He was a member of the San Onofre surfing club when it was private and Nixon was President. He would take me surfing and hold my ankles while he lay down and we surfed in. He was friends and is still friends with legends like Hobie Alter “Hobie Cat guy” Robert August “surfboard shaper” and many of the old school guys who made long boarding what it is today. We would go on treasure hunts on the beach and find stuff washed up onshore and spend hours just walking and exploring. When dinner came around he and his friends at low tide would walk out and grab abalone and bang them on rocks flattening out the meat and then cook them on the beach.
He retired for a while when I was about 14 and bought a motor home. We then left Newport and traveled across the northern half of the country stopping at every fort, battlefield, meteor crater etc…We then parked the motor home in New York, flew to Europe and lived there for a year traveling and living in every country in winter and summer. The truly amazing part about the trip is we never stayed in a hotel. We stayed on farms with families, above pubs, and homes that rented rooms. He wanted us to have a true adventure and not just a vacation. One day he drove us across the border to what was Russia at the time to “Check Point Charlie” just so we could say we did it. The crazy part is we didn’t have a visa or anything so we couldn’t get in of course but his plan was to just do a U-turn. Well, the Russians didn’t get it and we were there for a while as they tried to sort out what in the world we were doing.
