Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Oceans Waves Beaches

Surfing in Minnesota? Yes. In Winter? Hell, Yes.

January 28, 2009 / / 8 Comments

You've heard me say before that I've always been a warm-water surfer, born in Australia and growing up in places like Hawaii and Southern California. But I just have to tip my hat again to my surfing buddies here in Minnesota. They've been getting some nice attention lately.  Turns out the New York Times showed up recently at one of their favorite breaks up on the North Shore, and produced this story: Hanging 10 (Degrees) on Icy Lake Superior.

SurfSuperior-NYTimes

(Photo by T. C. Worley for The New York Times.)

My buddy Bob Tema is quoted in the story. Here's one of my favorite shots of him surfing that same break, Stoney Point, at an earlier time. 

(Photo by Brain Stabinger.)
SurfSuperior-Tema-StoneyPt2

And here's a great winter shot he took of fellow surfer Quinn Carmichael.

SurfSuperior-Carmichael

The New York Times story was soon noticed by my buddy Jim Moriarty, Executive Director of the Surfrider Foundation, which resulted in him writing a great post called Are You Core? on his "Oceans Waves Beaches" blog, read by a worldwide community of surfers. (Thanks, Jim!)

Speaking of Surfrider, our local chapter is building a lot of steam lately (so to speak!), and we got some further play this past week — actually on two Surfrider Foundation blogs, with this great piece: Shaping Boards at 13 Below Zero. It features photos of my good friend and fellow MN-Superior Chapter organizer, Stefan Ronchetti, in his board shaping room/garage in Richfield, Minnesota. (Photos by Jim Perry, our amazing fellow organizer, who's a cardiologist. Like me, he's not a native Minnesotan, but a lifelong surfer all over the world. Stefan's from the Iron Range and is a financial analyst at US Bank, and also a worldwide traveler — now surfing on Oahu's North Shore.)  And this post also made it onto Surfrider's Save Trestles blog. (That's one of Surfrider's major initiatives, to save a world-class surfing break in Orange County, not far from my second home in San Clemente. Stop the Toll Road!) 

Pretty damn cool, all this attention for us Surfrider members and lovers of surfing back here in freezing-cold Minnesota!  It's been one of the coldest Januarys in a long, long time, actually.  Bob Tema told me a few days ago that the big lake is pretty well frozen over, so "no surfing for a while." (Surprisingly, that doesn't happen all that much on Lake Superior.)

One last piece of news. Speaking of our budding MN-Superior Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, I recently entered us in a local competition for nonprofits, to try to win a free web site. (We're so new, we don't yet have one.) SurfriderMN-logo225w The competition is called the Overnight Website Challenge, and ten Minnesota nonprofits will be selected (from about 50 entries) to have some amazingly talented volunteer teams of web developers and designers build them a web site in a marathon session held all day and night on February 28, complete with massive amounts of Red Bull and other goodies. In the linked post above, I describe it as "24 hours of pure nerd energy"… 🙂

All lovers of surfing are attracted to the environmental mission of the Surfrider Foundation.  If you love oceans, waves, and beaches…and Minnesota's wonderful, lakes, rivers, and shorelines…and believe these resources are worth protecting and preserving, please add a testimonial to our entry page and help our chapter win a free web site!  Together, we can have fun and make a difference, too.

Jack Johnson Made Me Do a Post About Surfing

July 1, 2008 / / 8 Comments

Well, not Jack directly, but my local buddy (and San Diego transplant) Jim Perry, a fellow Surfrider Foundation member. He was lucky enough to catch Jack’s concert on June 22 at River’s Edge over in Wisconsin, and said it was awesome. Sigh, I was too busy. But his email inspired me to post something…at least surf-related. The photo here is from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s review of the event, Surf-Rocker Riding the Green Wave. Jackjohnsonconcert
And, no we’re not talkin’ about "spending some time in the green room" here (surf lingo for locked in a tube) — we’re talking eco stuff. Jack is huge into it, and is working closely with The Surfrider Foundation to promote its cause, and they in turn attend and help promote his latest tour events. [They even traveled from CA to set up a booth at the River’s Edge. And we didn’t even have any waves for ’em, just a river and water slides… 🙂 ]

Okay, maybe this post is more about music than surfing, but I’m throwin’ in a shot of Jack surfing at one his favorite spots in Hawaii (where he’s from), just for the hell of it.  Call it a gratuitous attempt to assuage some of my guilt in not posting about surfing in a while. Jackjohnsonsurfing
Haven’t been to my place in California for way too long, and (darn) I missed a return to the Cold Water Surf Fest up in Duluth this year, too, back in early June. But, for that matter, I really haven’t been posting here at all much lately, I’m sorry to say.

I’ve been a little busy here, and posting elsewhere, here and there …when I can grab a little time on evenings and weekends. And, of course, Twittering. Micro-blogging is just so much easier and faster — seconds or a minute per tweet, versus an hour or more to research and write a good blog post (often much more). There’s a reason I’ve done more than a thousand tweets in maybe seven months, versus maybe 400 blog posts in three years.

But you know my heart will always be with surfing and surfers everywhere, and anything I can do to protect our oceans, waves, and beaches.  And hat tip to my buddy Jim Moriarty out in San Clemente for a his great blog of that name. I read it religiously; he does great work. Aloha, bro, and to all in the global tribe of surfing…. And, oh, say hi and thanks to your buddy Jack, too… 😉

UPDATE 7/2/08: As long as we’re on the topic, let me get all the surf outta me that I can. Another thing I learned this week (actually from my surfer/skateboarder son) is a cool new site that sells surf clothing & gear cheap, one item at a time until it’s sold out — similar to woot.com, except for surf stuff, not electronics. It’s WhiskeyMilitia.com — a hilarious site, funny just to read the copy. One day earlier this week, it was a full Ripcurl wetsuit for $125, another day board shorts for $15, the day before t-shirts for $7. Hey, I’m all over it, already gettin’ daily alerts… 🙂

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