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__LONGBOARD SURFING WOMEN .|. PAGE 2 OF 2

Twelve hours of anything can get monotonous, so I wander the length of the boardwalk and back, past the Surfer Girl magazine booth, where I load up on free Surfer Girl stickers, and through the tangle of toddlers in strollers, dogs off leash, six-packs of blond teenage girls and clusters of Capitola hipsters in silver-frame wrap sunglasses, striped knit caps, baggy pants and Ugg boots who clearly span several generations. I grab a day-glo orange flyer that reads: Grand Opening Celebration! Northern California's First Women's Surf Shop. "It's my daughter's store!" The woman who's passing them out is beaming. "Paradise Surf Shop! Come on by tomorrow!" Two surfers dripping salt water hug each other and high-five: "Did you see that bad-ass long wave I rode?"

Some of the women in this contest are local legends and others are no doubt on their way, but many have only been surfing for about a year. Either way, when I quiz them on their attraction to this competition, the answers are always the same: fun, friends and love of the ocean. More than once I hear someone shout, "Hey, we're all winners!" when I pass the crowd in front of the heat sheet board.

The hours melt into a singular blob of time. Somewhere around heat 24 I'm behind the VIP line, standing at the silver guardrail, looking through my binoculars at all the crazy lip movements surfers make when they're ripping, when I feel someone lean into me like an old friend and say, "Want one?" It's one of the women from the heat sheet tally table, holding out a bottle of spring water.

"Thanks." I smile. She returns the gesture and there's something about the shape of her mouth -- eye-teeth slightly protruding, sexy little overbite -- that reminds me of Cher.

"So," she adjusts her black sunglasses with one hand and pats her brown bobbed hair with the other, "what do you think of all this?"

I think for a second. "It makes me want to cry but in a good way, you know?" All the women, the water, the tremendous community spirit, the air of confidence -- it all fills me with such an inexplicable sense of joy that it inevitably leads to a giant boo-hoo, I explain. She reaches over and gives my hand a little squeeze.

"Why are there so many girls who surf around Santa Cruz, anyway?" I ask.

She sweeps her arm through the air like a spokesmodel revealing a game-show prize. "The ocean is their front yard; it's what's going on." The details come out rapid-fire: The girls start young, get hooked, teach their girlfriends, their sisters, and they all go out together, all the time. "Plus, everybody knows everybody here and there's a long history of famous surfing families in Santa Cruz." She lowers her voice. "Look, these people don't have a lot of money. What they have is a sense of commitment. God, we were so poor --" Suddenly she turns around and shouts, "What?" and lets out an excited squeak. Then, to me: "Oh, I gotta go see how my kid did!"

"Wait. What's your name?" I feel like I've been left holding one glass slipper.

"Not telling." She takes off her sunglasses and gets right in my face. "I hate the media," she says with a wink.

My secret source, however, eagerly sidles up next to me during the next heat.

"OK, see her with the camera? That's Rosemary Reimers Rice. Amazing photographer. She's almost 60. Still surfs. Married to Johnny Rice, the surfboard shaper. And him?" She points to a white-haired man with a leathery brown face. "Malibu Enforcer. Didja ever see 'Big Wednesday'? No? Well, the Gary Busey character is based on him. Oh!" She pokes me. "There's Rita! Can you believe she's still in chemo?" she says, as if I too have known Rita as long as she has. "Go Rita!" she yells, waving her fists in the air.

Out in the water, it's the Masters (35 and over) semifinals and Rita Collins Micuda, a slight woman with an orange-yellow buzz cut, is dropping in on a wave. "She had some kind of cancer but seems to be totally recovering now. A real survivor."

Rita, however, isn't the only survivor. Later I learn that my secret source is Donna Pitts, whose 19-year-old daughter, Beth, an accomplished surfer and lifeguard, died while surfing at Steamer Lane in November 1995. According to the papers, Beth Pitts fell off her board, hit her head on a submerged rock and was knocked unconscious. In memoriam, hundreds of surfers paddled out and joined hands and made a human circle in the water while Beth's ashes were sprinkled into the ocean. Now, two years later, Donna Pitts is standing at the rail and rooting for everyone, including her daughters Pam, 17, and Miranda, 19, who are surfing in today's contest.

"There's Jane McKenzie!" She points. "Jane of the Lane -- you have to talk to Jane."

Jane exits the water to shouts of congratulations. At first I'm a bit intimidated by her look -- jet-black hair, intense eyes, sharp face -- and her reputation. In her early 40s, she's been surfing here for 35 years and earned the title "Jane of the Lane" for her prowess at Steamer Lane, a point break known for serious waves and macho attitudes. When I introduce myself, though, she is nothing but supercool and gracious.

Since this is a women's longboard contest, I ask her what it's been like to be a woman in a traditionally male-dominated arena.

"The ocean doesn't care what kind of genitals you have. And if you ask any man -- well, any man you'd actually want to have in your life -- if he wants to see more women in the water, he would say yes. In fact, this very contest was created by men who wanted to celebrate women being in the water."

I mention how pleased I am, being a spineless wreck when it comes to any sort of athletic competition, that the main vibe here today is fun rather than a cut-throat stampede for the brass ring.

"Don't be fooled," she says with a wicked grin. "There are a lot of competitive women out there today." Yet in the next breath, she tells me this: "There was a woman in my heat who was a little nervous; it was her first competition and she was having trouble catching waves. So I said, 'Why don't I push you into one of the waves?' And I immediately thought, 'God, should I have even said that?' But she agreed. So when the time came, I paddled beside her, gave her a little push and off she went."

Like clockwork, the last heat wraps at 5:20 p.m., but the winners are not announced until we get to the spaghetti dinner and awards ceremony at the Jade Street Community Center, a no-frills hall filled with round tables and folding chairs. There are 18 winners, six women from each division. But this, of course, is only the official list.

I came to this contest expecting localism and a heavy dose of too-cool attitude that supposedly goes hand-in-hand with surfing contests, and to a large degree, surf culture itself. Instead I met women who pushed each other into waves and taught each other how to ride and who drew on the power of the ocean when death stared them in the face. I came believing that everyone would be a better surfer than me. And most of them were -- but a few were actually worse. Never in a million years, I told myself at 6 o'clock that morning, would I have the guts to sign up. By the end of the day, I found myself looking around for the dotted line.

To say the contest was not about winning simply isn't true. Winning feels great -- and you get prizes and prestige to boot. (And had this been a pro contest offering big prize money, "winning" would no doubt be more narrowly defined.) The truth is, rather, that this competition wasn't about losing -- it was about loving to surf and giving it all you've got.
SALON | March 27, 1998

Lisa Palac is the author of "The Edge of the Bed," recently published by Little, Brown.

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