With the turning of the season from summer into fall comes the yearly drop in temperatures.\u00a0 Both in the air and in the seawater.<\/p>\n
Here in beautiful Orange County, we are lucky that our temp changes are not all that dramatic.\u00a0 Honestly, our temps don\u2019t change all that much in comparison with most other places in the world.\u00a0 The water never really gets all that warm or all that cold.<\/p>\n
That said, it still gets cold.\u00a0 Even when it\u2019s warm, it\u2019s kinda cold, if you ask me.\u00a0 I prefer the tropical waters that are 80 degrees or more.\u00a0 Here in OC it \u201cnormally\u201d ranges from the high 60s in summer to the mid-50s in winter.\u00a0 In other words, for surfers this means we live in a \u201cWetsuit Zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
To be comfortable surfing, it is preferable to own at least one wetsuit and ideally two or more.<\/p>\n
The good news is that there are tons of great choices in modern-day surfing wetsuits, and they are all very reasonably priced in comparison with most other things these days.\u00a0 Most serious surfers have at least a couple of boards and a couple of wetsuits on hand at all times.<\/p>\n
This was not always the case.\u00a0 When I first started surfing in the mid 1950s, we didn\u2019t have surfing wetsuits at all.\u00a0 And the only surfers with more than one board were a small handful of big wave riders over in Hawaii.<\/p>\n
I grew up in Surfside, just south of Seal Beach.\u00a0 We had a small group of locals who surfed, of which I was one of the youngest.<\/p>\n
Sometime in the late 50s, we all got together and went to a dive shop up on Signal Hill in Long Beach and got fitted for wetsuits. They were thick, had long sleeves and what was called a \u201cbeaver tail,\u201d which wrapped between your legs and snapped in the front.\u00a0 Nobody used those.<\/p>\n
It was impossible to get one of these things on without a ton of talcum powder.\u00a0 Getting them off was no piece of cake either.<\/p>\n
This was also before they sewed them together, the seams were just glued.\u00a0 I remember one day I came home from school and my wetsuit had the seam coming apart behind my shoulder.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have any rubber glue, so I just stapled it up and paddled out.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I stapled it from the outside, resulting in getting cut.\u00a0 Hey, I was a kid.<\/p>\n
Finally, wetsuits that were actually designed for surfing and not diving came on the market. Thanks to Jack O\u2019Neill and the Meistrell Brothers (Dive N\u2019 Surf), who pioneered the surfing wetsuit market.<\/p>\n
At first we had short legs and no arms, but soon there were all kinds of options to choose from.\u00a0 And they got comfortable and easy to get on and off.\u00a0 This was a huge step forward in the progression of surfing equipment. Just as with the surfboard designs.<\/p>\n
One of my favorite sayings came from a wetsuit ad for Body Glove in SURFER magazine back in the mid 1960s that featured Mickey Munoz. His now-famous quote from that ad is \u201cIt\u2019s better to be warm than cold.\u201d\u00a0 Classic.<\/p>\n
I still remember when I first saw that ad and read the quote.\u00a0 My immediate thought was, \u201cWell, yes, he is totally correct. It IS better to be warm than cold.\u201d\u00a0 This is typical great Mickey Munoz logical humor.<\/p>\n
The thought has stayed with me my whole life, and I have used this quote a zillion times for a zillion different reasons.\u00a0 Like heading out of the house to go somewhere and deciding if I should take a jacket or not. There it is: \u201cIt\u2019s better to be warm than cold.\u201d\u00a0 I have even used it on my wife when she was miffed at me for some obviously unfair reason. \u201cHey baby, it\u2019s better to be warm than cold.\u201d\u00a0 This might have gotten me smacked, not sure.\u00a0 But it is just such a great saying.<\/p>\n
So, that\u2019s my story for this week, and as fall is in full swing, don\u2019t forget: \u201cIt\u2019s better to be\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Awhooooo!!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the turning of the season from summer into fall comes the yearly drop in temperatures.\u00a0 Both in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,7,143107,23,611,77],"class_list":["post-522270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-california","tag-corky-carroll","tag-local-news","tag-orange-county","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}