2024 Book Review #9: In Search of Captain Zero

I am very much feeling like Captain Zero right now, with my doctor recently confirming a diagnosis of a slap shot induced frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) and giving me a hard and stern no on any current surfing plans or for that matter, for the next two years.

I had started this book, In Search of Captain Zero, before this dire predicament, and already feeling mountain land locked in Reno, now I am doctor warned. We will see how that shapes out.

The timeless book itself is about the limits and rewards of surfing, what happens when you go too far and not far enough in the endless, always on the go, quest for the perfect wave. It’s also about breaking hearts, a friendship going to hell and encounters with on the run individuals, both in the water and out, usually not put to print.

It reminds readers that surfing well and becoming a surfer takes true commitment over family and most legal work and any serious romantic relationship, as well as a certain attitude in the ever so dangerous and sometimes crowded ocean.

This honest, straightforward book has Allan Weisbecker, the writer, selling his home and possessions, loading his dog and surfboards into a truck to head south to Mexico and then further south into Costa Rica in search of his long lost surfing and smuggling companion.

Weisbecker died at 75 in October last year after a marvelous life of being a no holds barred surfer, photographer, pot dealer, with many epic fails, a gonzo writer and briefly a screenwriter for Miami Vice. After his first novel Cosmic Banditos was going nowhere, he sent all his copies to soldiers in the first Gulf War War, slowing but surely turning it into a cult classic.

Most surfers are philosophical but usually they rest their brains in between surf sessions, rather than putting pen to paper as Weisbecker did so brilliantly.

Per ratio of devoted travel divided by surfing ability I am proudly probably one of the world’s worst, having nearly drowned in Bali after too much partying, surfed elsewhere in Indonesia during student protests, dodged fecal matter in Ghana, bullets, barricades and Hezbollah linked surfers in Ivory Coast, former child soldiers in Liberia, gangs in El Salvador and Brazil, former guerrillas in Nicaragua, turf wars in the Dominican Republic, paparazzi there for George Clooney’s ex dating Steve-O in Costa Rica, my surfing partner for a few days, up and down motel family road trips in Florida, the Carolinas and California, but without much ability to show for all that travel and money spent.

Still on the right day with the right conditions, gliding on a wave is a place like no other I wish to one day experience again and transmit to my sons. It’s also in the rush of the water I feel closest to my lost angel Zizou, who so enjoyed a Highway 1 family surf trip when we were all new to the West Coast.

When I was about to leave west Africa for good before Barack Obama’s first election, I went back to my favorite beach spot one last time, Assinie, with just an empty notepad to write in, a plastic Bic surfboard, a mattress I bought on the side of the road and lived there off the grid without tv or Internet in an abandoned hut for a few months, pumping my own showers, eating fresh fish every day and being greeted after surf sessions by the village loner who would strum his guitar on the beach at sunset, while stocks and financial systems in the western world momentarily cratered.

Turns out I didn’t do much writing or even surfing for that matter, but just breathed in that environment, and battled mosquitoes on the nightly, waiting days in the shade for my kind of wave conditions to line up. My favorite was the swirling rip tide on a big day, being pulled out without effort, and then waiting patiently, harrowingly, mind over matter, sometimes for an hour, for a monster set to come in, and riding the angry ocean all the way back to shore.

For now, I can keep reading, one of my other favorite activities, but probably not about surfing again, which would be too much of a reminder of what could be and could have been, but for me never really has been.