PHOTO:
9/6/2025 // Somewhere Along the California Coast
Film + Digital // Shot on Nikon Action Touch + Rico GRII
Earlier this summer I got to kick it with Avery up at Mt. Hood for the first time and we got to talking about surfing, where he’d been, how he got into it and how I wanted to surf more as I already had a wetsuit and a board but out in Walla Walla, I hadn’t really met many people who surfed or were down to trek out to the coast. After a rad weekend of boarding and camp hanging with the spiral crew he said he’d let me know next time he was going out to the coast. Sure enough about a month later, Avery shot me a text: “Yo dude! Goin on a coast surf trip Aug 20 - 25 from Newport OR to Santa Cruz, u interested?” I thought about it for a little while, but the answer was pretty obvious. Why wouldn’t I go? I told him I was down.
We all rolled out of Bend in our own rigs, me coming from Walla, Avery already in Bend, and Sammy had come over from Boise a few days prior. Sammy’s end goal was to meet up with his dad in Santa Cruz for a bike trip, and figured surfing on way down was the best way to get there. I had my camper filled with camping gear, a skateboard, a surfboard, some clothes and some camera gear. Avery was packed with boards, some alternative berverages and his gear, and sammy had his bike, his surf gear, and a grill, which would be clutch later in the trip. Sammy and Avery had brought longer boards, and I was rocking the only board I’ve ever owned, a shorter one that I would later learn has its pros and cons.
The first stretch of the drive was exactly what you’d want out of a surf trip: windows down, rolling three deep on the highway, and a crew fired up. But right before we got to the coast, everything flipped. We’d just hit In-N-Out, and I get a call from Avery while we were driving. Sammy had to turn back. Just like that, the three-person mission turned into Avery and I, who I’d pretty much just met, looking down four days and Santa Cruz as the end goal.
That first night stuck with me. We has just “surfed” the first spot of the trip, I had pretty much perled every wave I paddeled for while avery was crusing. Then we got back to the rigs to find out we’d completly forgotten to get grub for camping and we were fresh out of water. Only thing avery had were those aformetioned alternative beverages, which were nice and luke warm, but after dry-heaving some salt water out my my system, it was the best we were going to do. After a couple sips, we hopped on the road and ended up stopping at this little roadside grocery store, where a single block of cream cheese was going for ten bucks. Most I’d ever seen cream cheese listed for. We grabbed what we could, and kept pushing on to find a camp spot. After a couple dead ends, and some less than ideal spots, we got to Sue-meg state park and avery managed to snag spot 69 right as the ranger was heading home for the night.
After waking up, and for a while during that 2nd day of the trip, we thought that was it, Sammy was out. But sure enough, a thousand-plus miles and a day and a half later, he pulled back up. He’d somehow mobbed all the way back to Boise, got what he needed to get, and then rallied back down to California in under 36 hours. Just absolutely insane.
The reunion was rad. We were so pumped to see Sammy again, and itching to finally surf. The waves where we had been waiting for him were socked in with fog and kind of all over the place, but to sammy, none of that really seemed to matter, he just wanted to get out and get his first waves of the trip. It was here that I also learned that Sammy and Avery have known each other since college but have somehow never surfed together, so watching them paddle out and trade waves felt like its own moment. I caught a few waves myself, but after a while I was gassed from all the paddling. That’s when I headed in, grabbed the film cam, and started shooting them out in the water instead.
I hadn’t shot film in a while, but I’d brought my dad’s old Nikon Action Touch, the little waterproof point-and-shoot he used to bring on his trips in the late 80’s and 90’s. Felt like the perfect time to bust it out. Shooting on that thing was such a trip, almost relieving. After years of shooting with a big setup, going back to something so simple felt different. Just point, click, hope you got it. No playback, no checking histograms, no dialing in anything. Shooting surfing was also a whole new challenge. Kinda like snowboarding in that there are good angles and bad angles, but you’re in the ocean, getting tossed around, trying to figure out where to stand and when to swim. Half the time I was just fighting the current, or ducking the whitewater, but every now and then I’d line something up and feel like I actually caught what it felt like to be out there.
After a rad reunion session, we kept pushing south. We grabbed some more In and Out, and cruised straight through San Francisco, where it went from sunny to sideways rain in about an hour. Apparently a classic california mood swing. By the time we got to Teo’s place in Santa Cruz that night, we were salty, wet, and more than ready to crash.
The last day was arguably the “best” of the whole trip. We woke up, made some breakfast from the neighbors plum tree, went out for a morning surf, and then hit a quick skate session followed by a dip at the local swimming hole. After the morning surf session we linked with Teo’s buddy Nate who ended up kicking it with us the whole day and came to paddle out at Greyhound Rock for a end of day surf. It was sunset session, the waves were sick, and we had dogs and Sammys grill waiting for us after in the lot. I borrowed an extra log from Teo’s place and ended up catching one of, if not the most fun waves of my life. That’s also when I realized I might need to do this more and add a few more boards to the quiver.
Looking back, the whole trip was a reminder of how powerful a loose plan, a truck, and the right people can be. None of it was perfect, the waves, the weather, even the crew for a hot sec, but it all came together in a way that none of us could have expected. Time and time again trips like this prove you don’t need to have everything lined up and figured out, you kinda just need to pick something, find a friend, and go figure it out somwhere along the way.