Central American Summer Pt. 3 - Going Wild in The Streets

Although I thought I was carving my own path, I was really just trading one influence for another. The further I strayed from the life my parents envisioned for me, the more I moved toward the one depicted in the surf media of the time. Alongside my high school surf buddies, we melded the classic adventure of The Endless Summer dream with the raw, rebellious culture of the ...Lost brand.

Our plan was to relive the section of The Endless Summer II where they travel to Tamarindo, Costa Rica, and score epic waves at Witch's Rock. It was a healthy dose of inspiration, pushing us to get out of California and explore Central America for new waves in warmer waters. I'm embarrassed to look back and realize how unoriginal we were, but proud to have had the courage to venture into unknown territory.

The other big influence on our trip came from a different corner of pro surfing—the unapologetically real side of the sport.

For some reason we were drawn to the approach of the surfing life embodied by ...Lost.

The ...Lost surf team of the 2000s was an outlier among the dominant surfwear giants of the time like Billabong, Quiksilver, and Rip Curl. While the big brands built massive global empires on the backs of clean-cut, world-champion-caliber athletes, ...Lost cultivated an identity rooted in irreverence, rebellion, and a more raw, authentic side of surf culture.

The mainstream surf giants had slick marketing focused on a broad, mainstream audience. They sold a "surfer lifestyle" to people both in and out of the water. Their teams were stacked with marketable athletes who dominated the ASP (now WSL) World Tour. These were the heroes of competitive surfing, and their success translated directly into massive sales. Their clothing, while rooted in surf culture, was designed to be fashionable and accessible—the kind of stuff you'd find in a mall surf shop. The goal was to sell a dream of a sun-kissed, idyllic beach lifestyle through polished, high-budget films and commercials that showcased their stars in pristine, exotic locations.

...Lost Surfboards emerged from a different subculture entirely. Their identity was less about being a polished brand and more about a gritty, authentic crew from San Clemente, California. They were the anti-establishment alternative, and after two eye-opening years at liberal colleges, we were primed and ready to take on the system.

The ...Lost team was famous for its cast of "anti-heroes" and eccentric personalities known for their rebellious, sometimes controversial, antics. They were the surfers who did things their own way, both in and out of the water. While still highly competitive, their persona was less about winning world titles and more about raw talent and a general disregard for convention. They'd go for the biggest maneuver just for the sake of it, even if it cost them a contest. To us, they were as cool as you could get.

Instead of glossy, high-budget films, ...Lost produced a series of low-fi surf videos that we latched onto. They showcased radical, high-performance surfing in a way that felt more like a punk rock music video than a traditional surf film. The art and imagery were often crude, hand-drawn, and filled with inside jokes, a sharp contrast to the polished branding of the bigger companies.

While Billabong and Quiksilver were apparel companies that also sold boards, ...Lost was first and foremost a surfboard company. Legendary shaper Matt Biolos's designs were at the heart of the brand's identity. This created a sense of authenticity; the team wasn't just wearing the clothes, they were riding the boards that were a central part of the company's story.

...Lost even had an unofficial team mascot, Randall - somewhat of a functioning homeless man from San Clemente, whom the brand had essentially adopted. He was often featured giving rambling, philosophical monologues. His presence in the videos added to the feeling that ...Lost was a brand by and for the outcasts, not the polished pros. This resonated with me in particular, having a mother who was also somewhat functioning homeless.

We watched our copy of the Lost Across America vol. 2 VHS multiple times. It starts with a monologue by Randall, followed quickly by the Circle Jerks' song "Wild in the Streets." Both became the theme of our trip.

You can watch the intro here:

Lost Across America

"Wild in the streets, running, running..."

Maybe this ethos resonated with us because our surfing environment up to that point had been the gritty, real breaks of Oceanside and Santa Cruz. Or maybe we wanted to shed the uncool stereotype of our upper-middle-class upbringings. It's likely we were just feeling rebelious for the sake of it. It's also possible that it all happened just because Chris happened to have the VHS tape of 'Lost Across America Vol. 2'.

Whatever the reason, we jumped into it with the unrivaled level of over enthusiasm only a pack of young men can have.

We were amped up and ready to run wild in the streets of Tamarindo, and the town welcomed us with open arms.

We drank an unhealthy volume of Imperial beer, stacking the cans into a pyramid almost as high as our heads in the living room of our apartment. We tried to pick up girls at the bars and clubs with little success and flirted with the local prostitutes, but none of us had the balls to actually go through with it. One night we physically held our friend Cody back from getting into a fight he definitely would have lost. Another night, Derrick was briefly detained by local police and accused of buying drugs. Luckily, he had nothing on him at the time and walked away free.

And we did a bit of surfing too...

While we could match the voracity of partying in the ...Lost films, we were well behind when it came to surfing. The waves were good, but not spectacular, and the surf breaks were as well-developed as the bar scene. It was crowded, and the same locals who were friendly when they had drugs to sell on the beach didn't seem to know us in the water. They took pleasure in cutting us off. Coming into Tamarindo thinking we were hot shots who would have free reign of the waves like we saw in The Endless Summer, we were ripe for a wakeup call.

For a few days, when the swell was on, we did get our act together and caught some amazing waves. We hitched a ride down to Langosta and surfed some of the biggest waves any of us had ever seen. We paddled across the crocodile-infested inlet to the north and walked down to find less crowded peaks at Playa Grande. And the crew scored shoulder-high Witch's Rock via boat—the highlight of the trip.

Unfortunately, I didn't make it far enough into the trip to join them at Witch's Rock...

Awakening & Sobering

During a flat spell, with no waves to chase and nothing else to do, we rented a car and headed into the jungle. We were seeking an adventure, maybe a glimpse of monkeys or a toucan, but we weren't prepared for what we'd actually find.

Following a bumpy, unpaved road, we eventually located a trailhead that promised a waterfall. We set off in our board shorts, one of us with a backpack holding water and a few beers. The jungle was thick but unimpressive—no monkeys swinging from trees, no sloths, just thick brush and the oppressive humidity. We were all soaked in sweat by the time we reached the river, only a few kilometers in.

The waterfall was equally anticlimactic. It was a two-story cascade, not a powerful freefall, but the surrounding geological setup was still classic: rocky walls on three sides, a shallow pool at its base, and a light mist in the air blown out away from the falls. We stripped down and jumped in to cool off.

As boys naturally do, we quickly grew bored. A new game was needed to test our abilities and establish a new kind of dominance hierarchy. We knew who the best surfer was and who could chug a beer the fastest, but this was new territory. Who was the best cliff jumper?

We started climbing the slick, mossy rock walls and jumping into the pool, each jump a little higher than the last. When Cody slipped, landed on his butt, and rolled into the water, we laughed and ignored the warning sign.

One of the guys set the highest mark, carefully balancing on a small ledge before cannon-balling into the pool. I felt the pressure to follow suit. Would I be the chicken of the group by not attempting the jump? I climbed to the ledge, balanced, and flexed my arms in a gesture of accomplishment. My friends cheered me on.

I crouched slightly and pushed off with my left foot, driving my arms and right knee into the air. My plan was to go up and out, clearing the ledge below, but my foot slipped on the mossy rock. Instead of launching forward, I fell slightly, my upper body heading toward the water, but not far enough out for my lower body to clear the ledge. My left knee hit the rock, somersaulting my body forward. I bounced off a flat, slippery rock, hitting my chest and the side of my face, but somehow managing to push off with my hands to land head-first in deeper water. I braced for a massive impact on my head, but felt nothing but water.

When I surfaced, shaking with adrenaline, I was in disbelief that I was alive. I ran a hand over my face—all my teeth were still there. My friends stared at me like I was a ghost. There was no laughing this time. I treaded water with my arms, but my left leg wouldn't move. It hurt a little but wasn't throbbing in pain. I was in shock.

Doggy-paddling to the edge of the pool, I grabbed Cody's hand as he helped pull me out of the water. That's when the pain hit me. I looked down. There was no blood, but a defined crack ran down the middle of my kneecap and branched out to the sides, where the skin was indented. It looked like a hard-boiled egg that had been cracked but the shell was still holding together. Cody, an EMT at the time, quickly surveyed me, checking my head and neck before looking at my knee. "You have a fractured kneecap," he said directly with no emotion.

A moment of panic followed. Derrick pointed at another friend and said, "Fuck! I knew you shouldn't have started that jumping game." Our brother snapped us out of it. "We need to get you to the hospital. Let's go. Can you walk?" I couldn't move my leg.

Chris collected our shirts and backpack while Cody and Derrick each took one of my arms, and we began the slow journey back up the path. I don't remember the hike out being too terrible, probably because I was still in a state of shock, but the pain settled in once we reached the car. Every bump on the long dirt road sent a jolt of pain from my knee up into my chest.

The mental suffering was as bad as the physical pain. What were we going to do now? Was I going to some Costa Rican hospital? Was I going to be air-evacuated out of the country? This could cripple me for life... physically and financially. We pulled over to ask for directions, and despite being in agony, I had to be the one to stick my head out the window and ask for directions. No one else spoke Spanish. We ping-ponged our way to a regional hospital.

The hospital itself issued me a new level of panic. We pulled into a hectic driveway filled with people, a food vendor, and a line of taxis. Someone found an old wheel chair and brought it out to the car. The boys wheeled me in, and the acrid smell of cheap disinfectant made me sick and nervous. The waiting area was crowded with patients and family members fanning themselves in the humid air. Old gurneys lined the walls, and the open doors to other rooms revealed outdated medical equipment that seemed more relic than medical tool.

The quick attention we received calmed me a bit. It seemed we were getting preferential treatment - possibly because we were foreigners, possibly because we told them we were paying in cash. It struck me that it wasn't right for us to bybass everyone in the waiting room, but I wasn't going to volunteer to get in the back of the line.

Inside the doctor's office down the hall, the doctor introduced himself in Spanish and asked if we could speak Spanish. I told him I only knew a little. He humbly said he spoke a little English and that he would try his best... then proceeded to speak fluently with us in our native tongue. After getting the basic story and taking a quick glance at my knee he immobilized my leg with wooden sticks that looked like paint mixers and some tape, then sent us to the x-ray room. I was in and out of there in minutes. They had the x-ray sheets beat me back to the doctor's office.

He held up the big black x-ray sheet to the fluorescent lights and confirmed what we already knew. "You have a fractured kneed cap. We can't do the surgery here." he informed me. "You would need to go to the capital, San Jose." My stomach dropped. There was no way I was having surgery in Costa Rica.

The doctor reached for a syringe that looked like it belonged in a black-and-white war movie. It was the reusable type, made of dull metal and glass, with a pair of metal finger loops at the bottom and a thumb plunger at the top. As he filled the syringe from a small glass bottle, he signaled for me to lower my pants, and I nervously asked what he was about to inject. "One for pain, one for antibiotics," he said plainly. After the first shot, I felt my body begin to relax, the sharp edges of the pain starting to soften. A moment later, two nurses appeared and wheeled me to another room, where they wrapped my entire leg, from my hip to my ankle, in a thick plaster cast.

They'd done everything they could do at this regional hospital. It was time for us to pay the bill. There had been no paper working coming in, no information about prices, and no discussion of the cost. We didn't have a choice or the forethought to ask about it in advance. As Cody wheeled me over to the payment counter manned by one woman in jeans and a scrub top, I braced for a massive bill. With no insurance I figured the treatment would be hundreds of dollars if not over a thousand.

We communicated in broken Spanish that we wanted to pay in US dollars. She punched a handheld calculator a few times and wrote a number down next to the total on the paper printout she had.

She slid it across the counter, under the glass partitioning. Cody picked it up, read it, and started a laughing.

"What? How much is it?" I asked.

"$63" He giggled.

I grabbed it, thinking he was joking. It had everything listed: the doctor's examination, the x-ray, the cast, and two shots. Total amount: $63 even.

We paid it and Cody wheeled me away before they could change their minds.

Cody and I called our parents from a pay phone outside the x-ray room. I distinctly remember being confused by my dad's reaction. "You're going to have to pay for this," were his first words. My stepmom, Donna, was a bit more empathetic and told us she would help arrange a flight back for me. Cody was already planning to leave a few days so he could start at the firefighter academy; she'd try to get me on his flight.

She also promised to set up an appointment at a hospital back in California.

The interaction with my parents shocked me as much as the surprise injury.

I was immensely relieved to have Donna coordinating on my behalf and suddenly felt awful about all the times I'd doubted her or wished she hadn't married my Dad.

At the same time I was also confused about my Dad's reaction. It immediately inflated all the insecurities I had been carrying about our relationship. This was just the latest incident that confirmed all my beliefs: I was the goofy one, unable to do anything athletic like my brother; the stupid one, not able to graduate anywhere near the top of my high school class like Maria and Will; the most problematic - having to be forced to complete my chores and coerced into attending college.

I flew home two days later and had surgery the following day. The nurses in California had never seen a plaster cast before. They had to get an older nurse to help and find a special handheld drill to remove it. The damage was clear: my kneecap had been shattered and required immediate surgery. To hold it together, the doctor had to use two pins and a piece of wire to make a figure-eight loop.

I thought the initial pain was bad, but the pain after the surgery was well beyond anything I had ever felt up to that point or since. Both my parents had already planned to be out of town that week. My dad was already gone, and my stepmom was heading out the next day. After being released from the hospital, she brought me home and set me up in a recliner in front of the TV, then she headed out. My sister, who lived in town, would stop by to check on me.

Still loopy from being sedated, I settled in with the remote and took a sigh of relief, thinking the worst was over. I was wrong. The doctor who performed my surgery was notoriously conservative. He and my parents were worried that I would abuse any painkillers issued to me, so he prescribed a light dose, and my parents ensured I would only be given the minimum necessary. I either wasn't informed about the proper way to ration the painkillers, or I was too groggy to remember. I made a crucial mistake by waiting until the pain became severe before taking my first dose at home. I would later learn that the correct way was to take the dose before the surgical pain medication wore off, so the new painkillers were already in my system.

The pain grew quickly and severely. It was at least five times worse than what I felt when I initially broke it. This made sense since they had opened up my knee and rearranged my kneecap, sticking pins and wires in there. I sat still, trying not to move, as any twitch of a leg muscle would send paralyzing shots of pain up my leg and into my body.

I thought I could tough it out, but the pain kept getting worse. Getting up to pee was a monumental feat, a 30-minute round trip of tiny, grimacing steps on the crutches. I contemplated just peeing in my pants but came up with a better idea: I had my sister fashion a "piss bottle" for me by cutting off the top of a gallon milk carton.

I asked my sister for the next dose of my pain meds. My parents had tasked her with doling them out to me only as prescribed. She gave them to me, but they seemed to have no effect. She left for dinner with her family, and I was left alone with just the TV and my thoughts. All I could think about was the pain. I focused on it, ruminated on it, and catastrophized about it. Maybe something had gone wrong. This couldn't be right. Was I just being a total bitch?

I couldn't sleep the entire night. The next day, I was delusional from pain and lack of sleep. My sister called my parents concerned. I was nearing the end of my initial prescription, and the doctor was off for the weekend. His nurse answered our calls but didn't have the authority to issue another prescription until the doctor was back.

I took matters into my own hands. As soon as my sister was gone, I called one of my close friends, whom I knew had a connection. He was at my house in less than an hour. He took a look at my prescription bottle in the kitchen and saw that the doctor had given me the a weak prescription. It was the lowest possible dose of hydrocodone, with only six pills in the entire bottle.

My friend immediately understood my frustration. He explained that many prescription painkillers were a combination of an opioid and an over-the-counter pain reliever like acetaminophen (Tylenol). He told me that two pills could be the same size, yet have vastly different effects, with one containing only 5mg of hydrocodone, while others could have a better ratio, like 10mg.

"Classic!" he said, "You have major surgery and your parents leave you here on the couch!"

My friends had always been quick to see my parents' actions as proof that I was the forgotten one, and in that moment, as per usual, I found myself agreeing.

He set me up with a few "heavy hitters" he had brought. He took off my bandage to inspect the surgery. I had a giant cut from above my kneecap down to the top of my shin. My knee was massively swollen, and the bandages were wet with whatever goo was coming out of the cut. He cleaned it up, put on a fresh bandage, and then hung around to shoot the shit.

My relief was twofold: mental and physical. Mentally, I had someone there who knew what I needed, someone I could speak openly to without judgment, who could even make me laugh and help me take the focus off my knee. Physically, the real painkillers kicked in quickly. I felt warm and fuzzy. My knee still throbbed but it was becoming more and more of a dull nag than a splitting pain. I allowed myself to smile as I enjoyed the high.

This was the one-two punch I needed. By the time he left, my outlook on life had flipped. The pain had subsided, and I was starting to nod off to sleep. Most importantly, I gained belief that there wasn't something terribly wrong, that the worst was over, that this wouldn't last forever, and that I was in fact on my way to recovery.

The visit got me over the hump and past the post-surgery pain. The next few days I settled in for a long recovery of healing over the course of the next 12 months, including an additional surgery to remove the metal and multiple rounds of physical therapy before I could eventually get back in the water.

My feelings of loneliness and abandonment from my family were outweighed by the support of my friends. I had been carried out of the jungle and saved from post-surgery insanity by the bros. My parents had logistically arranged my return and the surgery. They economically had me covered - it was their insurance plan I was under the footed the bill. In that regard they had met their family obligations. But emotionally, my friends filled in where I felt my parents were lacking. They had carried me out of the jungle. They had come to my aid while my parents were out of town at some work function or family visit.

Maybe without my friends, I would have filled my perceived family void with opiates or alcohol - exactly what my parents feared.

Sure, we used drugs recreationally, but none of us developed an addiction. I used to think this was just luck, but after many rounds of counseling and studying it to understand addiction from other members of my family, I learned that the majority of drug use is self-medication. People have deep traumas to numb or a void to fill. My friends and I had a tight group—a family of our own—with the type of support that was more effective than any drug we'd ever experimented with.

The Middle Path

As my friends were scoring the waves of Witch's Rock, I was in a recliner at my parents’ house, left once again with too much time to think. The physical pain of my knee was a constant reminder of my stupidity, but the mental pain of being alone was even more agonizing. I began to re-evaluate the "wild" lifestyle I had recently blindly chased.

In hindsight, going wild in the streets wasn't that much fun. The reality was a far cry from the carefree imagery of surf films. Hungover surf sessions, risky drug deals, and breaking up fights were my least favorite memories of the trip. I had gone to Tamarindo to improve my surfing and find great waves, but I succumbed to the nightly ritual of drinking. This left me with a constant hangover that made me feel sick and gave me heartburn in the water. I wondered if the other guys felt as bad as I did, or if I just couldn't keep up.

Similarly, I realized that acquiring drugs in a foreign country was never worth the high. It was a risky, intense, and short-lived experience that was far more about the thrill of defying the system than the reward. Like paddling out on a day well beyond my comfort zone, the experience was uncomfortable and often ended with a sense of relief that nothing went wrong. While it made for a good story, the experience itself was hollow.

I had so desperately wanted to stray from the path my parents wanted for me, but it was the very "system" I rebelled against that had helped put me back together. The bill from my surgery and the mountain of medical expenses for follow up treatments would have put me in a level of debt that I would have spent the next two decades trying to get out of. But the system saved me from financial ruin.

The dichotomy between my medical care in Costa Rica and California couldn't have been more stark. While there was more paperwork and red tape in the States, it was comforting to be in a clean, organized hospital with modern equipment. The nurses and doctors spoke my language, which itself was comforting. And I knew I was getting top-of-the-line treatment from an experienced surgeon and modern materials, a far cry from the plaster cast and old-school syringe in Costa Rica. I imagine that if I hadn't been able to come back to California, I might have been crippled for life, a cruel irony for someone who went on a surf trip and came back unable to surf again.

The physical therapy that followed was a slow, consistent grind of low-level pain. Every session had the same three parts. First, I would sweat through simple stretches. Then, the massage therapist would dig into my fascia with their thumb, elbow, or a tool to break up the connective tissue as I gripped the table, gritted my teeth, and sweat drops grew on my forehead like I'd just eaten kung-pow chicken. The final part was the workout, and I realized that with someone else pushing me, I can't just quit when I get tired. The slow recovery taught me the true meaning of "no pain, no gain." I'd heard it a thousand times but until I entered the daily fight to painstakingly regain flexbility and strength one centimeter at a time, I didn't really understand it. But once I did, it stuck with me. To this day, it's helped me push through resistance and make progress in all areas of my life.

Reflecting back on the trip now, almost 20 years later, I still have mixed feelings. I still regret the rock jump. I'd take back all the pain and the year-long recovery in a second. I do appreciate that this became a formative experience for our group and it might attribute to the reason we're still all close. Most people I know outside of our group only loosely keep in touch with 1-2 of their friends from high school, if any. We still see each other multiple times per year and when we're together near the beach, we still surf together... and almost every time, someone has to retell the Costa Rica story.

In hindsight it's also easier to see how various influences shaped me but I ended up gravitating toward a middle path. I'm relieved I didn't follow the rebellious surfer-drop out nor recoil after Costa Rica and apply for law school. I wouldn't find fulfillment at either extreme.