Transcription of David Turin for the show Oceans and Islands #25
Dr. Lisa: Our next guest is an individual who along with his wife has come to be a friend.
This individual is a big supporter of the events that go on through Maine Magazine. This is David Turin and I am going to allow Genevieve Morgan to interview him for Maine Magazine Minutes.
Genevieve: Thanks Lisa. David, we did a great interview about six months ago for Maine …
David: That was super fun.
Genevieve: … It was super fun for Maine Magazine. You have a great career as a restaurateur. The thing that actually gets your heart going in the morning is surfing.
David: I like to joke that the restaurant is my hobby and the surfing thing is my real job, but reality would catch up with me probably if I said that.
Genevieve: We’re on the show now “Oceans and Islands,” so let’s talk a little bit about the oceans because you weren’t born near an ocean.
David: I was born near Lake Erie, which is until you really see the ocean, you think that’s a big body of water and then you got Lake Erie is green or mud brown depending on your vantage point I guess. No, I grew up pretty far from the ocean, didn’t really see it until I was about 16 and then started surfing as soon as I had the chance.
Genevieve: Then how did surfing change your life?
David: I guess it relaxed me and I found out that going surfing every day is a phenomenal way to just be active in your environment. It probably saved my life, truthfully, honestly. That’s a pretty big change, right? Staying alive, yeah.
Genevieve: You have a uniquely stressful work environment.
David: That’s what people say and being in the restaurant business I’m coming up on 29 years this year as a restaurant owner.
Genevieve: Your restaurants are …?
David: I own David’s Restaurant in Portland and David’s 388 in South Portland, numbers eight and nine in my restaurant career. I only own two now, but yeah it’s a busy job. There’s always a lot of moving parts and there’s a lot of people involved. It requires a lot of time. I’ve heard people say that it’s a very stressful job so having pretty much only been involved in that career for a long time I don’t know by comparison, but I’d take that as true.
Genevieve: You also have a surf camp.
David: I do.
Genevieve: It’s one of the oldest in Maine.
David: I think it is. I think we started the concept in Maine, which it was really an idea
that I stole from California because they were running surf camps for kids out there for a long time. I actually went to a surf camp in San Clemente, probably
I don’t know 17, 18 years ago and they had surfing camp for kids and then they had one session of summer for adults. I went and slept on the beach in San Clemente State Park and went surfing every day and lived in a tent. We went to and from different breaks into what do they call it a …? One of those travel trailer things and it was fantastic. I met a bunch of people. I’ve been surfing around the world with one of them, been to Fiji and South Africa and Costa Rica and all these places. I made some friends.
After doing that a couple times I thought, “I could do this.” It really started by accident. I had a couple of restaurants in Massachusetts. I sold them, honestly because the stress was getting to me. I was driving back and forth and almost drove my car off the road one night about 2:30 in the morning after doing a late, late party. I said, “You know what? I got to get rid of this. I’m going to die on the road here. Those rumble strips saved my life.” I thought, “Oh, I’ll teach a little surfing,” after I sold the restaurant. Next thing you know the camp just evolved and we ended up with a real business out of the thing.
Genevieve: The great thing about surfing is it actually gets you into the water Maine, which can be cold and off-putting to some people, but water, especially ocean swimming is very therapeutic. Can anyone surf? Can anyone learn how to surf?
David: I’d say that the range of people who we’ve had as candidates have ranged from kids as small as five and six-years-old, who we don’t really take in our camp, but we have taught some lessons for really little kids. We’ve had had actually quite a number of autistic kids come. I think that the reason they bring them is because for some reason people with autism, they find that the water is a very soothing place. I don’t know a lot about this so I could be completely wrong, but
I understand that autistic kids like to swim. They like being in the water. We’ve had a number of autistic kids who were relatively high functioning and then through the age groups I think the oldest surf candidate we had was my stepmother, who was 79 I think the last time that she went.
Genevieve: I’m sure she’s thrilled that you just outed her on radio with her age there.
David: Actually, she’s quite proud of it because she gets a discount for skiing as a senior citizen and she gets carded. Now she’s 83 and she’s really happy that way down it’s, “I really am 83,” because most of the ski areas, they’ll give you a free ticket when you’re over 75 so she’s like, “Oh yes. I am yes.”
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Genevieve: Let’s go back a little bit to this idea of surfing saving your life because you’re not the first person I have heard tell me that.
David: It’s so trite, “Come on dude, man. It will change your life, try surfing.” It’s really true, yeah.
Genevieve: I actually think you were somebody who can articulate why that is the case because you go out there almost every day now, right?
David: Yeah.
Genevieve: Still to this day and you get on your board. I know that you’ve said to me before in the interview that sometimes in Maine sometimes it’s flat even. You’re not catching the waves. That’s not actually what it’s about.
David: It’s awfully nice when you go out there and surf. It’s perfect, but it doesn’t really matter where you go. The surf is not perfect all the time. If you follow the contest circuit, most surf contest are run in really pretty bad surf, honestly. When there’s great surf, even in the best places it’s not the common fact.
It’s about being out there with the ocean and the peace and the quiet and maybe a couple of your buddies. I don’t know why exactly, but it’s really hard to think about much else when you’re out there doing that. Sometimes, a lot of times, especially in the summers it’s not our big surf season in terms of the size of the waves, there’s a lot of times when you go out and there are knee high waves or smaller and you’re just out on the board and you’re paddling around.
Now stand up paddle boarding has really caught on and that doesn’t require any surf at all. Most people really just want to paddle on flat water. I don’t know maybe an acupuncturist, basically could explain that there’s got to be some energy that flows ions that come up through your … I don’t know why. It really washes you. It’s the rinse cycle. It really is.
Genevieve: You’re right. You’re absolutely right and we have actually talked about this. There’s this kidney energy and the kidney is associated with the element of water. Water can simultaneously be a source of fear and a source of wisdom.
If you’re surfing and you’re learning to interact with the water then it becomes a source of wisdom and nourishment and less a source of fear so you’re absolutely right that this rinse cycle, it’s not anything you have imagined.
David: Yeah. I don’t know how to articulate it, but you just struck on something that
I think is really interesting because you say, “It’s a source of fear and energy.”
Genevieve: And wisdom.
David: And wisdom. That’s what you said “wisdom.” As a surfer, most surfers who’ve spent any time surfing will tell you a story about when they got really scared because the ocean is tremendously powerful. It’s sad and shocking when you hear stories about every now and then some real expert pro surfer will die, clearly not doing what we do at our camp. It’s a different element of the sport than obviously, what we’re doing with the 12-year-old kids. There is a power and there is an unknown factor and every surfer I know will talk about a time when the adrenaline was flowing, they’re scared, but there’s also this tremendous comfort in it. It’s very, very hard to describe.
Genevieve: We start out as aquatic creatures before we’re born in the womb so coming out and then going back … I have always thought that …
David: Was the water warmer in that environment? That’s the one thing …
Genevieve: I think it was 98.9.
David: Yeah, there you go. That’s one of the things we have to get used to with what we’re doing here is the water is colder. The gear is important. That’s one thing.
Genevieve: Do you think this whole having to deal with the fear and gaining the wisdom and the rinse cycle, do you think this goes back to the “saving your life” element that you’re describing?
David: That’s a really interesting question. Thinking back, I think it’s sort of a scary thing that every young surfer seems to go through because you get a sense of invincibility. You start to catch waves and you start to get a little bit good at it and you’re starting to get proficient and you think there’s nothing you can’t do, until the ocean slaps you around a little bit and then you have that … Almost every surfer I know will tell a story about when they were learning and they thought they were Superman. Nothing can stop me and then they get knocked down and get held under or whatever.
Yeah, I think there is probably something. There’s a connection between the water and maybe a little bit of fear and the pleasure. The thing about surfing, people who haven’t surfed that don’t get and I’m a skier. Snowboard is particularly tough about this. Surfing and snowboarding are a lot alike, right? The thing is that the mountain doesn’t move. It’s static. When you go out and you’re skiing or you’re snowboarding, the terrain is there and you are moving around it. The ocean is such a dynamic environment and there is every single ride that you ever take will be different than any other one. I suppose it’s true to a lesser degree with a downhill sport.
Having that that thing move around you and being part of it and then there’s an interaction that happens between you and the wave where you change the wave, the wave changes you. There’s something that’s really beautiful and poetic and sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it’s scary. There’s a lot of senses going on.
Genevieve: The little bit of surfing that I have done when I was doing research for the article, there is a lot of effort and then there’s a moment of no effort when the wave energy blends with your own and for me it was a nano second.
David: It’s funny because talking about surfing, people say, “Oh, it must be great for your legs.” You say, “Well, the amount of time you actually spend standing up on a surfboard is really small compared to the amount of time that you spend paddling,” so surfing is really great for your arms. It’s funny because now there’s the whole sport of stand up paddling, which you are standing up all the time and people report very quickly. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, my core, it was really so hard.”
You are standing on a moving object so all these little micro muscles and fibers are firing to keep your balance and you do that for an hour or so and you come back and people are like, “They’re all stiff in here,” in their very core, the top of their thighs. I’m like, “How did that happen? You didn’t do anything?” I was like, “Yes you did.” When you’re wave surfing it’s a whole different thing because all that work to get out there and you’re paddling. You got to put yourself in the right place and then this burst of energy to match the speed of the wave so you can catch the wave and then you get this incredible moment or a few moments of effortless where the wave is projecting you and you’re riding that energy.
The thing is the wave isn’t the water moving. It’s something that’s below the surface of the water. It’s moving through the water and that’s a really hard notion to get across people when you’re teaching them to ride a wave. They want to surf in the white water where the wave is already broken because that’s the obvious place where the energy is present, but that’s not really where you surf. You really surf on the unbroken surface of the water, so you’re surfing on the wave energy itself.
You have probably heard of Laird Hamilton. You’re doing all your research here. He comes up in every book that has anything to do … He created this game where they ride a, it’s basically a dolphin wave that they put on this, it’s a metal fin that they put in the water and they ride in on the open ocean and they can ride it for 15, 20 miles between islands in Hawaii. It’s just the force of the wave moving through the water and they have figured out a way to harnest that with this wing, fin-shaped device that’s in the water and you’re standing up above it. That really demonstrates how the wave is a force that moves through the water. It’s not the water. It’s kind of an interesting…
Genevieve: It’s March in Maine and the water is still very cold so you need a level 5 thickness wetsuit if you’re going to go out there now?
David: That’s the beginning of our season is March. The water is the coldest February and March.
Genevieve: Summer is coming.
David: Yeah summer is coming quickly, yeah.
Genevieve: How can people get in touch with you and join the surf camp or sign their kids up for the surf camp?
David: We have a website which is pretty active, surfcampme.com and that’s the best way to reach us is to go there and shoot us an email through our contact page.
Genevieve: It’s a week camp so you can go for week segments.
David: We do a week camp for ages nine to fifteen. Then we do lessons for any age over eight. Adults usually want to come for a day or a couple of days and then that’s just a lesson so we do that as well.
Genevieve: That’s great. I would encourage anybody out there who is listening to contact David and go get wet this summer.
David: Genevieve, you are going to come this summer to increase that time on the wave from nano seconds to seconds?
Genevieve: Absolutely, it was a great experience. I wouldn’t miss it.
David: Yeah.
Genevieve: Thank you so much for being here.
David: It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me in.
Genevieve: To read more about David Turin and his passion for surfing and the sea, visit us at themainemag.com. To read more about David’s restaurant, pick up the current issue of the Maine Magazine, our special food edition at a local newsstand near you.