Question: Is the “family surf trip” a beautiful mélange or the devil’s most insidious contradiction?

A necessary investigation for our time.

I am, at once, a surfer and a family man and these are mutually exclusive. Surfers are selfish, by nature. Self-obsessed and edgy. Eggy. Family man necessitates selflessness, patience, kindness, benevolence, etc.

The two often thrash about and become entwined in my life. The surfer comes out on land, when a car drives by too fast when I’m walking my daughter to school and I kick its rear fender as hard as I can then chase it down until the driver opens the door at which point I press him, by the neck, against his death machine, screaming, “DON’T PADDLE ON ME!” while my daughter cries on the sidewalk.

The family man comes out in the water, when a gorgeous nugget is coming to me, straight to me, but I’ve been watching a gentle child struggle all day and now he is on the corner and now his head is down paddling with all his gentle might.

“Go!” I yell. “Go, go, go!”

It’s a rough business, trying to keep them separate, though I mostly do, but my beautiful wife is perpetually trying to destroy the fragile détente.

She has been asking, for years, to go on surf trip. She is a shredder. Once a professional snowboarder, now a grumpy local having cut her teeth in Westport, Washington, coming of age in bucolic Cardiff-by-the-Sea.

“You’re a surf journalist…” she tells me through tears. “Can you please take us on a surf trip? I need warm water and waves…” motioning to my daughter who has her hands folded as if in prayer.

And while she has taken us on snowboard trips to Wyoming, Colorado, Switzerland, France, Japan, Squaw Valley, etc. I respond, “No.”

A family surf trip equals misery in the water, particularly with a surfing spouse, wondering if he or she is getting anxious, and misery on land, playing Marco Polo in a swimming pool when, somewhere, waves are firing.

No.

The family surf trip is impossible. It is not a thing that exists or a thing that should exist. The devil’s most insidious contradiction.

But, late one night after too many vodka sodas, tired and worn down, I sighed, “Show me where you want to go.” The time is now, I suppose, as my surf journalism is quickly evolving into some new, grand mutation, possibly a modern Buddha or maybe Gandhi, and I don’t know if modern Buddhas go on many surf trips.

Gandhis definitely don’t.

Hours later she sent me an email link to Rancho Santana in Nicaragua.

I was intrigued as I’ve only ever heard glorious tales of the country from my uncle who was very good friends with… someone etched into Central American history (find out who here!) and spent time crawling around its jungles both before and after vacations to Afghanistan.

Rancho Santana looked ideal. Elegant yet folding into the verdant landscape perfectly. Pristinely white with red tiled roofs. A huge piece of property featuring a left point and beachbreak wedge out the front. A short hop to famed Colorados and Panga Drops just around the corner.

“But will it work?” I wondered. “Can a family surf trip actually work?”

More as the story develops.