Never teach a newbie on a brand new steed.

Years back, when my grems were small we had a wonderful Norwegian nanny named Hege. I remember when we picked her up at LAX, 18 years old and never been out of Norway. Now she was in L.A. and man she looked excited and scared.

We had a tradition of going to San O' at least once a week back then, and she was a fish out of water at that beach scene. I do not think she had ever even been to the beach before she joined our family. But, she had seen the movies and had inherited the Hollander spirit of "I will try anything four times", so on the second week told us that she was ready to try surfing.

I was teaching a bunch of the grems to surf back in those days and had a foolproof method. Wait till low tide, wade out to about shoulder deep water, get them to paddle to you, turn them around and give them a gentle push. No one ever goes more than 10 feet before they fall, and repeating that enough times in an afternoon eventually produces a 30 foot ride and a ton of stoke.

I had just waxed and finned a beautiful new 9 footer custom built at our factory by Phil. First day at the beach for that baby. I gave Hege the standard beach talk about hopping up on both feet at the same time, balancing the board to keep the nose up a bit when you paddle, the usual.

She looked nervous that was for sure, but she had that Norwegian spirit. I walked out a very long way as the tide was perfect to start her on a small crumbler 100 feet from shore. I got her outside, waited for the perfect little wave and gave her a gentle push. She was off, she was up and to my amazement she was riding. I was cheering, hooting and laughing at the same time. But, I realized she had not fallen, was looking good and was halfway to the beach. It dawned on me that I had not mentioned the dismount part of the surfing lesson-the part about jumping off before you ride my brand new board up on the rock scattered beach. Well, she rode that sucker dry. Just pile drove it onto the rocks and sand and then stepped off. Man, you gotta laugh at that. Who would have thought the best first ride you had ever seen was from a person who had never been to a beach in her life until two weeks ago.

The board was a mess. Rode it that afternoon, repaired her the best I could, and sold it the next week.

Hege was with us a couple of years, and is representing So Cal hard in Norway to this day.
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