People Who Surf: An Interview With Palos Verdes Artist and Charger Zen Del Rio

Apparently painting isn't all Zen Del Rio is good at

Some guy from Texas told me about it when I was in San Blas. And then a couple of articles came out that didn’t name it, they were calling it the Mexican Pipeline, but I just put two and two together. So we drove down from California the following summer and we got there and it was really good. And we just started going back every year. We got into it. We thought we were invincible if we did it right. We surfed it when it was life or death and we took this all-encompassing samurai attitude. We’d face death with complete preparation, good karma, the best physical conditioning and full confidence in our equipment. We tried to address as many variables as we could before paddling out. It was something that resonated from what that guy in Hawaii had said to me

So, your approach to surfing was spilling over into all aspects of your life. You were living your life on land with surf consequences in mind?

Yea, well life does that. You can’t just be an artist when you’re behind the easel and you can’t just be a surfer in the water. It’s all connected. With surfing, that’s how it became. We had this crew down there that tuned into that beachbreak and surfed it countless times where it was life and death. (Points to a picture of perfect A-frame Puerto on his wall) This day here, I was the only guy out and got one 15-footer, this tube, and it was like, “My God.” I had been there for three months, so I was tuned, and then this day came and there was this good surfer from Sunset Beach, I don’t know who he was, and he paddled out and I was like; “Oh, wow! It’s bigger than it looks.” And he got caught inside and pushed his board up and over this big lip. But his board got sucked over and broke and he never even got a wave. After that, everybody was sitting there and it was like, “Wow!’ And some kid came out of the blue and goes, “It’s your day out there Zen.” And I was like, “Yea? You think so?” And he was like, “Yea. You couldn’t ask for better.” And we were looking at it and it was just going off. Perfect. Spitting. So he goes, “It’s your day. You’ve been waiting your whole life for this day.” And he was right.,p> Who was he?

Just some kid. Some kid from Newport. He looked like he was 17. And I was like 21 or 22.

What year was this?

This was 1980.

And how long had you been going down at this point?

Like three years. So, I started walking to paddle out, and I slipped into this like extrasensory type of feeling. I felt like I had a sixth sense. I was really tuned into all of my senses. I paddled out during a total lull. The ocean had gone completely flat, so I paddled out without really even getting my hair wet, but when I got out there and moved into the lineup, that’s when the sets started coming. And I was like, “Oh my God.” So what happened was, I saw this set of rights and I paddled over the first two. The third one, I went for. But suddenly, it double-sucked and I was stuck on top trying to pull back. I was going over the falls and I thought I was dead, but the wind caught my board and it went flying and I went up with it and over. As I swam over to it, I was shaking. But I got my board, and got it together and this next set came in, and I chose my wave. It was such a perfect wave, and as I was taking off, at first, the take off was so easy. But as I got about a third of the way down, it started to stretch and get really steep. I was on-rail, and I realized it was going to tube really soon, so I remember clearly thinking that I better accelerate. I just started going faster and faster and the fins started to hum. They had never hummed before, and it was high pitched, like a teakettle. So I went into a turn and it went even higher, and a set myself up in the perfect spot and the whole tube pitched out right as I turned. And as I un-weighted, and slowed down, the teakettle just went away. The pitch went lower. And I remember going into the tube and it was this perfect giant tube and I was in the clear. I had it made. And when I came out, the thing just fire-hosed me, like Pipeline or Teahupoo does, and it literally blasted me off my board. And I was out in the flats and landed on my hands, hydroplaning, body surfing, and then it doubled up again, and it was still like and 8-foot wave. I went into it body surfing. And then I freaked out. I thought I could get out of it, so it tried to go through the face and I went up and over the falls and really got rag-dolled. I really got thrashed. Thankfully, no waves were behind it, so I made it into the beach. And I got to the beach, and the whole group that I was with came running to greet me. My girlfriend was the first person in the pack, and she was holding my board. So I was like, “Oh, good. No broken board.” She came running up and jumped on me. I was on my hands and knees trying to get a breath, and she was crying and hugging me and my buddies were so psyched that I made it out of that tube. So I was kind of the hero of the day. At dinner, this rich Mexican tourist bought my meal. I asked for my check and the waiter was like, “Oh, he has it.” And the guy was like; “You got that wave this morning?” And I was like, “Yea.” And he goes, “That was the first time I’ve ever seen surfing.” Can you imagine that?

Visit ZenDelRio.comto view and purchase more of Zen’s art.