My First Bodyboarding Magazine

My First Bodyboarding Magazine

A Blog A Day 2017: Blog #2

Saturday, September 2nd


  As a 13 year old grom in 1988, discovering the sport of bodyboarding changed my life.  I was stoked to get up early every summer day, grab my Mach 7-7 and Churchills, ride my bike up to the beach, and hit the water.  Even on the flat days with no waves, spending all day (every day) at the beach is all I wanted to do.  When summer break came to an end, I was bummed.  Suddenly, I found myself cut off from my new favorite sport. September in New Jersey is still a fairly warm time of year, and the waves are much more consistent than during the summer, but I had obstacles preventing me from getting out in the water. Obstacle #1: The bane of all teenaged wave riders, school was back in session. Obstacle #2: My mom was afraid that I would drown trying to bodyboard during a hurricane swell, so usually when the surf report said there were waves, my mom said, "No." Obstacle #3: I did not, yet, own a wetsuit.  That, obviously, kept me out of the water during the later months of fall and through the winter and early portion of spring the following year.

  For, roughly, six months all I could do was reflect on my summer sessions.  I would lay in bed, with my Walkman headphones on, listening to music and think about my best waves and all the fun I had getting barreled, learning how to do 360's and el rollos.  Then, the next big step in my evolution as a bodyboarder happened.  One day, my neighbor Ryan (one of the kids I started bodyboarding with) showed me a copy of BODYBOARDING MAGAZINE that his parents bought for him.  "Wow, there's a magazine? Where did they buy it?" "7-11."  I had to get a copy!  I went back into my house, grabbed my velcro wallet, and road my bike into town (downtown Manasquan) to go buy a copy of the magazine at my local 7-11 convenience store.  Unfortunately, after scanning the magazine rack, I realized it was sold out.  I was going to have to wait for the next issue to come out.  When the next issue hit newsstands, the April 1989 issue, I bought a copy after I'd finished school for the day.  I couldn't get home fast enough, peddling my beach cruiser as hard as I could.  When I got home, I went straight upstairs to my bedroom, closed the door, threw on some music, and dove into my first ever copy of Bodyboarding Magazine.  I must have read it from cover to cover about three times that week!

Bodyboarding Magazine, April 1989. Image taken from www.bodyboardmuseum.com.au

  Being able to kill time out of the water by reading Bodyboarding Magazine was like throwing gasoline on a fire! My desire to ride had grown exponentially.  Looking at the photos, reading the articles, my imagination went wild. "I want to be a professional bodyboarder!"  Motivated by the wealth of images and new information I'd seen in the magazine, and armed with a brand new springsuit my mom had begrudgingly bought me for my birthday (an electric blue/ white/ black Rip Curl), I couldn't wait to hit the water for my first session of the year...and quickly froze my tail off!  It was still April in the Northeastern Atlantic, after all, and a springsuit really doesn't help much when water temps are still around 45F/ 7C.