Another Warning to Northerners on the Great Lakes Vacationing Near an Ocean
It’s not a lake.
I grew up on Lake Erie in northern Ohio.
I moved to Ventura, California, right after high school.
I knew nothing about the ocean.
Zuma Beach, California, 1984
An Ohio girl flies to L.A. in 1984 to follow a guy. He picks her up and takes her to their new home in Ventura, California.
A commune of hippies and Navy folk sharing a living space.
The first weekend I was in my new home, the group I lived with decided to head to Zuma beach for a day of sunning and drinking.
I was on the swim team in high school and loved to swim growing up on Lake Erie.
But a chlorinated pool and a lake are much different than the powerful Pacific Ocean.
A few housemates were into body surfing, and I wanted to try it.
The first wave I caught, I was hooked.
I body surfed for hours. Over and over, we swam out into the surf. Turning around and swam hard towards shore before the wave would pick us up in the froth and catapulted us forward on top of the cresting water.
