Doin’ the Wave in La Jolla
The Pacific scares the nail polish off my fingers. That’s been my dirty little secret since I moved to Southern California 31/2 years ago. I love beaches and can swim like a guppy, but have you seen the waves at Zuma and Topanga?
Being afraid--especially of something millions of people seem to enjoy--aggravates me. So in the dog days of August, I decided to face my fear by coming here for a weekend clinic at Surf Diva, a school for women at La Jolla Shores a few miles north of town.
Izzy Tihanyi, a tall, muscular 30-year-old with sun-streaked hair, founded the school with twin sister Caroline in 1996. Izzy, a competitive swimmer and surfer since she was 8, noticed that women didn’t always fare well in coed classes she taught with male instructors. “The women students were really intimidated to ask 20-year-old surfer dudes questions,” she says.
Hence Surf Diva, with headquarters in the La Jolla Shores neighborhood. The school offers intensive weeklong programs, five-day surfing camps in Carlsbad, surfing safaris in Mexico and popular weekend clinics, which consist of two hours of instruction on a Saturday and a Sunday for $98, including equipment. The goal is for women novices to have fun without breaking any nails and to get confident and competent enough to practice surfing on their own.
I never expected to become a Marge Calhoun or Linda Benson, Southern Californians who were among the first women surfers to brave the big waves on the North Shore of Oahu in the late ‘50s. I just wanted to get comfortable bodysurfing and bodyboarding in the big ocean at my front door. I wanted to better understand Southern California beach culture. And I needed to get baptized in the Pacific so I could finally call myself a “California girl” with authenticity.
Besides, the shopping’s good in La Jolla.
Scoff if you like. But Izzy, who designs women’s surfboards and sells Surf Diva T-shirts, thinks surfing and shopping are dynamically related. “You used to have to pick between being a jock and a girl,” she told Andrea Gabbard, the author of “Girl in the Curl: A Century of Women in Surfing” (Seal Press, 2000), “but now you can be both.”
On the 100-mile Friday afternoon drive to La Jolla, cruising by San Onofre, I heard on the radio that a shark attacked a Florida surfer.
The only thing worse than big waves is sharks. But Izzy says only harmless sand sharks roam off La Jolla. I pushed away the thought of an ocean-based amputation by having a Caesar salad and English breakfast tea on the flowery terrace at Cody’s, a La Jolla restaurant overlooking the pretty cove that put the town on the map.
I bought a nightie at Victoria’s Secret and strolled along the waterfront in Scripps Park, where love-struck couples were picnicking and kids were flapping their water wings.
La Valencia Hotel, painted a shade of pink that put me in a good mood, rose on the cliffs above. For dinner I had a Manhattan and a bowl of French onion soup in the Whaling Bar at this landmark hotel.
Afterward it would have been convenient to take the elevator to one of the rooms at La Valencia, but they are a bit pricey at $275 and up, so I stayed at Shell Beach Apartment-Motel just down the block.
The complex, made of up three buildings on Coast Boulevard, looks a little funky, like the sort of place that would have cockroaches. But there wasn’t a bug in sight in my room on the second floor of the main brick building. It had a bay window overlooking the water, a queen bed, kitchenette, small bath, sad, shabby furniture and hooks on the wall with no pictures for $135 a night, including continental breakfast and use of the pool at its nearby sister hotel, La Jolla Cove Suites.
If I hadn’t felt justified in indulging myself after the rigors of surfing class, it would have been a reasonably priced getaway. But I work on the carrot system, which in this case involved offering myself a reward for venturing into the Pacific by booking a Saturday massage at the nearby Chopra Center for Well Being for $95.
The thought of that sybaritic rubdown compelled me to the beach Saturday morning. Surf Diva holds classes at 7:30 and 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on weekends. I chose the earliest one.
I indeed got there early and strolled the wide, gray sand beach with a coffee in hand. Soon a group of young women in wetsuits appeared by Lifeguard Stand 32. They set up a card table and awning, hauled out clothes racks with T-shirts and hung a Surf Diva sign. When class got started, I realized they were the instructors, trim and suntanned, enthusiastic and articulate, like Michelle Woodward, who is financing a master’s degree in marine biology at UC San Diego by teaching surfing.
My 24 fellow students were 15 to 45, some athletic-looking, others with the flesh pouches of couch potatoes. When we were asked to introduce ourselves, everyone perked up, and during the one-hour lecture at the beginning of class, the teachers did their best to allay our fears. They discussed surfer safety (when you wipe out, it’s best to fall flat into the water); showed us the parts of a surfboard (from nose to skegs, or fins); and made us practice pop-ups (the move that brings surfers to their feet on their boards when they catch a wave).
Then we split up into five groups (each with one instructor), donned wetsuits, grabbed boards and ran into the water.
During our first class, we stayed inside the place where the waves break. Right away my teacher launched me on a wave, which I gleefully rode on my stomach all the way to shore. The next time, I popped up. I couldn’t believe it. Briefly, surfing didn’t seem hard and the Pacific Ocean was no more frightening than a bottle of mineral water.
After class, I hung out on the beach for a while, then visited the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (part of UC San Diego) just north of La Jolla Shores, where I saw a shark cage like the one in the movie “Jaws” and a pile of paintbrushes, clothes hangers and golf balls retrieved from the stomachs of sharks.
I lunched on a bagel and egg sandwich at Rudy’s Cafe in La Jolla Shores, sat by the pool at La Jolla Cove Suites and then went for my delightful massage.
Dinner was a glass of Chardonnay and vegetarian pad Thai at Spice and Rice Thai Kitchen on Girard Avenue, followed by “The Laramie Project” at La Jolla Playhouse. (The show has since closed; “Dracula, the Musical” opens Tuesday.) The theatrical documentary by Moises Kaufman about the brutal 1998 killing of Matthew Shepard was long but interesting.
Never mind the perfect wave. It had been a perfect day.
At class on Sunday morning, we learned such moves as turtle rolls, a technique for getting through a big, breaking wave without wiping out, and pivots, a way to turn the board fast.
Then we went outside where the waves break. Just getting there, blasted by one huge tunnel of water after another, taught me that surfing is hard. I never managed to pop up, and I felt so battered that I eventually joined the group that had stayed in easier inside waters.
Still, on the way back to L.A., I stopped at the Longboard Grotto in the beach town of Encinitas, where I priced a surfboard. I didn’t buy the light and lovely 9-foot Bear the clerk showed me for $399. But I had a good time shopping. (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Budget for One
Surf Diva, weekend clinic--$98.00
Shell Beach motel,two nights--298.36
Massage with tip, Chopra Center for Well Being--115.00
Admission, La Jolla Playhouse--42.00
Dinner, Whaler’s Bar--18.00
Lunch, Rudy’s Cafe--6.00
Dinner, Spice and Rice--23.31
Groceries, for breakfasts and snacks--27.95
Gas--18.16
FINAL TAB--$646.78
* Surf Diva Surf School, 2160 Avenida de la Playa, La Jolla, CA 92037; telephone (858) 454-8273, fax (858) 454-8505, Internet https://www.surfdiva.com.
* Shell Beach Apartment-Motel, 981 Coast Blvd., La Jolla, CA 92037; tel. (888) 525-6552 or (858) 459-4306, fax (858) 551-3405, https://www.lajollacove.com.