(Writer’s note: While I intend to continue my series “Sick Surfers,” I am forced to use this column to comment on the best addition to North County since bike lanes.)



The new Encinitas library is alive with possibility for surfers who like to dream. Check out the Ocean Room.

I still remember my first library card and the book I checked out, “The Tiny Man.” It was then, as a 5-year-old kid, that I became hooked on reading — sent off to dream about thumb-sized people and worlds so unlike our own that they might have been located on distant planets.

By high school, my love of reading had been distracted by my love of the opposite sex and the library became the best excuse ever for meeting potential friends and discussing upcoming parties. Still, some of the knowledge stored there found its way into my distracted little brain.

Beyond high school, libraries once again became a center of learning for me as I poured over guidebooks and maps, dreaming of surfing destinations that had yet to be discovered — a library sent me to New Zealand in 1972, where, caught in a deluge of biblical proportions I read for 40 days and nights, gaining new understandings by the hour, until my head was bursting with great expectations.

That little town was named Gisbon, and its library was as big as libraries of cities five times its size. It then occurred to me that a city could and should be judged by its library, and I returned home to Encinitas, recalling that I had more books stored in my parent’s garage than the local library had on its few shelves. This was nobody’s fault, but the once-tiny town had outgrown the facility.

A while ago I began hearing what are usually unpleasant sounds to me — those of earthmovers followed by concrete trucks and electric saws and hammers as a new structure is being erected. This time the result was not a Mediterranean nightmare, but something beautiful and timeless that stretches out for a city block and invites people in, rather than keeping them out with dogs, and alarms and gates. This was the new Encinitas Branch library.

My first tour of the place was with former Encinitas Mayor Sheila Cameron, who directed me to the Ocean Room where I found myself surrounded by a sea of books, three of which I had written. All of the books contained stories of the sea, sometimes even touching upon surf stories for children and their parents.

I had never dreamed that such a place as this would exist in my hometown. Here were books on big waves, travels, how to books, books on Rhinos who surfed, crazy people who surfed, living reefs and dying oceans, all in one beautiful setting.

And here before me were surfers, some of whom are longtime friends of mine like Chris Stewart, Debbie and Calvin Tom and Billy Sterns. Others whom I had only seen on the beach showed up sunburned, pockets filled with sand, having recently returned from a session of riding good waves.

I spoke to the group for about an hour and then accompanied my wife, Tracy, on a self-guided tour, stopping for brief inspiration on the patio where chairs beneath umbrellas were set up to face the ocean. I am certain that our conclusion was not unique, as Tracy offered, “We can come here every Saturday, sit on the deck and read.” Imagine the joy of being surfed out, warm and dry, meeting friends, sitting in the sun and reading everything from classic novels, to how to build a patio, to where take your next surf trip. A moment later it occurred to me that Encinitas has regained its title as surfing capitol.

This is the life.