Ian Crane, unwinding a ruffled apex, Santa Ana, California

“The waves in California weren’t any good til the end of January,” says fabulous teen lensman Quinn Matthews. “There was a decent sized swell poised to hit California, and strong, offshore, Santa Ana winds to comb it. The only thing was that the swell direction was a little unusual, and the period a bit long, which threw a bunch of people off. Almost everyone in Southern California seemed to make a break for Mexico but Ian Crane, Tanner Rozunko and I did a little road trip north to Central California. The wind was so strong it kept blowing open the top to the bed of the pickup truck, and we almost lost all our stuff a few times. Everyone we knew up there was telling us that it wasn’t any good, and they’d been driving around all day looking for somewhere to surf, but we were already too invested in the road to turn around. Once we got there we stopped at McDonalds, grabbed some Big Macs and stumbled across this great sandbar at the first beach we checked. There were these dreamy peaks up and down the beach with almost no one out. We jumped up and down with excitement a few times, ran down to the beach, and surfed until it was dark outside.”