Ch. 1: Searching for the Perfect Windsurfing Car
Ch. 2: Visualizing Windsurfing
Ch 3: Not Designed to Live in the Cold
Ch 5: A Whale, a Pack of Sharks and a Pod of Dolphins
Ch 6: A Gold Medal and Sponsorship
Ch 7: Island Politics
Ch 8: H.A.W.A.I.I. Makes Waves
Ch 9: Fast Racers, Slow Boat
Ch 10: More Racing, Less Boat
Ch 11: Maui No Ka Oi
Ch 12: Honors I'll Always Appreciate
Ch 1 Searching for the Perfect Windsurfing Car
In August 1996, at the USWA National Championships in Corpus Christi, Texas, U.S. Windsurfing announced the recipients of the Windsurfer of the Year Awards:
Jimmy
Diaz (top Male Competitor)
Jennifer Racette (top Female Competitor)
John Twelker (Greatest Contributor to the Sport)
Chapter 1: Searching for the Perfect Windsurfing Car
What follows is a short history of how I became involved in the sport, although some might question exactly how "short" it is!!! :-)
Sometime
in 1960: I
began my search for the perfect windsurfing car around 40 years ago.
Of course, that was before windsurfing even became a popular sport
... but I had to do something while waiting. I got my B.A. at San Diego
State College and during my years there, I'd become interested in exotic
foreign cars, especially those suitable for my future sport of windsurfing.
After trying several, I finally found the perfect car --- a Citroen
2CV (CV means "Horse Power") ... and in France, one horse
power is equal to about six of ours ... so you can understand that
the 2CV, with its 12 h.p. two cylinder air cooled motor could be somewhat
underpowered on occasion ... but what it lacked in speed and power,
it more than made up for in personality. In fact, I loved driving that
car so much I bought three of them: light blue, beige and red. My favorite
2CV was the beige one and that's the one I drove while attending graduate
school at U.C.L.A. and living at the Alpha Gamma Omega fraternity house
in Westwood. I'll never forget the time my fraternity brothers carried
the car from where it was parked on the street, up the stairs to the
fraternity house. When I returned home from classes ... there it was
... faithfully waiting for me on the front porch ... and of course,
all the brothers hanging around, waiting and watching for my reactions.
I had the last laugh though. I got in, started it up, drove it down
the first flight of stairs, signalled for a left hand turn and drove
it down the second flight of stairs to the street. We had lots of good
laughs over that one!
Besides being able to navagate stairs in style, the 2CV also offered two ways to carry your windsurfing boards. You could roll back the canvas roof panel all the way to the back window, secure it with elastic straps, and insert short board through the roof. Or, you could roll up the canvas back panel to the bottom of the window and insert long board under the seats (metal frame laced with rubber bands covered by a durable nylon pad). When bar-b-que time came, you could easily remove both front and rear seats and have a picnic in comfort right on the beach! Best of all, it got 50-55 m.p.g. ... even more if you slipstreamed big trucks.
It's also the car I was driving when I met my future wife. I'll never forget her words that evening as we walked down the street and stopped at the side of this unique, practical, comfortable, economical, exotically beautiful foreign sedan.
"Why are we stopping?", she asked and I said, smiling, "Well, this is my car".
She must have thought I was joking because she laughed and looked around for something more appropriate to drive to the coffee shop in. Any number of cars up and down the street would have done just fine and she asked about several. I was laughing inside but outside I managed to maintain a polite smile as I pulled the keys out of my pocket, unlocked the door of the 2CV and said in my best French as I gestured her to be seated, "Merci".
"You've GOT to be kidding!" she said.
"No, this is all I've got. By the way, be careful of the window ... it tends to crash on your arm when you shut the door ... "
SLAM!! slam!
"Ouch!"
Citroen 2CV affectionados got used to the double slam, one for the door closing and one for the window crashing down ... but that time, for some reason, two words flashed across my mind, "micro" and "soft", and I wondered why ... but finding no reason, I reassured my future wife,
"Love me, love my car...".
The rest of my sentence was mumbled and couldn't be heard: "... besides, this is the car that's going to take us through our courtship ... and into the 21st Century!"
Believe it or not, we drove the 2CV all though our courtship. Ah, those were good days. The 2CV had a rollback roof and rollup trunk cover (perfect for carrying windsurfing equipment), removable rubber band seats (perfect for picnics on the beach), front wheel drive (way ahead of its time and good on sand too), a totally flat floor (the gear shift stuck out of the dashboard), speedometer cable driven windshield wipers (who needs windshield wipers when you're stopped anyway and besides, the faster you drive the faster they wipe), a centrifugal clutch (no need to disengage the clutch when you came to a stop or engage it to take off), and it got 50-55 miles per gallon (great for poor graduate students and equipment poor windsurfers). It was exotic all right ... the perfect windsurfing car. If only Citroen would've beefed up the bumpers to meet the new federally mandated 5 m.p.h. law, it surely would have become THE windsurfer's choice!!
By the way, just in case you're wondering, we didn't take the 2CV on our honeymoon trip. I had made arrangements with my brother to buy his ID-19, Citroen's luxury car, which was a far more appropriate car for a honeymoon! About an hour before the wedding, I paid him most of our honeymoon funds and he handed over the keys. We sure had a great time driving around and camping out in northern California on our honeymoon.
