From our spot in Brooklyn, the A train runs a long route to Rockaway beach that is mostly above ground; it's an amazing experience to haul our boards on and ride out in the dark, suit up, shred for a couple hours, and ride back as the sun rises. The train takes us along the Cross Bay Bridge and through Broad Channel, Queens alongside Big Egg Marsh, a nationally protected wildlife preserve. It does a lot to ease us back into the city; the trip is normally serene until the population gets a little more dense and the cars starts to fill.
We love that adventure and, as a consequence of our home break, we are often forced to make it in nasty weather. Rain, sleet, snow and nine months of the year, low temperatures and a frigid ocean. We wait to the last moment to get in our suits, often changing on the subway where it's just a little warmer. When we first paddle out, it can be a fight to control our steaming breath; it comes too fast at first and needs to be slowed to prevent full-on hyperventilation. After the muscles start moving and the excitement of the moment kicks in, anxieties subside and there's nothing left but to enjoy it. The ride home is a bit different. After a morning of catching ankle-breakers in 38°F water, a deep cold will stay with you through that whole trip. It keeps your teeth chattering and your brain slow, your hands don't work quite right and your toes stay numb. Words come out more as guttural babbling until finally, as that sun rises and the trapped warmth of the city wraps around you, you start to come back. You're tired, you're a little confused, and maybe you're convincing yourself never again or even shopping for a new 6/5 mm with hotshot boots, hood, and gloves, but at the very least you're satisfied with the day. No matter how cold the water or how uncomfortable it was to peel off your gear behind a pillar of a subway platform, how mushy the waves or gray the sky, you had it all to yourself. You owned that morning and, as much as you love meeting and learning from other surfers, being alone on light rollers in early light is something wholly unique. When you remember that day, you won't remember the pain of recovering from the cold but the short time when you weren't worried about a thing. We've been through this and recovered from it quickly, but each time learned a lesson about the line between what we can endure and what is safe. Our equipment let's us do this (relatively) safely, but it's always a risk to get out there in that clime and deal with the consequences. For us, it's always been worth it and as long as we're surfing the northeast, something that's a part of our evolution as surfers.
