Gerry Lopez article in the New York Times.

www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/sports/20surfer.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=sports/



Gerry Lopez on the Deschutes River. In his younger days, Lopez was a surfer known as Mr. Pipeline, but now you'll find him on a stand-up paddleboard.

BEND, Ore. - Four hours from the nearest surf, 4,000 feet above sea level and 4 decades removed from the days when he was known as Mr. Pipeline for deep and daring tube rides at one of the world's most treacherous wave spots, Gerry Lopez shouldered a board beneath ponderosa pines on his way to the banks of the Deschutes River.

Dean Guernsey for The New York Times
Gerry Lopez with some of the boards he shapes in Bend, Ore.
He might have made his name and reputation along Oahu's North Shore - and in Hollywood, where he appeared in cult films, including "Conan the Barbarian" with Arnold Schwarzenegger - but Lopez has made another life here in the Cascades the past 15 years.

He lives with his wife, Toni, and son, Alex, in a tidy Craftsman house next to the river, near Mount Bachelor, where snow clings to the peak through summer. He begins most mornings with yoga before driving to a shop in town to shape custom surfboards, a career that began during his heyday in Hawaii. And in spare moments, Lopez, 61, likes to glide along the green river on a stand-up paddleboard - maybe the most mellow surfing experience yet devised, and one that has expanded the sport's reach to unlikely places and populations.

"There have been a lot of water-paddling sports here already - kayaking, rafting," said Lopez, who started stand-up paddling a few years ago on lakes near his house. "Stand-up is different than surfing. All you need is water. You don't need waves."

You don't need much experience, either.

"With a minimum of athletic ability, anyone can get on a board and say, 'Wow, I can do this,' and start paddling and cover a mile before they know it without a lot of effort," Lopez said.

Pioneered by Honolulu's Waikiki beach boys to monitor tourists during surfing lessons, riders stand upright on a long, wide board and use a six-foot paddle to propel themselves. Laird Hamilton, the big-wave surfer, revived interest in stand-up paddling - S.U.P. in industry argot - in Hawaii a decade ago. The trend soon spread to waves around the world. Now adapted to flat water, stand-up paddling has surged inland.

The languid pace of surfing's latest offshoot suits Lopez. Even during his days as the undisputed leader of Pipeline, he embodied a Zen approach.

"Gerry was very competitive," said Shaun Tomson, 1977 world champion of surfing and sometime Lopez sparring partner at Pipeline. "But he never displayed any sort of aggression."

"When I think of Gerry, I always think of someone very calm with water exploding all around him," Tomson said. "He was always very calm and unperturbed in that deathly situation he was in."

Lopez last surfed Pipeline in December during an exhibition as part of the Pipeline Masters, an event he won in 1972 and 1973. Although fit and trim, he allows that he has slowed down.

"It's a whole different deal," he said. "I'm old now."

About Pipeline's famous lineup, Lopez said: "It's probably the most crowded spot with good, top-level surfers. It's like that any time it breaks. They really want it badly. I don't want it that badly."

He will most likely retire from surfboard shaping in a couple of years. In the meantime, Lopez is riding the new wave of stand-up paddling, which has caught on here along the Deschutes, especially a section that courses beneath a footbridge through the Old Mill District in town. Folks from Lake Tahoe to the Mississippi River, and from the Great Lakes to New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee, have begun to figure it out, too. All of which has caught the surf industry somewhat off balance.

"I get media inquiries from Midwest outlets asking about S.U.P. because their lakes are starting to see more and more of it," Mandy Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association, a leading trade group, wrote in an e-mail message.

The manufacturers association says it does not have sales figures on stand-up paddling because it is so new. But three magazines cover the sport. And Action Sports Retailer, a board sports trade show held in August in San Diego, will host a stand-up demonstration this year - on a lagoon, not the ocean.

Scott Bass, an early stand-up enthusiast in California, founded the Sacred Craft Surfboard Expo, an exhibition for surfboard shapers and manufacturers held in conjunction with the Action Sports Retailer show.

"If you consider stand-up paddleboards as surfboards, they are far and away the best sellers," he said.

Not everyone has embraced the new equipment. The boards' size and maneuverability make it easy to catch waves but also contribute to a sense that their users are hogging precious surf. Thus, many surf shops refuse to sell stand-up boards, and some Southern California beach communities have restricted when and where they can be used.

Related
Times Topic: SurfingWith many surfers sneering, Lopez has lent legitimacy to stand-up paddling.

He sells a line of boards through a licensing agreement with a manufacturer. In June, he hosted an open-water race in Waikiki, an event that drew more than 600 competitors. Next week, he will compete in the Molokai 2 Oahu paddleboard world championship, a 32-mile haul across a channel in Hawaii that sold out for the first time in its 14-year history.

Lopez has a record of being at the leading edge of trends. In the 1970s, he shaped surfboards tailored to the waves at Pipeline with a lightning bolt logo on top. It was an embryonic age for professional surfing, and free boards were a form of payment. Soon, the world's top surfers rode lightning bolt boards at famous surf spots along the North Shore, kick-starting an era of sponsored professional surfing.

He later lent his support to windsurfing, big-wave tow-in surfing, and snowboarding, a sport that led him to relocate to Bend with his wife and son in 1995.

"Largely because of his diversity of excellence, he'll have a long, enduring reputation compared to most people," said Drew Kampion, a onetime editor at Surfer and Surfing who now works for The Surfer's Path. "He's not only a surfer and a snowboarder, but he's also an exquisite shaper."

When the surf is up, Lopez still drives to the coast. This month he sliced his wrist during a wipeout while stand-up paddle surfing. The result: eight stitches, and instructions not to get them wet. That ruled out surfing for a while, but not a few runs on a lazy river.

With his white board knifing the current on a sunny morning this month, a sage of surfing dispensed wisdom on the Deschutes, politely telling two neophytes that they were holding their paddles backward and warning that leashes linking their boards and ankles could snag on toppled trees downriver.

For a man who walked on water in surfing circles, stand-up paddling actually comes pretty close.

Another new SUP article about the rise of stand up paddle boards.. This one from the Wall Street Journal.

www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703720504575377023651849234

DJ



When Chris Krause hops on a board each morning to surf Lake Michigan, the water is usually flat. But who cares? Instead of catching a wave, Mr. Krause is catching a workout, by standing on his board and paddling for 60 minutes.

"For my money it's the best total body workout you can get," says Mr. Krause, a 44-year-old triathlete who runs a match-making service for promising athletes and college coaches.

.Stand-up paddle surfing is the fitness rage of the summer. In lakes, rivers and bays where the surf is never up, Americans in skyrocketing numbers are standing on boards and paddling, a balancing act that strengthens the muscles of the legs, buttocks, back, shoulders and arms.

"Stand-up paddle surfing is a valuable new form of cross-training, in part because it's so low impact," says Cindi Bannink, a triathlon coach in Madison, Wis.

For an industry long dependent on California and Hawaii, the trend is rapidly forging new sales territories. "Suddenly, our fastest-growing markets are places like Chicago, Boise and Austin, Texas," says Ty Zulim, sales manager for Surftech International, a surf-board maker and distributor based in Santa Cruz, Calif.

"Stand-up paddling is the fastest-growing segment of the surf industry," says Sean Smith, executive director of the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association, whose most recent study found that the industry had sales in 2008 of $7.2 billion.

Some manufacturers say they can't make them fast enough. "Every one we make is already sold, and that's the case with most manufacturers," says surfing legend Laird Hamilton, who has licensed his name and stand-up board designs-including a model called the Laird-to Surftech and other manufacturers.

After introducing stand-up boards at west coast stores last year, Recreational Equipment Inc. this summer stocked it in a number of land-locked stores-and met its annual sales projections by mid-June, says Nathan Grothe, product manager for REI, based just outside of Seattle.

Even general merchandiser Costco Wholesale Corp. began selling stand-up boards this summer to great success, says Jack Weisbly, the Kirkland, Wash., chain's sporting goods' merchandise manager. "We're selling a lot of them to hotels and resorts that are located near water," he says.

Known as SUP (pronounced as in "Wassup?"), the stand-up paddling trend comes on the heels of the kayak craze, but offers potentially greater health benefits, especially given recent research showing the hazards of prolonged sitting. Like yoga, standing on a board requires basic balancing abilities, which in turn strengthen and tone any and all muscles used to stay in position. (A new trend in some still-water locales involves staging yoga classes on stand-up boards.)

Surfer Laird Hamilton, with daughter Reece, 6, on Hanalei River, Kauai.
.People of any age can get started, proponents say, recommending that newcomers should use the widest-and therefore sturdiest-boards. While conventional surf boards are about 20 inches in width, stand-up boards can be 32 inches wide. Children older than toddlers can use them alongside their grandparents, although life preservers are recommended and in some locations required.

Newcomers should kneel on the board and paddle that way before trying to rise to their feet. In still water, standing up is hardly more difficult on a stand-up board than on solid ground. Once afoot, staying that way is relatively easy. This reporter-who during yoga class takes frequent tumbles-stayed dry during an hour of debut paddle surfing last week on the choppy waters of Lake Michigan.

Like cycling, paddle surfing can be done at a recreational pace or, for an aerobic workout, at heart-thumping speed. And like yoga, stand-up paddle surfing is proving particularly popular with women.

"Nearly 50% of the buyers of our stand-up boards are women, which is a much much higher percentage than" conventional surf boards, says Mr. Hamilton.

At worst, a tumble means getting wet. But many veterans say they never do. "If falling off was a real danger, my wife and I wouldn't be out on Lake Michigan doing it in March," when chunks of ice are floating in the lake, says Mr. Krause, who says only his feet ever get wet.

High-end models of stand-up boards sold in sporting-goods stores range from about $900 to $1,500, with the paddle costing an additional $150 to $300. Costco, however, offers a board-and-paddle set for as little as $429.

Paddles have given rise to races. Dozens are scheduled this summer, up from none only a few years ago, with the fastest paddlers moving well beyond 10 miles an hour. "This is to surfing what snowboarding first was to skiing," says Mr. Hamilton. "I'm convinced it will be an Olympic sport."

Mr. Hamilton declines to call himself the inventor of the sport because Pacific Islanders-and Italy's Venetians-for centuries have stood in boats using paddles or poles.

Yet there's one place where stand-up paddling isn't popular: the waters where conventional surfers converge. To them, the oversized boards and six-feet long paddles represent a danger, especially in the hands of novices. "Don't Encourage Them," said a recent headline in a blog called Postsurf.com.

Write to Kevin Helliker at [email protected]