SURFING SOAPBOX: Lost in thought in Indiana

It is the experiences in life that shape who we are, or become. I’m sure if you were to lay out your life in front of you, you could almost put your experiences in different categories, beginning with simple ones like “good” and “bad.”

Then dig a little deeper, looking at your family tree. Where you were born and raised. Friendships and relationships. Before ending with your education — and I don’t only mean schooling but the education that comes with traveling, the experience of new places and cultures, seeing a way of life that is completely foreign, that one can’t completely understand or imagine.

When you see it, it slaps you in the face as hard as it can. Days pass, and you still feel that slap; maybe you begin to even call it “the slap of life.”

You’re not sure what to think of it, other than the fact that you can’t stop thinking about it.

Gary, Ind., slapped me and I can’t stop thinking about it. My thoughts, feeling and emotions still run through me as I recall the day we drove through the neighborhoods there.

After surfing nearby on Lake Michigan, many of the streets had been flooded because of the rains Hurricane Ike brought. The freeways were at a slow crawl before giving way to a complete standstill. So we took to the back streets and found our way through the neighborhoods of Gary.

Along the way we passed steel mills, and as far as we could see there was nothing more than train tracks and smoke stacks and natural gas flames.

But it was down in the neighborhoods where you could see the ghosts of better days.

One by one there were old businesses and homes boarded up and left behind. Huge apartment buildings with all the windows blown out, with old crusty curtains blowing in the wind, dirt lots and not a tree in sight. The sidewalks were cracked with weeds growing up, but more than that, they were empty. People weren’t cruising around like you see in Laguna.

Except for the group of eight school children, dressed in their school uniforms walking down the sidewalk, smiling and laughing, still holding onto hope.

Peace.

JAMES PRIBRAM is a Laguna Beach native, professional surfer and John Kelly Environmental Award winner. His websites include AlohaSchoolofSurfing and ECOWarrior Surf.com. He can be reached at Jamo@Aloha SchoolofSurfing.com