It was worth the drive to Duluth, Minnisota and the experience helped jump start my surfing and writing.

Man the other 4 lakes fit into Lake Superior. Even when Gummie is small it can work you. This lake mimics the ocean.

There is nothing wilder than driving through a full on Upper Peneinsula winter storm in Michigan. This time I'm trying to make time to get to Duluth and find my car making noises like missle lock in movies but I'm doing sixty and the back end is spinning back and forth and the woods is on both sides. Next I'm at Lester nailing two good rides and then on the third ride go hard over the falls. I hit my knee but was so pumped I felt nothing. I picked up a bragging rights bruise on my good knee. It's doesn't compare to cancer. Nonetheless it was ALL good!

I rode Stoney Point on a waist to chest high clean up session on Sunday. There were some nice surprises. The best moment was seeing Ralph catch a head high drop and see the crowd on the beach in total disbelief. They looked stunned!

Greg Issacson was out there riding alone years ago. Now there is a terrific crew hitting it hard.

I related this old memory to some of the surfers I was surfing with this past weekend. Many years ago Derrick Richardson and I used to talk about the lakes and how Superior had to get big waves. The Surfer Magazine cover shot and Unsalted gave me a good idea of how big it was but the truth is that surfng it is like seeing the light on the road to Damascus.


It took me some time but I have now finally ridden all five Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River. My biggest days have been in Lakes Erie and Ontario. I could write tons more but that is for a book or an article. Area 51 can be as powerful as Superior but Gittche gets some mean and unforgiving surf that can snap boards or knees or worse. The volcanic rocks and boulders are the top of the food chain sharks in that lake. These ancient, inanimate objects can kill you. They linger in the water everywhere. Hit a hungry rock and go see the knee doctor or see your board break. The wave force on Saturday broke a surfboard.

WOW what a surf trip. The first trip I took around Superior it was flat as the G Plains. This weekend it came alive and produced some astounding rides and surf.

The snow storm detered me from riding the overhead surf but I had my share of worth while fresh rides.

Aloha Lake Superior Surf Club and to all the Great Lakes surfers I surfed with and hung out with. Thank You.

This is the only shot taken of me on the trip. I caught two stand up rides and went over the falls once at the Lester River. I didn't surf more because of the great story telling up in the lot. This photograph shows me trying to eyeball the wave and shake off the cobwebs of being ice bound in Buffalo for two months. I rode more the next day at Stoney Point.

Photograph property of Lake Superior Surf Club:

http://superiorsurfclub.com/08_spring_a/46.html

Awesome Magilla...Awesome!

Ryan

Good for you Magilla...

Lake Superior and the surfers up there are AWESOME. This time it wasn't flat! Those last Friday shots on the Lake Superior Surf Club's web site are top notch, big, and ocean like.

The Lake Superior waves can break your board and hold you down.

The volcanic rocks are the sharks in the water to worry about. I didn't think about them except when I was being pushed towards the shore. It's part of surfing. Sometimes one gets banged up a little. The good rides keep melting away the moments of adversity that build character.


It was best to shake Greg Issacson's hand and share a beer with him at Lester River in Duluth. He was surfing alone with fishermen watching onshore at Stoney Point years ago and still goes out. I have a pic of him and I shaking hands and you can see how cold I became from standing around after the surfing in my suit and gabbing and talking beach story.

Thank You Bob Tema for the replies to my email I sent you. Sorry I didn't run into you. Will it was terrific to run into you again. John excellent meeting you. Twinn Cities Crew you rock! Thanks for sharing the digs. Ralph you had the whole beach mezmerized on Sunday.

I'm still hooting like I was in the line up and feel like I can still see those nice drops that rock at Lester River. The waves looked good without my glasses on in the water but when I put my specs on back on shore the waves size really impressed me. I still can see in my minds eye crouching down on a sloping wall of fresh water heading left then at the end of the ride discovering how far back I had to paddle. It was nice not to have to paddle through the waves to get out. Sometimes I think I'm doing this on experience auto pilot. My sight has diminished but I can still ride waves and drive two thousand miles with one eyeball. Regular footer and regular sighter all the way down the line.

Lots of good story was created by this trip. It was two thousand miles round trip. It still blows me away to think that last Fall I was surfing in the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and this Spring I'm in the line ups around Duluth. Smaller Stoney Point is still good long boarding. I had some long rides there on Sunday. The quietness up there is breath taking. It is a big change from around here. The natural element is more powerful. The rock and roll stations are better in the Upper Peninsula and Duluth because they play from the 50's to the present and lots of high energy tunes that make the long drives easier. Slow tunes behind the wheel make me sleepy on long drives.

I stopped in Port Huron, Michigan on the way back and almost had a surf there. The waves never got big enough. Ankle bitters were not enough to persude myself to suit up.

It was cool to see lake shipping in Duluth and Port Huron and Sarnia the way it used to be in Buffalo when I was a kid. Only thing I missed up there was the Tim Hortons coffee. The border line for Tims was around Flint, Michigan. Believe me the waves I rode was worth what little I sacrificed. Just driving away from the Presidential politics, the computer, television, and newspapers for a weekend made the trip a bonus.

Wish either of you guys had been there with me.

On the way home I stopped in the cemetery where Greg Issacson said that Tom Blake is buried. The weekend snow fall covered almost all of the ground level stones. However I knew that I was close because Greg said that one could see the lake from where he is buried.

Now that I have surfed all five Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River I will not be complete until I have paid my respects at Tom Blakes grave in Wisconsin.



"Tom Blake was a larger-than-life surf pioneer, a seminal force in the history of the sport, who almost single-handedly transformed surfing from a primitive Polynesian curiosity into a 20th century lifestyle. In the process, he was responsible for preserving much of surfing's oral history as well as resurrecting the streamlined surfboards of ancient times.


Blake created (and patented) a small, keel-like fin, although the importance of this invention wasn't really appreciated until the late '40s when Bob Simmons and other began to use it." -Fishbrotherhood

The big question in every Great Lakes surfers mind is did Tom Blake surf in Lake Superior. I think how could he not. The waves we see were the same waves that Blake saw. If a surfer sees good waves he wants to ride them. Tom Blake was a surf innovator and had to have taken off at least one time on a fresh wave.

This pic reminds me of what I rode on Sunday at Stoney Point:





If you think that it is odd that ocean surfing Tom Blake is buried in Wisconsin consider his words, "Nature = God." The shores of Lake Superior are wildest in a snow fall or when a ship encounters the three sisters wave during the gales of November. There are many mysto things about Lake Superior.

Today I saw a documentary film, "Drums of Winter: Uksuum Cauyai." This film has been selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for the National Film Registry. It was produced and directed by Sarah Elder and Leonard Kamerling. The film reveals traditions of the Yup'ik Eskimo people, their music, dance, spititual world, potlatch festivals, and how missionaries tried to suppress their dancing and gift giving holidays. The music in the film become hypnotic and was transcendental. I couldn't help to think about how surfing was repressed and discouraged by misguided faith. Look at how Tom Blake respected others peoples cultures and gained from the knowledge that he discovered and wrote about. Blake wanted to share the surfing potlatch with others. His paddleboard was another tool he gave to this world to save drownding lives in the oceans. He was a kuhuna. He gave and gave and gave some more. His mortal remains are on a hill facing Lake Superior. The Yup'ik Eskimo songs and dances now compete against the endless television elections, media consumption, ways that seperate, instead of uniting us with nature and the universe. The silence of a snow drifted grave yard was only broken by the crunch of my boots. This was my dance to tradition. This was where I went back to the roots of the culture of surfing. My feet moved. I was somewhere else like being on a wave or sharing a cosmic wave or being in a movie where Eskimos danced to songs with words that are timeless and from long ago. This is what Elder got me into in her film. This is what I got this week on a journey for waves that took me close to one of our surfing elders and to how important things that seam worthless are more valuable than gold and paper money. The mind can travel out of the body into incredible places.


This is an excellent article about Tom Blake that was recently posted on the Lake Superior Surf Club web site.


http://wisconsinology.blogspot.com/2007/10/father-of-modern-surfing.html

Tom Blakes life's work resonates still today around the world. Blake is buried in Wisconsin but the surfing innovations he designed advanced surfing therefore he has lived onward. He is now the energy of star light that creates the waves. I think that it is amazing that Blake's interest in surfing came about in Detroit when he met the Duke Kahanamoku. See the roots of surfing extend into the Great Lakes. Kahanamoku probably visited Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

Magilla,

What was your route to Stoney? Did you cut up through MI and then over going to and from, and is that the quickest?

Tom Blake is buried in Washburn, WI at Woodlawn Cemetery according to the little info i found searching online, but is his grave marked? Would you have found it if it wasn't for the snow?

Did you surf Georgian Bay yet? Yes, technically part of Lake Huron, but come on Magilla, get on that.

Hopefully Superior throws out some swells this year.

Is Erie completely iced in, except for Ohio according to the GLCFS.

Small swell here this past weekend, but flatness rules as of now. Most surfers are hitting local lakes for some ice hockey.

Ryan

R: What was your route to Stoney? Did you cut up through MI and then over going to and from, and is that the quickest?

M.S.: QEW to 401
401 to Port Huron
Port Huron north to Mack Bridge
St Ig across Upper Pen Michigan
Upper Mich to Duluth

In snow storms in the Upper Pen the roads do not get plowed like they do in Buffalo. That has been my experience up there on two winter adventures. If you are in a snow storm there you go real slow. 55 becomes 35 unless you are suicidal. Long durations of whiteouts are quite a mind blower on one eye.


R: Tom Blake is buried in Washburn, WI at Woodlawn Cemetery according to the little info i found searching online, but is his grave marked? Would you have found it if it wasn't for the snow?

M.S.: I followed Greggs directions. I would have found his grave if the snow drifts were not in places up to my knees.



R: Did you surf Georgian Bay yet? Yes, technically part of Lake Huron, but come on Magilla, get on that.


M.S.: I got skunked up there when I have had opportunities to travel there. I have heard lots of old story from my past surfing bud Derrick about surfing there in the sixties. Now Origin has lots of new surfers up there that are on it. The mind wants to but the body is unwilling. I'm in God's hands now.

R.: Hopefully Superior throws out some swells this year.

M.S.: It's not an issue of hoping but getting on it when it goes off. You can bank on it that there will be big waves in a big, deep, lake with lots of fetch.

R: Is Erie completely iced in, except for Ohio according to the GLCA.


M.S. No. L Erie has some open spots but lots of shore ice or miles of massive surface ice that has shut down the fetch. Modus is not getting clear photographs because of the near constant moisture pumping here from the west and southwest off the Gulf and the lake effect evaporation that clouds up the images.

R.: Small swell here this past weekend, but flatness rules as of now. Most surfers are hitting local lakes for some ice hockey.


M.S.: There is always snow boarding or taking a road trip to South America or flying off to some other exotic surf destination. It takes money, having time off or being situated in an occupation that evolves around travel. Not everyone can live like Doc Paskowitz or Allan Weisbecker. To those reading this I say follow your passion and heart.