It¹s probably not the best time of year to be singing the praises of
bennies or inlanders. By this point in the summer, we¹ve all had our fair
share of rude, preening a-holes, traffic jams and kook-filled shoulder-to-shoulder lineups. But there¹s one breed of inlander, whom I¹ve always thought deserves a lot more praise, a lot more props. They get no respect, but deserve tons.I’m talking about the inland dwelling surfer.In the hierarchy of hard core  they sit at the top. In the hierarchy of respect, they’re near the bottom. 

I’m not talking about bennies who emerge in May, flop around like broken-winged gulls for a few months and then fly back to Bergen County after Labor Day.

I’m talking about dedicated surfers, who are simply stuck living far from the ocean.  I’m talking about guys and maybe a few gals, who suffer long drives to get to the beach but still have enough stoke to keep doing it year after year. 

At one of my regular breaks, there are a handful of such guys, and their stories are ones of unrivaled dedication. There’s a guy who gets up at 4 am and drives from his home in Somerset County, surfs DP and then heads to work in Middlesex. There are mornings in March and February when I paddle out and he’s the first one there, the locals all still tucked in their beds. There’s another guy who lives in West Orange, drives down the night before he thinks a swell will arrive and sleeps in his van to catch it early. He somehow pulls this off with a wife and baby at home, too. It’s not just the domestic juggling and commute that make this tough. It’s just flat out tougher in the lineup when you¹re not a local. You could surf for 20 years like this and be one of the best rippers around, but when you paddle out, no one knows who you are.  In the xenophobic localized lineups, if you’re not local, you’re assumed to be a kook. Nobody’s gonna give you a break and you’re gonna have to fight strangers for waves – even if you’ve been surfing that same break for longer than they’ve been alive.

 I write about it, I guess, because I lived like this for a long time before I managed to settle in Monmouth County.  I remember what seems like a zillion pre-dawn drives from Middlesex and Hudson Counties in the pre-Internet surf report days, arriving at the beach only to find frigid blown out ankle slappers. Even after I’d been surfing the same break for 15 years, I’d paddle out and get looks like I was a stranger – because I was.

Thankfully, those days are long gone for me. But not for many. You seem them every swell, plying their cars across Route 195, down the Parkway, boards strapped to the roof as they cut through the predawn darkness, driven by a stoke that overcomes geography

So the next time you them pull up at your break, somebody you don’t recognize, don’t assume they’re some kook stranger. Give em a wave.  Give em some respect. They just might be more hard core than the locals.

Peace. BD.