory is that if the Airlines truly want to crush your boards there is no kind of packing that can withstand that. There is bad packing, however, and that is leaving boards loose in the bag and not taking any precautions to pad their more sensitive areas. I packed an entirely separate suit case for fins, wax, and camera gear. The bag was still 100 lbs when I got to the counter. It’s a good thing my roundtrip fare was $200! They didn’t count boards, just charged me $200 for an overweight bag. I always use carts in the airport, which is actually why I opt out of the wheeled bags. I find they’re way more expensive and still more difficult to lug than just plopping the thing on a cart. Said plopping is not necessarily a piece of cake with the shitty carts you pay for in America. People definitely look at me like I’m a complete lunatic when I’m wheeling around the coffin bag, taking it off the cart to get into the air train or elevator, and then putting it back on again. And it turns out it got me into a spot of bother at the rental car center in SFO. Fox (never rent from them) is now off site and their shuttle drivers refused to accommodate my boards. After 4 tries and one hour wasted I walked upstairs to Thrifty and rented a Jeep Compass. I dealt with Fox later in the day and fortunately did receive a full refund. When I got to my Jeep I unpacked all the boards. I folded down the back seats (Jeeps are great with this) and put them in a way where they all fit well. This allowed me to roll up the bag and smash it in where there was room. I left the bag at my friend Shea’s in SF for the whole trip so that I didn’t have to lug it around everywhere.

Rental car stuffed with boards, water, leashes, and the Pelican case stuffed with surf tools.

None of the boards were dinged upon arrival. I brought three boards by Charles Mencel: 6’6” twin pin 4 channel gun (red), 5’9” rounded squash thruster (red), 5’3” asymmetrically finned fish (light yellow); and four boards by Jose Barahona: 6’1” (orange) and 5’6” (green) Tiburones/Potentias — big fish/shortboard with three fin boxes and a double wing swallow tails, a 5’11” rounded pin with 5 fin boxes (sunset/dawn airbrush), and a 5’8” modern twin fin with one wing and a round tail (polka dots). I store a 7’10” triple stringer glassed on single fin pin swallow tail Haut Surfboards gun that used to belong to my dad down there. I also had access to an 8’0” Haut Surfboards egg or mini longboard. Both of these boards shined in the test.

5’ll” Barahona next to the 5’3” Mencel with the 6’6” Mencel and 6’1” Barahona behind them.

My first few surfs were in SF without a camera. SF is having somewhat of a thievery renaissance during the pandemic. I was warned to bring as little as possible with me to the beach. Shea recommended I put stickers on my rental car. I took her advice. Knock wood, no one fucked with my glass, and maybe use that advice when you’re renting a car in northern CA. I stayed in SF for two days then with more swell on the way and a desire to use my camera I headed down to the Monterey Bay to reunite with my home zone and my surf homies from childhood, Andrew Dolan, Heath and Luke Braddock, and my brother, Andrew Mattison (who like me no longer lives there but was going to be in town for a few weeks). We are the “original grom crew” of our local beach. The generation before us started in high school, as did the two generation before then. We were the first kids to be rolling around in the sand there as wee tykes, cutting our teeth on the shorepound on boogie boards, and overhearing copious amounts of foul language at the fire pit. There hasn’t been a generation after us, until now. Heath, Luke, and Andrew Dolan all have kids learning to surf in the area. Whether they turn out to be a crew like we are, however, will depend on whether they really take to surfing. I wanted all of us to try out these boards, and I had always planned to leave a few there after figuring out which ones are best for my surfing. These are the 5’3” asym fin fish, the 5’8” twin pin, the 5’9” squash tail, and the 6’6” gun. I also love the 6’1” but I have one exactly like it in 6’0” in NY. Both that and the 5’11” also looked so damn good under Andrew Dolan’s feet, I could not not leave them with him. As for the 5’6”, I have never seen anyone surf it better than Heath or Luke Braddock, so I left that one there with them. The absolute all around winner for me, however, is the 5’3” Mencel asym fish. I made a little video just of my waves on it describing what makes it so special to me:

As I note in the video, I rode it both with an upright standard modern twin fin and a keel on the toe side. I kept the same Album quad set up (well half of a quad set up) on my heel side the whole time. I liked it both ways, but felt it really come alive with the keel. It was a touch more squirrelly, but also a touch faster, which is great. For me native speed is a key factor in a magic board. This means that while you can pump to make it go even faster, it has a ton of speed just on its own when you get to your feet. You don’t have to do much but drop in to get it going. Another factor is maneuverability or how easy it is to figure out how a board wants to be turned off the tail. This is a factor with strange subtleties and high variability based upon the weight and style of the rider. For example, the 7’10” Haut Single fin gun is easier for me to figure out and overall more suited to my surfing than the 5’11” rounded pin is. That 5’11” has seen a bunch of good surf on both coasts but I’ve never really felt complete magic on it. It’s always felt a little hard for me to push. When I saw Andrew Dolan surfing it I knew it had to be his. At 6’1” 175 the board sings under his feet in a way that it doesn’t for me at 5’6” 145.

Andrew Dolan surfing the sunset/dawn 5’11” how it ought to be surfed.

Andrew also gelled really well with the 6’1” Tiburon/Potentia.

I always find that boards in this standard shortboard/step up range are hard for me to really jive with or find the magic. I seem to be in my happy zone on fishes and weird boards under 5’6” and on floatier equipment over 6’0”. Again, I love the 6’1” that Andrew is riding above — the orange — but have its duplicate and wanted to cut down on the weight of the bag for the ride home. The 5’8” polka dot board is complete magic, and it makes me think that if I’m going to ride that standard kind of size something a little chunky and weird works better for me. But then the 5’9” Mencel with knifey rails and three fins was working on one of the hollower days. It definitely wants the waves to have juice — it is not a grovel stick — which means that in a sense it doesn’t have as much native speed as I normally desire, but it does have all the control one wants and needs in vertical, tubing waves. The 5’6” Barahona with the green airbrush is similar in this sense. I have had a few magic sessions on that board, but it’s just slightly too low volume to be a consistent go-to here in NY. Again, I’d rather be on a fish or an asym. So I gave that to the Braddocks to test out and immediately knew it was staying with them. They both have a much more aggressive shortboard approach than I do, albeit smooth as hell still, and they have the good fortune of getting to surf waves with juice more often than not. Basically my rule with giving the boards away was seeing which ones they surfed better than I ever will. Heath did just that on the 5’6”.

The first air this board has ever experienced by Heath Braddock.

Heath rocking up with his own quiver test.

I was heartened when after coming in from his first session on the 5’6” Heath said, “It’s not like a normal fish. It really needs a more vertical wall.” It was one of those experiences where I had my reality confirmed by someone who’s surfing I truly respect. That was always my feeling: that it was “sticky” when the wave was weak. We get a lot of weak waves on the east coast, so my opportunities to make this (and other more standard boards) shine out here seem to be pretty limited. As I said before, true fishes seem to work well both in weak and powerful surf, so when the former is what’s mostly on offer, it makes sense for me — for the surfer I am, with the approach to waves that I have — to rely on fishes and bigger boards. The 6’6” continues to be a dream in bigger surf or anything with a rip current. It was raining the days I surfed it, so there’s not a ton of footage, but you’ll see in the trip vids below.

And last is about the big boards. You just can’t go wrong with extra foam. Big waves, small waves, foam is your friend. There’s rarely a board that’s “too big”, especially if you don’t abuse your paddling privileges. There are obvious reasons why I have an especial attachment to my dad’s old 7’10”, which was actually shaped for him to surf Hawaii. In fact my first board was a very similarly shaped 7’2”, but that one was a thruster and only had one stringer. It also wasn’t airbrushed yellow, but instead was yellowish brown from sun damage. Speaking of which, that is how Dolan’s 8’0” Haut is colored these days, and that board turned out to be a life saver for my brother and for the new guy at the beach Allie Liddle, who I gave some community coaching on a few days after my students had bailed. Andrew (Mattison) hadn’t surfed in 9 months and was worried he’d be hopelessly out of shape, but he was pulling into tubes and cranking top turns on that thing. Allie was riding a board too small for his ability level, and so I smoothed out his surfing by making him ride the tank.

The waves were fun pretty much the whole trip, and all the trip objectives were accomplished, including a trip to see my last existing grandparent in Pacific Grove (Capt. F.G. Satterthwaite, my maternal grandfather), and a check in on the family heirlooms at the storage unit (still intact behind temperature controlled locked doors). It was epic to link with my original crew. We have text feeds going now on both iMessage and WhatsApp, and I’m getting daily wave reports (it’s still pumping, although it was a little slow last week, but “a little slow” there is like “best day ever” here). I also got to shower merch on the crew, so I have some solid CSC representation going on next time I’m in town.

Luke Braddock repping CSC with his little ones all around.

And if you want to see the trip from start to finish check out the YouTube vids below. They’re in chronological order and you can see us all riding the different boards. When I got to SFO for the flight home my bag was 60 lbs lighter and I didn’t have to pay extra since surfboards (not overweight ones) are free to take on the plane to/from California (since it’s the official state sport). Crazy to think that three boards added up to 60 lbs when they’re not individually 20 lbs! Who knows?! I have some new trips planned for 2022 and some new boards on their way from Jose. I’m also definitely going to get Charles Mencel to make me a few different asymmetrical boards in larger sizes for CSC crew to partake in. Enjoy the vids!

CSC x Chancletas Northern Nicaragua Nov 2-6 2021

The seal has been broken — I have traveled! This short and sweet trip to Chancletas Beach Resort in northern Nicaragua is the first I have taken since the pandemic broke out in March 2020. I just had to surf something other than New York, New Jersey, or Rhode Island for a moment. They sufficed more than enough for the past 18 months, but the travel bug set in, and I needed a change of scenery. At first this trip was just going to be solo, and then I thought, “Why the hell not just text a few friends who are either advanced surfers or intermediate clients and see if they want to do a surgical strike?” Most people could not swing it, but Bryce Rosner was itching for some consistent water time. He has an 18 month old child and this was going to be his first trip since becoming a new dad (and also his first trip during the pandemic), so he pressed go. We booked our flights on Avianca (the only airline currently flying to Nicaragua) for Nov 1-7. The 1st and 7th weren’t surf days due to the travel time needed to get from Managua to Chancletas and given the very interesting wind and tide cycles of northern Nica (more on those below).

Traveling during Covid is annoying, but it’s manageable. It’s just a new way of life now. 72 hours before leaving I took a PCR test from a Care Cube in Brooklyn ($225) and the results came 8 hours later, giving me ample time to submit them to airline. Bryce got his results from a City MD in 1 hour! We emailed our results to Avianca — they provide very clear instructions for how to do this, and after that we were cleared to travel. I brought a print out of my test with me, and Bryce forgot his print out, but the phone sufficed. For the return we brought Abbott Binax travel Covid tests that you take at home (or at the bar as the case may be) with a telehealth person. It’s a very basic process, but I had some nerves about it at first. Fortunately Loretta O’Brien, one of the owners of Chancletas, has done 6 million of these with clients, and she lead us through, what I now consider a super easy process, the day before we left. Overall getting through the Covid stuff was no big deal.

Shay and Loretta O’Brien are family to my great friend and amazing surfer, Juan Jose Heredia. Loretta is high school friends with Juan’s older sister, Maria. Maria and Loretta married two brothers, Jaymin and Shay O’Brien. Maria and Jaymin live in Brooklyn with their two boys, Otis and Yohan, and Shay and Loretta live in Nicaragua with their three girls, Jalen, Sashi, and Lila. Shay and Loretta purchased the property that houses Chancletas about 20 years ago, way before northern Nicaragua and the famous surf spot, “The Boom,” were on anyone’s surf radar. They started off as a hotel/restaurant and are now a fully operational surf camp with guided tours, 3.5 meals a day, a yoga deck, killer pool, and fun games on the ground like cornhole, bocci, and billiards (here is my request for a ping pong table!).

The pool is the maximum chill spot. Me reading philosophy (it’s our current book club read) with a cold Toña beer!

“The Boom” is a famous barreling wave just steps from Chancletas front porch. It only really works on high tides with offshore winds.

The rumor is that the Boom is a high tide spot. The other rumor is that the winds can be offshore all day in November in Nicaragua, so even if it’s not an ideal tide first thing in the morning, when it’s almost always offshore, you can still score it later in the day if the winds hold up. I have also seen pictures of it doing its thing at low tide, but after I arrived I learned that that is only when the surf is on the smaller side and the sandbars are set up for low tide, which is rare. The top to bottom tubes that most people travel to the Boom for happen at high tide, on really any size swell (even small ones), with offshore or no winds. The main wind cycle is offshore from dawn (530a) to about 9/10a, after which it comes on pretty hard onshore from the NW. Bryce and I booked on a low tide week, so that means it was low tide during the better wind times of day. Scoring the Boom was always going to be a gamble for us. At Chancletas there are two main packages: the Boom package and the guided package. The Boom package is cheaper because you just stay at the hotel and surf in front, and the guided package gets you two amazing local guides to explore different surf spots if the Boom isn’t working. Due to our tide cycle, we went for the latter (which by the way is super reasonably priced), and were glad we did. We checked and surfed about 7 spots altogether in our 5 full days there! Interestingly enough the best day we caught the Boom was our first full day. The wind stayed offshore until 2p and we were able to surf right on through the high tide. The swell was smaller and the sets were a little slow to come through, but when they did, wow. Gorgeous blue water, tubes to the left and the right, and plenty of fun sections to do turns on.

The middle part of our trip was mired by a storm system that developed off the coast of Costa Rica and sent the funkiest south wind bump on top of the south swell that was picking up. We had to explore a lot these three days. Most of what we surfed was affected by the funky lumps, but we made the most of the warm water. This curveball sent from mama Ocean caused me to be grateful that I had someone to coach, because if the trip was just for me I’d be bummed that I wasn’t getting tubed out of my mind every day. I also don’t mind surfing junky wedges and working on my cutbacks and end section repertoire, but at this point in my career I find those kinds of conditions almost ideal for coaching. It’s often less crowded and the tricky surf makes for a good challenge for the intermediate surfer working on fundamentals. Add the warm water and you have a perfect recipe for intermediate progress. It’s time in the water, and that’s what counts when you’re trying to become a proficient surfer.

Bryce off the boat at the river mouth soaking up his water time!

And working on his turn game in less than perfect conditions at Aposentillo.

So for the middle part of the trip we explored different spots near Chancletas and mostly surfed funky, lumpy storm surf, and had a blast doing so. The last day the swell came up and the tide cycle moved towards the higher end at dawn. I think it was high at 3a on the last full day of our trip. The Boom, however, didn’t want to really turn on for us. I gave it a go on the 6’6” Mencel twin pin gun I brought down with me just in case the Boom ended up looking like Pipeline. It had some Pipeline-esque moments that morning but for the most part was closed out. I felt I got really close to a great tube on one right, but the video shows that it wasn’t makeable. That makes me feel a little better about not making it! I was glad for the extra foam in the 6’6”. The conditions were shortboard-able, for sure, but I love the confidence slightly more foam gives me in difficult, hollow surf. You can see in the trip vid at the end of this post how easily I’m able to slide into them. The other two boards I brought were also twin fins. I don’t exclusively ride twins but dang do I love the way they feel! I just love the freedom of the water flowing off the back of the board.

Twin quiver: 6’6” Mencel, 5’8” Barahona, 5’3 Barahona

The shorter twins worked great in all the conditions we surfed. I left my favorite blue 5’3” for Carlos because I saw him struggle to figure it out. I didn’t see a lot of alternative style boards down there and thought it would be cool to introduce the locals to that style of surfing. I love Carlos’ approach, but from a coach’s perspective see how it can benefit from smoothing out and finding the kind of flow that fish boards require. They can’t be forced; they desire to be finessed.

After about 90 minutes the Boom was unsurfable and we headed out to “La Isla,” a little left point break in viewing distance from Chancletas. We gave the caretaker of the island some bread and soda in exchange for letting the local photographer, Saul Erazo, traipse over the land to shoot videos of us. Bryce and I also shot some video from the boat. This was the most fun surf of the trip besides the first day at the Boom with the offshore winds. It was a bit overhead and just easy as you like to get into them. We were the only ones out and the winds stayed good until almost 11a. Carlos bagged the tube of the trip (of course) and I caught the whole thing with my camera. Scroll through the sequence below to check it out:

There’s something special about surfing off of a boat, and this alone made the guided package more than worth it. What else? The food was great. We ate a ton of ceviche. The Toña beers were ice cold. The room was sparkling clean. We always had clean towels. Everyone we met was warm and friendly. The transfers to and from the airport with the driver, Victor, were stress free and efficient. I will be back, but I’ll be aiming for high tide in the morning! I want those tubes!

Ceviche and plantain chips, an appetizer staple at Chancletas.

Carlos and the feeling of anticipation when you’re paddling to an empty wave from a boat.

A herd of 230 cows making their way off the road in northern Nicaragua.

Young gun Jeovany Cadenas has all the moves.