A New Decade

What will the new decade mean for Great Lakes surfing?

Undoubtedly, we have seen the most change in surfing here, from a single decade, in the last ten years. Granted, I wasn't around for the previous four decades to see how they evolved, but I'd bet that change in each of those ten year periods was miniscule to what we've seen in the first ten years of this century.

It makes me wonder what the next ten will be like, and the ten after that, and the ten after that.

When I learned how to surf on southern Lake Michigan in the fall of 1998, my surf buddies had mullets, our surfboards were pieces of crap, the waves we were surfing were crappier, and our surf forecasts came from NOAA weather radios and Chicago weatherman Tom Skillings' nightly forecasts. And we were geeked on surfing.

11 years later, the mullets are long gone, our surfboards are better, the waves are way better, and our forecasts come from a computer. And we're even more geeked on surfing.

I'm looking forward to see how we feel about surfing here at the end of the coming decade. Happy New Year!