SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER ONE - DAY THIRTEEN - August 4, 2019

 

We headed 100 miles south through Orange County and into San Diego County, stopping at San Onofre State Beach, known colloquially as “Trestles.” Before it was a state park, surfers identified the spot by the train bridge over which the Amtrak Surfliner glides between San Diego and Los Angeles. Ronald Reagan made it a state beach, an act for which he is fondly remembered. Trestles is a Mecca, perhaps the best wave on the coast. As with Topanga Beach, San Mateo Creek empties there and, over millennia has deposited a reef of cobblestones that do something to make the shape ideal.

Back in 2007, a proposal to build a road through the park was close to becoming a reality. Governor Schwarzenegger wanted it, and he had the backing of builders and construction unions. It was up to the California Coastal Commission. A “Save Trestles” movement had been growing along the coast so that the Commission convened the meeting in a hangar at the Del Mar Fairgrounds to accommodate all the requests to speak publicly.

I was assigned by Bloomberg BNA to cover the hearing. I decided to try Trestles before going to the assignment, because that’s the kind of reporter I am. Blown away. It had a semi-wild nature walk fragrant and shady and thick with animal life, and the wave lived up to the legend of the wave.

Some three thousand surfers showed up. For eight hours testimony was absorbed about the treasure that is Trestles. What commission members planned to do when they walked in that day is a secret of their own keeping, but approving that road and getting out alive seemed unlikely. They killed the project. The big barn exploded in unrestrained joy. In that moment the surfing environmental movement came of age thanks to the efforts of people like Surfrider Foundation’s Chad Nelsen and Wildcoast’s Serge Dedina, who would go on to be elected the surfing mayor of Imperial Beach. 

The developers thought the fact they were leaving the beach “pristine” was a winner. The opposition feared the project would affect the creek and mess with the geology/hydrology. Without the wave, Trestles would be just another pretty spit of sand on a very long coastline. Why would people continue to make pilgrimages from all over the world? They monetized the value of the wave. A new approach. 

We left early on Sunday and stopped in San Juan Capistrano for tacos at a biker hangout across from the Old Spanish Mission called, aptly, the Mission Grill. They were fish tacos, because that’s how they roll at the coast from the south O.C. down to the tip of Baja California.

Trestles is home to the only professional surf tournament in the continental United States. They train there year round and there are no ropes out on the water saying “Professionals Over Here: Hopeless Cases Over There.” You have to fight for waves with these people. I spend most of the time examining their bodies for wings as they fly over my head. We stayed all day and at sundown I found a groove and finished up right. We've got good base tans; were safe to let the sun have its way with us, and returned to the car looking like people living a Surfin' Safari Summer. We took El Camino Real through San Clemente, grabbed California 1 at Dana Point, and moved up into Laguna Beach under an orange-pink and blue pastel Indian paint sunset.