The October 2009 Mavericks Opening Ceremony by "Z"

My Mom and I were going to the Mavericks Ceremony. We parked in the tiny parking lot near the yacht club. We didn’t park in the main parking lot because the only people that were supposed to paddle out were the people in the Mavericks contest and we didn’t want to take up any parking spaces. When we got out of the car we saw that we had parked right next to these surfers, and they had a gun in the back of their pickup truck. I knew that only one of them was going to paddle out because there was only one gun. I didn’t know who it was, but my Mom did!

We were just about to start walking down to the beach when one of them saw me and asked,” Hey, are you going to paddle out?”

I said,” No,” and explained to him that Rocky (our coach) told us not to because of the parking. Then he said, “Well, if I say you can go out, then you can go out!” 

Then, my Mom whispered into my ear that the person I was talking to was Anthony Tashnick, aka Tazzy. I got super excited because I had seen pictures of him surfing and I knew that he was super good. I just didn’t know what he looked like because in most surfing pictures you can’t actually see their face.

Then, I said I didn’t have a wetsuit or a board.

Then, he took one of his other boards that he won in a contest out of his truck and said, “USE THIS!” I couldn’t believe my ears.

Then, I reminded him that I didn’t have a wetsuit and he said,” Go out in your board shorts.”

I was a little worried about going out in just my board shorts because it would be freezing. My Mom could tell that I was worried so on the way down she called Mike Newling and asked him if he had brought down Marlon’s (his son) wetsuit. He said, “No, but you can go to my house and get it from the clothes line.” So, my Mom told me to go up to Mavericks by myself while she drove back to get Marlon’s wetsuit.

When I got to the beach all my friends were already there and we were super stoked about the board that Tazzy let me borrow. After about twenty minutes my Mom came back and I put the wetsuit on. We had to wait another fifteen minutes until we actually paddled out because of the land ceremony. Then, Tim West and his Dad took me out and that’s who I sat next to in the circle. I’m super glad that Tim took me out because otherwise it would have been really awkward in the circle.                               

Then everybody said something and after each person said something everybody would say,”WHOOOOO!” Then it would go onto the next person. I was one of the last people to say something and I said, “I couldn’t believe I was out there and I can’t wait until I can surf Mavericks!” When everybody was finished we all started splashing each other.

When I got back to the beach all my friends asked how it went and I said it was super cool. I took my wetsuit off and got all toasty and dry.

After that there was a big party at Oceano. There was this one guy in a big white shirt that got super drunk and kept saying, “Life sucks, wear your helmets!” to us even though we weren’t even skating. It was hilarious. I also got a poster and got tons of surfers to sign it.

We went on the grass and played this one game where two of the older kids would pull a younger kid across the wet grass while he was squatting on his shoes so he slid across. We also played a game where somebody took Thomas by the arms and spun him around in a circle so he was flying horizontal to the ground and everybody else had to jump over him!

There was also this guy named Neftali Espino aka Neffi who owns a surf shop in Davenport called Homegrown Surf Shop and he gave us a bunch of stickers and is giving me a bunch discounts on boards. He also shapes Tazzy and Nat Young’s boards. He was really nice and he is trying to build a skate park in Davenport and my Mom is trying to build one here, so they kind of gave each other some advice.

That was one of the best days of my life, and Rocky said that next year the whole surf team can go out! It is going to be really fun.

Zander Dragony

November 2009