The Bike to Surf Movement with Cameron from My Wave Addiction

I grew up in the South Bay of LA. Started surfing at 12 and at the time I was riding my bike to surf with my friends before class in middle school. We’d get up super early in the dark and go down there to get like 45 minutes in the water, even though we started school before 8 AM. I grew obsessed with the sport as many people do. During high school I stopped playing team sports because I found myself at soccer and hockey practice, just wanting to be at the beach. I was over having coaches telling me to run and skate laps, I was over the politics of team sports and I just decided to focus on surfing. I went and did NSSA contests every weekend, and rarely did well but I had fun doing it. Eventually, I ended up at SDSU, and I spent 5 years down there, 3 of which I was on their Surf Team. We won a national championship during my last year there. It was a blast.

After college I was dying to go to Indonesia, and My Wave Addiction started as a place for me to share stories about my travels with my friends and family. As I wrote more, people in my life seemed to like it and wanted to read more. And now it’s a year later and MWA has sort of morphed into what it is today: A place for curious surfers whose interests span beyond the happenings of the ocean. It’s funny because there is not a lot of surf-specific content on my site. I end up posting about all sorts of random topics that interest me, so while surfing is a constant underlying theme because it’s ingrained in my life, and a huge part of who I am as a person, it’s definitely not just a place for surfers. My love for surfing and the ocean often ends up being the motivation behind topics that I like to write about, including but not limited to: travel, the environment, and life in general.

Obviously surfing is a huge part of your life, hence the blog and aspirations as a surf journalist. What is it about surfing that makes you so passionate about the sport?

Hard to answer this one in an original way. The name of my site kind of says it all. I think most surfers, probably including you, understand how it can become a bit like an addiction, and how you can actually crave it. There are many parallels that can be drawn between surfers and surfing, and anyone who is really passionate about their biggest hobby, whether it’s a sport, a creative activity, or even their life’s work. What makes surfing unique to me (again, this has been said time and time again), is that we can never ride the same wave twice, which keeps things interesting. And I guess once you get barreled as well, like really, truly barreled, that kind of changes the game. That’s my ultimate craving.

Can you tell us about your new campaign, #BikeToSurf? Where did it come from and how has it been working so far?

I’ve talked about the rewards of Bike to Surf, which include saving money, exercising outside, and more human encounters.

An excerpt from the post, “I ride along the bike path in zones where there are no parking lots, and I have the freedom to spend as much time as I’d like sizing up any individual section of my local beach break. This is something I rarely did when I was driving to surf.”

Great question. I think that carpooling with friends is a great way to reduce your emissions and still drive to the beach. Also, we tend to like to check ten different spots before we surf to find the best waves, but how often do we end up back at the first place we checked? I guess the best thing you can do is just stay local and enjoy what’s right in front of you. If you can learn to really enjoy surfing average waves, I think that’s a great start in not always needing to continue driving (and emitting) to find the best surf.

Another great question. My answer unfortunately doesn’t have a ton of practical value here for readers. It’s just something inside me that I can’t help but care. It’s just a naturally occurring bug inside me that feels guilty if I’m not doing my part. I didn’t always have this, it’s pretty new in my life, but it’s real and it’s powerful and there’s no reversing it now that it’s happened. Surfing and the ocean are a motivating force behind it, but I honestly feel like this would have happened to me either way, with or without surfing.

 Such a tough one, but I’ll say HT’s.

 At home, El Porto in Manhattan Beach.