I really need to paddle out.

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

I grew up on the Outerbanks of North Carolina and started surfing when I was in my teens. I was kind of a late starter compared to the guys I was surfing with, but they were also part of the “bad crowd” that my parents warned me about and protected me from most of my life. I now live in Illinois and it’s been over 8 yrs since I’ve been able to surf on a consistent basis. One of my plans for 2013 is to make this winter my last winter in Illinois and move back to the coast. I’ve got my eye on Florida right now and have made a plan to be living their by the time my youngest starts school in the 2013-14 school year.

My surfing story goes a little like this… I’ll try to piece it together as best as I can because some of it’s pretty blurry, but that’s a different story. The place I grew up was literally out in the middle of nowhere in a place called Currituck NC. My parents sent me to a Christian School in a town about 45 minutes away called Elizabeth City, and my Dad worked as a contractor on the OuterBanks (Nag’s Head), which was about 45 minutes in the other direction. We were also about an hour away from any hospital, grocery store, shopping mall, and movie theater. So basically if we wanted to go shopping or go out for fun we’d have to start of with a 45 minute trip.

When I was 16 and got my drivers license a few of my friends, who also just got their drivers license, decided to take up surfing. A few had been surfing a few times before on family vacations or trips to the beach, but none of us really new what we were doing. Here were are, the town where we went to school was at least an hour drive to a good surf spot (Elizabeth City to Kitty Hawk Pier), and we were surfers. I remember showing up late for school because I drove 45 minutes in the wrong direction for a sun rise session. Then I would get to school, and hang my wetsuit over the bed of my truck to dry out while I made my appearance at school and skipped out after lunch for an afternoon session. I got so good at skipping my afternoon classes, that I remember, more than a couple times my senior year, talking my mom into writing a note for me asking my teachers to let me leave early.

During my senior year I met a guy who has become a life-long friend and has been a brother to me. We met in the line up during a sunset session on the south side of Avalon Pier. The next day we met up and headed south to Cape Hatteras to surf the light house jetty. The following summer we lived out of my ’85 Oldsmobile Calais. I had a job at a tourist-trap beach shop. We would park at a beach access, wake up to the sun rise, and check the surf. It was great, we had board shorts, flip flops, a couple blankets, and our boards strapped down on the roof racks and no bills except gas for the car and food. (This is the part of the story that’s the most blurry).

I remember the first big hurricane swell I surfed was in September of 1999 at Kitty Hawk Pier during hurricane Floyd. I had met some foreigners who were working and traveling over the summer and stayed with them at a place called OuterBanks Int’l Hostel. I honestly don’t remember how long I stayed there or how I ended up there, but I do remember waking up one morning to the unmistakeable sounds of the Emergency Alert System on the radio followed by information regarding the mandatory evacuation of Dare County. So I jumped up out of my bunk and headed straight for line up. It was about head high and fun when I first got there. The current was pushing hard to the north, and in less than an hour I fought my way in from being rag-dolled over and over again by strong double over head surf, which was the biggest waves I had ever attempted to surf up to that point.

That was towards the end of 1999. I spent new years ’99-’00 partying with the same friend I met at Avalon Pier, at his and his girlfriend’s place in Richmond VA, and honestly, the year 2000 is a blur. So fast forward to the end of 2000 and I decided to make some changes and attempted to get my life back on track. I moved up to VA and stayed with my sister for a few months before going college for a semester in West Palm Beach FL. It was the winter of  ’00-’01. The best winter surf Florida had in years. Add that to the fact that my dorm room was a 20 minute walk to the beach, a 10 minute walk to the strip, and being a 21 yr old living in freshman dorms, and needless to say the odds were stacked against me for getting my life back on track. But I did make some great memories, and caught some great waves. I still have a scar on my right thumb from one of the best surf sessions I had there. It was a perfect point break about 2 feet over head on the outside at a break we called “flag pole” because of the flag pole on S Ocean Blvd at the end of Royal Palm Way. My room mate and I decided to skip class and paddle out. He wasn’t as experienced as me and did not have a leash for his board. I told him he could use mine as long as he didn’t wuss out when we got there. After about an hour and a half of the best session I had had in a long time, I lost my board. I grabbed for it under the water and got hit by a fin that sliced my thumb open.

That session in Palm Beach was over ten years ago, I’ve surfed an average of once or twice a year since then, and that is the last really good session I’ve had. I’ve been living in Illinois for a few years and am dying to get back to the beach and back to the surfing lifestyle. I’ve got a plan to make it happen this year. 2013 will be the year I get back in the water!

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David Smith
Skype: dsmithntl
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