Time to Hang 5 (No, Not the Supes)

When I called Surf Happens, a local aquatic academy, owner Chris Keet offered me a guarantee. I would be standing on a surfboard by the end of my first lesson, and he would provide photographic evidence of the feat.

I told my wife about it and she had no faith. She has seen me on skis at Mammoth, and I’d made the mistake of telling her that a colleague of mine said surfing is like skiing on a moving mountain.

But Santa Barbara is a seductress, a place that makes you want to go native. I came here to expand my turf now that the Santa Barbara News-Press has lost some of its best muckrakers. But spend a few minutes here gazing at green mountains, red tile roofs and sun glinting off water, and honest work seems like it can wait until tomorrow. All I want to do today is play hooky.

After briefly researching some actual stories, I drove out to Miramar Beach and met a chap named Don Michael. He said he retired to the easy life here a few years ago from Los Angeles, and he kills hours a day making beach rock sculptures that stand until the tide washes them away.

I could see myself doing this if the newspaper business goes under, because it might be the only thing I’m qualified for. While talking to Michael, a surfer walked by with his board, dripping from the surf, and he wore the most contented look I’ve ever seen.

How could I be a native Californian and never have surfed, I asked my wife? My family traveled to Santa Cruz every summer on vacation, and we always went out to the lighthouse to watch the surfers. But for some reason I never gave it a try.

Once, in Hawaii, I rented a board for an hour. But with no instructor, my chance of standing up was roughly equal to my chance of riding a bottlenose dolphin.

Now was the time, I thought, and back at my hotel I reached for the Yellow Pages and found two surfing schools. When I got an answering machine at Santa Barbara Seals, I called Surf Happens and Keet picked up the phone.

Keet told me he had lost no more than a couple dozen students over the years, and those were “only when the great whites come in.”

He told me not to think of myself as 52 years old, but 52 years young, and he said not to worry about my high center of gravity (I’m 6 feet 2) or weight (200 pounds). Just get in the car and drive down to Santa Claus Lane Beach in Carpinteria, he said, and I’d go home a surfer.

On the way to my lesson, I realized something: When Keet guaranteed that I’d get up on a board, he hadn’t specified that the board would be in the water.

Surf camp was in full swing when I arrived with my wife and daughter, who wanted to bear witness so they could make fun of me for the rest of my life. I realized upon arrival that all the other students had much lower centers of gravity, primarily because the average age was about 7.

They were in Keet’s surf camp, though, and I would be getting one-on-one instruction from Dre Martinez. Dre was 21, a Santa Barbara City College student and lifelong surfer with a bronze tan to prove it. His blond girlfriend was sitting on the beach in a bikini.

In short, Dre has it made. I felt sorry for all the future leaders of America packing for Harvard and other miserable campuses where their eyelids will be frozen in six weeks.

Dre, who has surfed the world, began my lesson by discussing the beginnings of the sport in Hawaii, the different types of waves and my obligation to respect the ocean and all its creatures. All of this, I suspected, was a way of delaying my moment of failure.

“It’s the sport of kings,” Dre said.

I looked out over the water expecting to see L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich hanging ten.

With the board firmly planted on the sand, Dre demonstrated how to paddle, paddle, paddle, then pop up instantly without first going to your knees. Yeah, easy for him to do. The kid has springs, but my shocks went out years ago. It must have looked like slow motion when I gave it a go, trying to overcome decades of bad habits.

“Excellent,” Dre said, but I think he’s under orders to build confidence, and anything short of a coronary gets two thumbs up.

“When you surf, you don’t want to hide in your shell,” said Dre, a disciple of Keet’s philosophy on the Zen of surfing. “You always stay out of your shell, and you go all out every time you go surfing.”

I wouldn’t do it any other way, but I’ve got to admit I was a little intimidated by the kids in surf camp. They were now on the water, hopping to their feet like little jumping beans and catching waves with ease, the little brats.

I was going to end up looking like Bill Murray in a screwball comedy, a balding oaf thrashing about so the kids could get a good laugh at summer camp. I was wearing a rash-guard shirt designed for an 8-year-old, and must have looked like an Italian sausage. It was stretched so tight, a lung collapsed.

“You might not get up your first time, but I know you’re going to get up,” Dre said. “We’ve got the perfect wave here” -- it was roughly 18 inches high -- “and we’ve got the perfect board for you.” It was soft, super-buoyant, and the size of a PT boat. “If you fall and hit your head on the dang thing, it’s not going to hurt you.”

I paddled out, determined not to hide in my shell.

“OK, this looks like a good one,” Dre said.

I began paddling, paddling, paddling, felt the wave begin to carry me, and popped up, in a manner of speaking.

To my utter amazement, I was standing, riding, surfing. As a native Californian, it must have been in my blood all along.

Look at the photographic evidence, landlubbers, and eat your heart out.

Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at www.latimes.com