SOUTH COUNTY : Surfers Ride the Waves on OCTA Bus

Two local surfers are catching waves of a different sort this summer.

From now until August, Shane Stoneman of San Juan Capistrano and Colin McPhillips of Capistrano Beach can be seen riding their surfboards on a 40-foot bus traveling Pacific Coast Highway.

Actually, it’s a huge mural of the surfers that beach-goers will see, wrapped entirely around an Orange County Transportation Authority bus like a gigantic sticker.

The nationally ranked surfers, each pictured on either side of the bus, are promoting the Op Pro Surfing Championship. The event will be held Monday to July 30 at Huntington Beach by their sponsor, the Irvine-based clothing company, Ocean Pacific. Since June, the moving billboard has been wending its way along the Pacific Coast Highway route from San Clemente to Long Beach and back again.

McPhillips, 20, a San Clemente High School graduate and reigning long-board champion of the U.S. Open of Surfing, said the mural has garnered him a new nickname among his fellow surfers.

“Everybody I know has seen the mural,” McPhillips said. “They all call me ‘the busboy’ now.”

Stoneman, 22, a graduate of Capistrano Valley High School who was ranked eighth last year as a short-boarder on the national pro surfing tour, said the mural surprised him at first.

“To see a huge picture of you on a bus, it’s really weird,” he said.

The mural is a huge, computer-generated graphic taken from photographs of the surfers, which was printed on a gigantic sheet of adhesive vinyl and then applied to the bus like wallpaper. The entire outside of the bus, including the windows, is covered with the seemingly three-dimensional mural, but passengers can see out.

“I’m just real stoked about it all,” McPhillips said. “It’s good for surfing.”