Indoor Surfing

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• June 15, 2021

Surfers are basically crack heads for waves. Just as a stage and a hot crowd is heroin for comedians. Somewhere in my social media the Skudin Surf Park in New Jersey came up. I had always wanted to try a wave pool. A perfect wave? Over and over? Guaranteed conditions?

I didn’t realize the American Dream Water Park in New Jersey had a surf able wave pool. A $250 session with 13 other surfers? A bit pricey. But fuck it. Few things I love more than catching waves and having new experiences.

When I was young, I loved water parks. My whole family did. We were/are ride/adrenaline junkies. Once, my whole family, along with our neighbors went to Splish Splash out on Long Island. All nine of us wore shorty wetsuits because it was cool that day. So… fun fact, wet suits are now banned from Splish Splash and my family is pretty sure we’re the reason why. We kept jumping out of tubes and lodging ourselves in the slides to wait for the person behind us. And not just us kids. My siblings and the Winter boys were being yelled at for jumping out of the family raft. We swore it wasn’t us. He said, “we saw you, you’re wearing wet suits.” Then, in the most perfect timing, we look over our shoulders, and who’s flying down the family raft, but our parents, both dads outside of the raft holding on. “Look, it was them! They happen to be our parents.”

As I grew older, water parks started disgusting me, as did public pools and especially hot tubs. A friend of mine in high school went to Splish Splash while she had a scratch on her face. She ended up getting a weird staff infection on her face that lasted months and caused her tear ducts to continuously produce tears. Even when the skin infection was clear, she still produced an excess of tears and basically was always crying.

Also, one of my cousins was a lifeguard at Splish Splash. She said in the wave pool they’ll pull out rats and diapers every day after the park closed. That was basically it for me. I couldn’t really enjoy water parks after that. I just can’t stop thinking about all the people peeing in the water and all the germs and bacteria. Plus, the ocean is the greatest water park there is.

There would be exception. Like the Skudin Surf pool. The session would be from 7am to 9am. I get to the parking lot 45 minutes early as instructed. This is to go over safety protocol. It’s an impressive facility. If you have children, I would recommend it. It’s a cool place.

The pool is placid when we get there. A couple people have done the pool before. The rest of us are anxious. Most of us are intermediate to advanced surfers. They produce two waves. Inside, for beginners learning and the main wave.

They do warn us that these waves are different from waves we are used to. That it will take a little getting used to so don’t get frustrated. I brought a board but they had an impressive selection of LOST boards and I opted for 5’4 swallow tail fish.

We paddle out on the sides of the pool. The first wave type will be an A frame wave. This means the wave will peak and break right in the middle and one surfer can take the wave left, and on can go right. The back of the pool has numbered sections, while the sides have letters. This is so they can tell us where to line up to catch the wave. Because that’s the tricky part. When paddling for a wave in the ocean, you can see swell and most of the time read what the wave is going to do to figure out what you’re going to do. But in this particular wave pool, the waves are getting pushed up from the bottom. So it feels like all of a sudden you’re just in a wave which is an odd sensation.

They send what they call the “pulse wave” first. The water moves down and then up. A hand is placed on the wall for balance. Once you feel the pulse wave, you wait “one-one thousand, two one-thousand,” then paddle hard. There is almost no point looking over your shoulder since nothing is behind you when you start paddling, but it’s a habit that doesn’t die. The next thing you know you are in a wave. It took me three tries to catch the wave. Paddle to the wall and go back out to wait your turn.

When it’s my turn, I’m anxious for no true reason. Anxious to catch the wave. Anxious people are watching. It’s weird to surf in chlorine smelling water, but it’s warm and clear turquoise blue. All the surfers cheer each other other. Some of us are better than others. The vibe is chilled, supportive.

Half way through they change the wave type to waves that are generated from the corners of the pool. They are able to make the waves bigger this way, however, you can only go one at a time and it makes me impatient. After a couple rounds of this, we go back to the A frame.

We’re the only ones in the whole water park. And just like a day at the beach, it’s like nothing else in the world matters. This is best way to enjoy life. You catch more waves in a couple hours than you normally would surfing, especially in New York or New Jersey.

I would both recommend trying it out and do it again. Especially for beginners, actually. If you’re going away on vacation and plan to try surfing there, this would be a great place to take a beginners lesson to make the most at your trip. And if you’re already a surfer who just wishes there were more wave opportunities, well, now you know a place where it is always breaking.

Rumors have it Long Island is building their very own surf park. I look forward to more places like this becoming accessible. Thanks, Skudin, for something completely different, yet oddly familiar.

Link: https://skudinsurfamericandream.com/