Unpacked & Naked Podcast
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Unpacked & Naked Podcast
Episode 42: Caleb Howard and The Waves of Change: A Lifeguard's Journey Back Home
What motivates a lifeguard to return to the sandy shores after years of pursuing a career in clinical counseling? Join us as Caleb Howard shares his incredible journey back to Santa Cruz, where the pull of the ocean waves and the call of family brought him home. With a background in trauma therapy and lifeguarding, Caleb opens up about the complexities of balancing a career in mental health with the call of the sea. Through personal anecdotes, we explore the highs and lows of his decade-long journey, touching on the demanding nature of lifeguarding and the unique challenges faced by those who choose this life-saving profession.
As we navigate the changing tides of lifeguarding culture, explore the persistent issues within mental health services, and understand the evolving dynamics of the Santa Cruz surf scene, this episode delves into the personal and professional growth that shapes our lives. Listen to how Caleb's experiences reflect broader societal changes, highlighting the interplay between personal ambition and community responsibility. We discuss the systemic challenges of becoming a therapist in California, the cultural shifts in local surf communities, and the dedication of volunteers who step up during crises, painting a vibrant picture of a community in flux.
Our conversation also turns to the importance of community awareness and proactive communication in water safety practices. With a focus on hope and resilience, we reflect on how individuals continue to thrive within flawed systems, offering light in challenging times. Through it all, the bond between father and son shines through, as we share lessons learned and laughter in equal measure, underscoring the enduring theme of support and love. Join us in this heartfelt conversation that blends the personal with the universal, revealing the power of family and community in shaping our lives.
fucking slay these guys while you guys are talking. Welcome to the Unpacked and Naked podcast. I'm your host, michael Howard. We are sponsored by Santa Cruz Vibes Magazine at most of your local very cool establishments in Santa Cruz County. You can go to that magazine and see a lot about what's going on in the county. Also sponsored by Pointside Beach Jack. They're the host of the podcast. We get to use their facility, but of course not today. Today we are actually in my living room. I get to sit with my son, caleb Howard. My other son, aiden, is sitting in the backdrop playing video games.
Speaker 2:My wife is outside eating a sandwich. No, no podcast over. We're going to keep going.
Speaker 1:No, that's fine.
Speaker 2:I can Aiden, because the reality is that you are on break.
Speaker 1:So here we are, caleb Howard, hi, what's?
Speaker 2:going on. Not much so. This is the third, much so, this is the third time. This is the third time we've attempted to record.
Speaker 1:We've had bad chords, or cards, not chords. But well, you might have a bad chord because you play guitar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know well. Yeah, I think what I'm trying to think about before going into this is about the last two times that we talked. I feel like the deviation in conversation from the first time was very clear, that this is like a podcast where I'm going to be talking about lifeguarding it's connection to our community, and then the second time got a little more in the weeds of like our personal dynamic and like how we relate to one another, um, and I think there's like a middle space that we can find for the third round. That I think is going to be good. But I'm trying to be mindful of, like all the things that I already said that I really wanted to say and I think would. This is like a good platform to get it out or just like a good vessel for me to vent about some thoughts that I've had. Now that I'm back home, um, and maybe that's a good place to start is just like coming back home from the environment that I was in and doing the job that I've been doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great place for you to start here soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's hilarious.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, the listeners have already heard, if they listen to the three previous podcasts, that I'm re-changing my format quite a bit way out of my story and into the story of us, what makes Santa Cruz just such a dynamic place and the people that come around here and and choose to call this place home.
Speaker 2:And who else have you been interviewing?
Speaker 1:Lots of people Lucas from Quicksilver beer, mike at at Woodhouse, nathan, like there's, there's. I got like a list of a hundred people 20 of which have said yes, and we're going. Caleb Dang, it's kind of real, as real as a silly podcast can be. It's the town podcast. It's the town that's what the town podcast is Beauty town, yeah, anyway. So I got three questions. Ok, it'll be pretty simple, but why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself, what you want them to know, and we'll start right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, caleb Howard, your son, obviously you are. You're the experiment. Yeah, I'm also the one that kind of I've gone furthest from the roost, I think. Well, that's not necessarily true. Aiden spent some time out of the house and Brennan's definitely established himself as kind of a fixture in our community, which is really good, but I've definitely spent the most time outside of this environment, out of the three brothers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're about a decade away, so this is your first real amount of time back in about 10 years for, like this is my first substantial amount of time in the last 10 years where I've spent more than like a month back in santa cruz yeah um, I've I've been. What I've been up to in that interim is I've been getting, uh, my degrees. I got a bachelor's in communications, which is I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's like, it's fine, it's what you do when you don't know what you want to do. It was a good segue into a different degree.
Speaker 2:And I got my bachelor's in communications down at Point Loma, Nazarene, and then I decided to double down and go get my master's in clinical counseling at my alma mater. So two degrees from Point Loma, and the degree in clinical counseling was great. I was working mostly when I was in my internship at a hospital. I was working in the trauma IOP for Sharp Mesa Vista, which was um really amazing experience. I feel like I developed a lot as an individual and also professionally got a deeper understanding of um a lot of the conditions that are affecting um, not necessarily just, uh, my patients, but larger scale, like California, the government and government, and um how individuals function in those organizations. Um. So that was really interesting time of my life, and then I'm gonna adjust your mic.
Speaker 1:Okay, hold on, I got you this right.
Speaker 2:It's more aimed at you, yeah um, and then, uh yeah, was doing that for a little bit kind of dabbled in private practice and then circled back to lifeguarding. I had been lifeguarding on the side after quitting lifeguarding when I first moved down to San Diego.
Speaker 1:So when did you become a lifeguard?
Speaker 2:I became a lifeguard when I turned 18. So 2014, it was the summer I turned 18. So 2014, it was the summer I turned 18. And it was. It was just wasn't the right time. Well, it was the right time. It was the right time to learn a lesson, I guess, about like who I was as a person and how I fit into really, really intensive structural hierarchies, which, at the time, santa Cruz State Parks especially, was a pretty intense environment, because the stakes were high and everybody really wanted to be there. If you can hear the sirens, it's probably somebody responding.
Speaker 1:They always hear sirens on 41st Avenue.
Speaker 2:I'm going to just check Pulse Point just in case that it's a water rescue, just because it's a water rescue, just cause it's been a little bit busy this season for our listeners, we we it.
Speaker 1:The waves have been giant all season, beginning in November and, yes, and let's just say that there's a few alarms that go off in the in the house.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Aiden was here when I was like in the middle of a nap and my phone went off and there was a water rescue at capitola and it was like middle of the night there was one's middle of the night.
Speaker 2:It was maybe like 7 pm, yeah, but it's dark it's dark yeah and I saw the guy getting sucked out in the rip current from the view from our deck and I was like, oh shit, I'll be the first one there if I hurry. And so I feel like there's just a general energy that's been shifting through the county, so to speak, since I've been back back, which is kind of interesting, but, um, also, uh, a lot of acute water rescues, meaning, um, meaning like you have like a now. This is too. This is too soon. We're gonna.
Speaker 1:We could wait, we can wait whole thing um anyways so so you got, you got your, uh, your master's, and in counseling master's counseling.
Speaker 2:Well, the first two years of lifeguarding that I did in santa cruz, very um cultures changed a lot.
Speaker 2:Everybody wanted to be a lifeguard. When I, when I first started lifeguarding um, it was a very prestigious role within our community and I was kind of chasing that prestige. And then once I started doing the job, I realized that there was a lack of prestige that didn't scratch an itch that I had for my own ego and also I wasn't really taking the steps to better myself as maybe even just an employee within that organization and the informal structures of that hierarchy kind of consumed me. At that point I definitely put a target on my back in some ways, because I was a really competitive athlete and I was hyper competitive in an environment where competitiveness doesn't necessarily it's it's a part of the culture, but it is not's a part of the culture, but it is not a useful part of the culture yeah, I mean it's been kind of thematic in the other podcasts about the difference between competing with someone as opposed to competing against yes, yeah, yes, and I think there's there.
Speaker 2:There is a really big culture shift that's happening in lifeguarding, especially here in santa cruz and then throughout california in general, between all the agencies and like how we work together and um that competing against each other thing that, just as part of santa cruz though, too yeah, which like west side, east side beef is like a whole thing too, I think it's.
Speaker 2:It is very much so changing because, um, just because nobody fucking does this job anymore nobody wants to get paid less than mcdonald's employees yeah, yeah, to rescue stuff that's like pretty gnarly like like I'm not gonna stroke my ego too too hard, but it is. It is a job that requires a lot of effort at times. Um, it's very easy in some ways like I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna dance around, that I'm not gonna pretend like, uh, I'm not just cruising on the beach and, uh, getting tanned, working out, get a hangout outside, outside all day like drive around trucks, get burritos whenever I feel like it.
Speaker 1:That is a reality of the job, but that's not what we get paid to do yeah, I mean, I just interviewed lucas who owns quicksilver and rise, uh, collective, and he was talking about when he worked in. You know that that there's this reality that your head's always on a swivel, like your job is to make sure that you know going to the beach or a pool or anywhere, like that is doesn't turn into the worst day, you know but, but there's, but it's mostly boring until it's not oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the same thing with firemen. Like you don't pay firemen to play cards and make spaghetti at the house all day like you pay them because when uh shit's burning down, you need uh people with a really strong work ethic, who are willing to sacrifice themselves for their community, to show up and put in hard work, um, and that's why they get paid.
Speaker 1:So how did they pay the big bucks?
Speaker 2:But let's, let's circle back to so I did my two years in Santa Cruz. Had I had a. I had an incident at work where I didn't perform as well that I wanted to. I don't even know if I've told you this.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I told this in the last one.
Speaker 2:There was a call where there was a C-spine specifically at Black's Beach down here by Twin Lakes and I just didn't like.
Speaker 2:I handled it like a 19-year-old would you know, just not well and it wasn't to my fullest abilities or my training capacity. I didn't do anything clinically dangerous, it just wasn't the best like it wasn't the standard that I was being held to. If I'm being honest, I wasn't. I was being held to a pretty high standard, but I and it did not meet that standard. Whether or not that's a realistic standard for a 19 year old to maintain is like a totally different conversation.
Speaker 1:Or a 16 year old for that matter.
Speaker 2:It's what you're asked of when you when you step into lifeguarding in general, we're asking 16 year olds and up to do things that I would not trust. Adults like, who have lived long, full lives and are very well educated to do things that I would not trust, uh, adults like who have lived long, full lives and are very well educated to do so yeah, um, it's just weird in that way, but ultimately I felt like I had failed. I was also going through like a pretty rough transition, uh, regarding a relationship. I was quitting water polo and, um, I just needed to do a hard reset down in san diego when I went to my undergrad program, kind of ran away from some things, which was you know yeah, it's just how it is.
Speaker 1:Well, it's what, what you do to become an adult in some ways?
Speaker 2:yeah, totally like I don't. I don't have any qualms about it. There's definitely things that I wish I did better, but nothing that I um really nothing that I would do differently, I guess. Right, just not something you'd do again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wouldn't want to redo it for sure so let's segue a little bit. Anyways, wait, yeah, go ahead. Finished undergrad, moved to San Francisco. Hate San Francisco. Come back, feel like there's unfinished business in San Diego and start a lifeguard again at 22. I'm 29 now.
Speaker 1:So a little brief pause from 22 like or 19 to, because I feel like you might have been 17 when you started yeah, oh yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:So maybe three seasons in santa cruz, and then, um yeah, and then seven, and so this might be my 10th season yeah, damn, I think so you're getting old, I guess so you're getting old geez, but why don't you share with the audience a little bit about um?
Speaker 1:you know why you didn't just jump into clinical counseling right away?
Speaker 2:um, I feel like there, like there's a lot of one things that I like doing more. Just to be honest, it is very much so a job, and I think that people, when you think of your archetypal therapist or psychologist, when you think of your archetypal therapist or psychologist, you think of them in these very specific ways as, like this is the kind of person that becomes a psychologist or becomes a therapist, but it's still a bureaucracy to a certain extent, like there's so many people don't know about what's going on with the BBS, which is the governing body which all therapists and psychologists have to operate under in the state of california. It's just a weird organization with a lot of really intensive requirements. There's a massive influx of therapists coming from out of state moving to california because you can get paid a lot better to do therapy out here. There's a crazy demand for therapy out here because of the cultural shifts that are happening out here yeah, I.
Speaker 1:It kind of seems with the onset of COVID that therapy really became a thing. But what hasn't been removed is what has been true all along is that people with more means have a tendency to be where the quote unquote good therapists go to because the money's there.
Speaker 1:The people who have deep need get the therapy that the government will offer totally, which is there's a pretty, very specific kind of therapy right, it's, there's a very huge disparity in between that, if you're not from a lot of means to afford the kind of therapy that maybe you would need to sort through, you know, the, the things that you're working through maybe aren't as available because of those conflicting things. And, and I mean on the on the outside of the structure, it looks to me like most people cut their teeth, you know, at what would appear to be a lower tier.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, there there is. There are careers to be had at that level and it's pretty easy to move into supervisory positions when you're working in a clinical setting of the nature of billing and insurance and how insurance covers therapy because it is a medical service now, which is a really good thing. It is objectively a good thing, I think, that insurance companies should be covering therapy for their patients because, um, mental health and physical health are intertwined, um, so they're they're saving money at the end of the day, right Making sure that they're um that insurance companies clients are mentally fit. That being said, the type of therapy that you are going to be able to get if you get eight sessions, for example, through um whatever insurance that you're getting, or you get um sent to a six week IOP program because of a really acute issue that you're getting, or you get sent to a six-week IOP program because of a really acute issue that you're dealing with, something along the lines of a more intensive clinical diagnosis, maybe post-5150, you're getting therapy that is condensed to fit in a timeframe where we need you to get to a functional level to reenter the workforce.
Speaker 2:Essentially, like when I was working at the hospital, I was mostly working with active duty military. We're in an eight-week program. My focus is PTSD and trauma. When they show up, what most often was 20 and under kids, it was 18, 19, 20 year olds, occasionally even 17 year olds, and I'm not doing adolescent therapy with them. I'm doing adult therapy with them in groups with like other dudes who are in their like, 30s and 40s.
Speaker 2:Um, I am trying to get them as much information to take care of themselves as quickly as possible and to realign bad behaviors as quickly as I can, because eight weeks is not a time frame where you unpack any trauma right or you do any long-term work, you shouldn't even talk about your trauma within that time frame because we're not going to be able to develop a relationship enough before I have to pass them on to like whatever organization they're going to afterwards, right, um, that's just kind of the nature of the beast in that environment. I don't know if there is a better way to do it in the current system that we have, without a complete revamp of everything in the entire um, health care system just getting changed. So I'm I'm saying like obviously I have a very jaded lens because I'm obviously not in the field. I have really specific opinions about health insurance and diagnoses too. That isn't always helpful. It's helpful in my current job where I get to do a little bit more peer support and introduce psychological concepts to lifeguarding agencies, those types of things.
Speaker 2:But ultimately I'm not going to be the guy who shows up as a therapist in a clinical setting and changes everything. It's so much bigger than any idea or concept that I have and there's so much more money moving through it than you could ever imagine. And then also the government structures that are in place are weird and like very entrenched and don't make any sense. The BBS, for example, that governing body that I was talking about earlier, where they post all of their updates regarding licensure examinations, other random things, is solely through their Facebook page. Like what it's like? Wow, it's, it's um. They won't update anything over the phone or via their website and they have, I think, seven people now that work there to service, probably close to like 11 000 different plus.
Speaker 2:So it's just untenable people that are applying for licensure need to re-up licensure. Then there's more and more therapists being made, every single like yeah, yeah, that are required to go through the licensing process.
Speaker 1:That isn't supported enough to actually get the people that are getting licensed yeah, and I think the ratio for therapists slash even um.
Speaker 2:Psychiatrists to californians is when I remember last looking it was like one psychiatrist every like 18 000 californians like, and there's way more people who need psychiatrists that are in the psych so portion it's like we're so late stage. It was like when I showed up the apocalypse had already happened. I'm like getting tossed into the wasteland. That is like modern psychology, and it wasn't a good fit for me. I think there's a lot of people that are doing really great work there. I just don't know if that's my spot to do great work yet.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, so you switch lanes a little bit. Yeah, let's. Let's take this moment to kind of. You know you grew up in santa cruz county. You know you've lived in various places in the county. You know currently sitting in capitola right now uh, what was it like growing up here? In contrast to, really, the last four months that you've now lived back here. You know how the county shaped you to almost what you're bearing witness to now. And and the good shifts, the, the differences you, what are your thoughts in there?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest maybe let's talk about like how showing up back here as like kind of a professional lifesaver, like a lifeguard like just that perspective, cause there's a lot of different cultural dynamics that I think have changed due to economic factors and like who's all living here, who can like show up, work remote, but I think that lifeguarding and who gets rescued is a really good vessel to understand how those demographics have changed, because I think, growing up, I had this very specific perspective on, like, how I was going to fit into this community because, um, when I was growing up, it was um one very structured. There was um a lot of different people that were in this town that you looked up to maybe I don't know if looked up to is the right word.
Speaker 1:Well, you looked to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were setting the tone for a very large group of people Like, yeah, just the heavy local at any given surf spot that you wanted to be at kind of set a cultural tone for whatever place that you were surfing. Like you could pick up on the difference between like surfing Capitola, or surfing the hook, or surfing privates or surfing pleasure point, and this is all within like a mile a mile a mile, a mile, like there's.
Speaker 2:There's not a lot of um, a lot of space between these different spot, but the tones were so different when you're entering the water and a lot of that had to do with the types of people that were in the water, that were running the peak, that were, um, catching the most waves or surfing the best. Those people, um, ultimately had an impact on how those lineups ran and then, in the long run, how, um, that environment physically changed. Even, um, I think about the concrete steps at the hook and like those getting put in. Yeah, it's like a sign, like it's a visit, like it obviously physically changed how the wave broke a lot, but it was also a massive cultural shift at the time of, like, there's a lot more tech, people like out in the water that are entering the space.
Speaker 2:The reason why those wooden stairs are getting taken away in the first place is because there's a safety risk or hazard that is being perceived by members of the public that are showing up and they want to recreate there, and then they're pursuing um, uh, the government to change, change aspects of that and put tax dollars into it, and then they make it and then the wave breaks totally different and there's not really like uh, there's kind of like a left bull there now, but not really, and the sand moves all differently, and then sand issues are a whole other thing that the entire state is dealing with. But also the people that are there, that have been surfing there for a really long time, are trying to make sense of their new faces that are showing up there, because they've been used to interacting with the large hierarchy that's been established there for a long time, getting disrupted by a huge influx of people that are all of a sudden there's this massive portion of people that are at the bottom of the totem pole and there's not this right.
Speaker 1:You used to have to be able to get down the cliff before you could surf yeah, like, even at pleasure, point like the ropes course.
Speaker 2:That was there like I have really distinct memories of like holding on for dear life on those ropes and I'm sure like all of my siblings can relate to that too. Just because it's it's a fucked up one, um, super dangerous, like the, my inner lifeguard is like I can't believe that that was allowed like that's. It's so bad. It's so bad, it was so dangerous. Yeah, so dangerous.
Speaker 2:But now there's a staircase to the other danger zone yeah, yeah, the staircase the 38th, and at the point is just, it's just like, uh, it's so dangerous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it, it like well yeah. I don't know how it's like the staircase themselves, the new ones are far more precarious than the ones that were dangerous to go down, just trying to get in and out, depending on the tide. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:Like is it better to have someone like slip down the stairs or is it better to watch them get?
Speaker 1:or is it better? Better to have you know an ambulance have to show up, as we just heard? You know pass by the house just now. Yeah, you know, like the, the amount of rescues that now happen at staircases is crazy.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:I happen at staircases is crazy. It is I've, never, I, never. I bore witness to one person having to be rescued. That person fell from the top of the hook cliff all the way down and that was the one rescue, and he only broke his leg that's crazy. Yeah, you know like in all my life and then we've all fallen down. It but one rescue in my lifetime. Now it's just an everyday occurrence of those waves, but that was.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think this is a good segue into kind of the history lesson that we talked, where um localism was a byproduct of kind of rogue water safety or um like not public public yeah, publicly sourced water safety. Where it was not um run by any organization, it was very um loosely structured but it was still structured and there were beach clubs and surf clubs that kind of had like general ideas about like what was safe for certain people to do and what was not safe for certain people to do. But a lot of that had to pop up in this specific environment and it couldn't have happened anywhere else, in California, I think.
Speaker 1:Let me frame it up a little bit Okay, because you know I think yeah. Let me frame it up a little bit Okay Cause you know I have a grandfather. He was one of the original surfers here in town. He lived up up Santa Cruz river, you know San Lorenzo river, you know past the tannery, and he on Friday afternoons when he got out of school, gone on his Redwood longboard that was 15 feet long, paddled down the river, dragged the surfboard up to cow's beach and he parked there all weekend and came home on sunday night like those.
Speaker 2:But like calling it surfing back then even is kind of funny just because it was more of like uh, this is more of like adjacent to a circus act than it was like an actual sport, right, right, and odd enough, he was a circus performer too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like at the plunge.
Speaker 2:Look at these daring uh daring young men braving the waves and the surf, and then people.
Speaker 1:But I think we're full bonnets and like where you're going.
Speaker 1:Where you're going with this, though, is that then someone decided to paddle around the corner to the lane, which there is no way to get in and out of at the time. Yes, yeah, so you had to paddle from Cowles all the way around, and the waves there are very different, and they're just a quarter mile away, and you know what it took to surf the lane is very different than what it takes to get on the beach, off the beach at Cowles Very gentle experience, comparatively, totally. You know no wetsuits, you know nothing to hold your surfboard to you. It was dangerous, it was completely precarious, and in fact, there's a lighthouse that's on the point of of that, because someone died there. Yeah, that's why the lighthouse was built, so that that's a little view into how precarious it was back then yeah, I think it's really obvious when you look back in that time.
Speaker 2:But this is pre-wetsuit, pre-leash, where there is a filter that's in place.
Speaker 2:That's an organic filter, meaning that you'd have to be physically strong enough, capable enough and have the experience to get yourself out past certain conditions in order to surf certain spots.
Speaker 2:So if you look at how our bay is shaped, with all these right points, that like kind of move up west, towards where the lane is as the westernmost point, towards where the lane is as the westernmost point, waves are losing kinetic energy as they move. As swell moves through that bay, makes its way down, um, to where we're at on the east side, waves are generally going to get smaller. As they lose kinetic energy, they're bumping up against the friction of um, different reefs and breaks and the cliffs that are there, and and uh, waves are going to get smaller and smaller as all that swell moves through the bay. And so cal speech being a beginner spot makes sense because it's at the the bottom of that point, that right point that's there. It's lost, the waves have lost the most kinetic energy that they have by that time that they're making it their um indicators, kind of that like mid-level wave just right up from there. It's gonna have a little bit more energy. It's gonna take a little bit more physical fitness in order to paddle yourself up over there.
Speaker 2:The lane is reserved for like the bravest, not even necessarily most physically fit, but who's willing to like get themselves out there. On top of that, they're paddling out in like these wool bathing suits and like weird shit that um is warmish, but as soon as winter rolls around, when there's not really a lot of swell, it's kind of like over there's there's not a lot of surfing. That's happening. And if you are a person that's surfing out there, you are either a crazy person whose society is probably not too concerned for your safety, regarding they're already concerned for your safety on, probably on land at that point, not let alone the water. So they're not. There's not really a rescue service for those kinds of people. I guess it's like this is some Hellman who's just putting himself into this insane environment that we're just beginning to understand with equipment that we don't even know what we have the potential for. Right, right.
Speaker 1:The fire truck is the fire truck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they're like well, that looks like a dead guy out there, if you start to drown. There's nobody that's really coming to get you. At this stage of california history, um, as soon as wetsuit and leash get invented, it kind of opens up the um and also, like the shortboard revolution too, it opens up the doorway to a lot of these spots that are, for the most part, going unsurfed or getting surfed by very specific people. To have people who can kind of essentially pay their way into a new environment by getting equipment.
Speaker 2:Um, and you're seeing this happen now with the use of jet skis and like yeah, other stuff to a more extreme notion, I think, yeah, I feel like that's a totally different conversation about water safety, but I wanted to like talk about it for a second, just because the last Mavswell was so impressive and I'm seeing a lot of stuff out of Hawaii where you're seeing these rescue organizations that are running into issues. They're doing like lottery systems for big wave rescue and people are upset about it and they don't want to pay. But you should be paying your water rescue staff. It's really confusing. And then there's this kind of whole pay-to-play thing that's popping up within big wave surfing. That's kind of this is like an old story that we're rehashing out right right um.
Speaker 2:That being said, as soon as those inventions get made, you kind of have to introduce this new um, these new informal structures of who gets to surf here, because you were getting people who were buying equipment and they were putting themselves in situations where it's like, hey, you're not supposed to be out here and you're not ready. Those those dialogues would happen informally but probably could have used some formal structure at the time because the segue into, like what localism became in the 90s and the 2000s it was so entrenched in one, our local economy, but also like a drug culture and a bunch of different things that um they were different hierarchies, yeah that we we've had to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Speaker 2:I guess Right, right and that like all the good parts of localism which I think there are good parts, because it comes from this central source of like. How do we keep people safe in the water that is getting thrown out and we're kind of dealing with the consequences of it now because the water is a really dangerous place to be in still and we're seeing a lot new like. There's a new kind of safety issues.
Speaker 1:A lot of our resources are being used on people that shouldn't have been getting in the water in the first place Cause they have a nerf board now you know that you know, and, and, all things aside, you know like the wave storm has transformed surfing, you know that anybody can go buy one at Costco for 110 bucks, it's the new wetsuit I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's. This barrier to entry just keeps getting lower and lower, which is, in some ways, it's a really good thing, because you get to introduce a lot of different kinds of people and different cultures to something that's really beautiful. That, I think, is good. Good for different cultures and different kinds of people to enter this environment and understand it more. The ocean is for everybody. That being said, there's a right way to enter the ocean Right right.
Speaker 2:Because the consequences people don't really want to deal with and lifeguards have had to hold the vessel of those consequences. And then locals within our region have really tried to hold onto that vessel but haven't done a good job of doing it.
Speaker 1:So let me get your thoughts on this Cause cause, with this being the context. So we go to Monday right, which is when Alo caught his 108 foot wave. Everybody's focused on Mavericks, but there's another spot called Pleasure Point and all the rescue guys are up at Mavericks. Spare a few of them. You have a couple agencies who have jet skis available. You have Central Fire the state has a couple there, so there's three to service. You know, in essence, you know 12 miles of coastline of rescues that are potentially going to happen. And there's this great group of humans here who have all been in the life-saving business in some way, shape or form, who also have jet skis. But anybody who knows the Monterey Bay knows that it's a sanctuary and for whatever reason, they have chosen jet skis who are the most efficient. You know vessel out there the least contaminating vessel?
Speaker 2:yeah they are noisy, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna dance around that. No, no, no it they. They leak gasoline like no well, they're not there's no vessel that you want to rescue you.
Speaker 1:That is not that's going to be. They all, they all have their, their vices, but the point being is this is that you know, you, you get to these scenarios where you know we are related to one of these. You know where there are multiple lifesavers that have paddled out and their choice wasn't just to surf, but it was also to be available for the people that are out there. They're putting themselves in a very precarious position. The waves are 30 feet.
Speaker 1:Like it was substantial and the people who volunteer, you know they're willing to take the citation on the vessel because, to your point, there's a pool, someone's going to come out and help with the ski and they get a citation for putting that ski in the water. Everybody, you know this is like. One of these things that I'm that you're referring to is that there's a pool of money available for those guys if they're there to rescue guys and yeah, and they'll pay for that pool of money, though has, for the most part, from my understanding, there's no specific like pay structure no, no, no no rescue.
Speaker 2:It's like maybe you get a beer if you do a good rescue. Yeah like, and the homie hooks you up, you know like thanks for getting me out of there, like that's kind of always been my understanding for well it's, I'm not not singing.
Speaker 1:there's a, there's a pool of money to give to those guys for being out there. What I'm saying is that the people who know about what this new vehicle in essence kind of to the world can do, that 10 people can't do, the people that are willing to take the risk are willing to help take the cost also, and there's a camaraderie in that. Yeah, definitely. I'm not talking about the person getting paid to actually do the rest of it.
Speaker 2:I'm not talking about the person getting paid to actually do the rescues. So maybe we're kind of dancing around it a little bit, but what I want to clarify that you're talking about is that there were private citizens that were taking their own jet skis out and were performing rescues during this swell event. That happened a couple weeks ago to the collapse of the Santa Cruz wharf, which was a multi-casualty incident where I got pulled from a state park that's like an hour away to respond to as an aquatic response unit. I was not an aquatic response unit at the time, but I got pulled all the way from Hollister.
Speaker 1:Hills. Yeah, yep, which is a dirt biking spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like I mean, parks is a complicated organization and it's just like one of the fun things that we get to do is like work at a not a part which is like yeah, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 2:Um, it's because of not a great reason. It's because the there's not enough resources that our rangers have in order to like respond adequately to the medical needs that they have, and so what they've done is they've outsourced low-paid seasonal workers to respond to the that have medical experience to go to those areas. So I don't. State parks is an interesting organization but, yeah, that being said, it's really fun.
Speaker 2:Um also was pretty crazy to get called to a multi-casualty incident. What we assumed was going to to a multi-casualty incident what we assumed was going to be a multi-casualty incident. Thankfully, no one died. That was on the wharf.
Speaker 1:Um, everybody should have died on the wharf yeah, that was um you guys can go see the video it was it?
Speaker 2:it's. It is absolutely a blessing that no one died in Santa Cruz County, except for we had one fatality during that, yeah, which was totally separate and avoidable, and the member of the public that passed away, unfortunately, just yeah, just bad decision making, yeah. That being said, the private citizens that were taking jet ski out just their personal jet skis out and affecting rescues for friends of theirs that were also out surfing and getting some of the biggest waves that I've ever seen in my hometown, we're I don't want to say they were fulfilling like a public service. That was like not being met at the time. Um, it's just like. It's just the right thing to do. I think it's a little more complicated than like, oh, like it's not clean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these structures are in place and these are the only people that are allowed to run jet skis is kind of like the dialogue that's happening on social media. I don't think it's helpful in any way yeah, I think it kind of epitomizes.
Speaker 1:What you're referring to is that there's this thing that's happening. We're relying on old structures that are not, yeah, functioning at the level that they're they're actually happening and the informal structures are usually better.
Speaker 2:That's the other side of it, to be honest. Okay, I think the perfect example of this is. So the largest water rescue, or this is the largest maritime rescue in human history, happened on September 11th 2001. I did not know that it was all the bone owners on the other side of Long Island getting people that were trapped on that side of the buildings that collapsed. I had no idea about that. I'm pretty sure thousands of people I'd have to look it up but it is by far the largest water rescue that has ever happened before. There was no organization. Nobody in the government told anybody to do this. It was all just people who had boats and knew that there was something to do and they showed up. Yeah, and so I think there's this assumption that people have, where there is a cultural expectation to have these government infrastructures be a baseline to rely on.
Speaker 2:But those resources get spread pretty thin pretty quickly, yeah, and that was very apparent in this last swell event yeah not because we weren't making rescues at state parks, and san cruz city wasn't making amazing rescues and, like all these central fire like all these different organizations were working very hard, but we had every engine in the county like running code throughout the whole town.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, every other person and their mom was in their cars trying to look at the surf, so that made it even more difficult to respond to yeah, I mean, I was talking with a friend of mine that lives rescues just just at santa maria and rescued an elderly lady out of her Lexus because she attempted to drive across this, you know, at 26th Avenue, where it goes at sea level, just about and got swept all the way into the parking lot, got pinned by a boulder, like in the parking lot, and any of you who drive by here you know if you saw this moment, something that's never happened, right, but it's what happened.
Speaker 1:And here you have this guy who just happens to live there, saw it happen. He's in the water rescuing this old lady Totally, who also has a child with her, and it doesn't even make the news. There was so much going on that day that that was just one of dozens of stories, many things that happened.
Speaker 2:yeah, and localism in some ways fills that void, because I obviously have some qualms with localism, obviously have some like qualms with localism. I think that it's a vessel for a lot of ego and um people to impose their will upon other people. That and like get power in small communities to kind of bully other people.
Speaker 2:it's very obvious like you just look at, just watch any cool 90s, 2000s, like sort of videos like see how many people are getting into fights in those videos and how glorified that was to a certain extent Like, even like some of the Taylor Steele movies, I think like campaign one or two has like a couple fights or maybe not. I think Taylor Steele kind of shied away from that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Anyways. Well, I mean, look, you were steeped in this shit because of me. Yeah, yeah, you know. And just the temperature in and around me in the water certainly something I've shared with my listeners.
Speaker 1:About being called out by you, yeah, just about being, you know, one of these small town mob bosses yeah you know that, that there there's a mentality that just lives out there and there's these weird hierarchical orders that we're calling localism. What you're saying to me now is like it's a little bit more complex than that. Yeah, there's the bad part and we can look at that and go that's naughty. We shouldn't do that. But there's this other aspect, which is safety. There's a reason it's staying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like in any other area of culture, stuff like this has kind of faded into the ether, into the, and it's become like an aesthetic or something like that. It's like a part of like, even to a certain extent like surf aesthetic from the 2000s is kind of getting adopted into like pop culture where there's a lot of kids rocking over the knee board shorts, now for TikTok videos, which is it's sick, it rips.
Speaker 1:But I don't know why you'd go back. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I love a good, quick silver over the knee or the billab billabong, the rising sun tommy carroll oh my god. Or even like the kelly, like the big yellow ones, the parachute pant ones, those are probably going to come full circle back who knows?
Speaker 2:um, they probably already are, and I'm just not on the right algorithm anyways. Um, there's a bunch of other spaces, culturally, that there was kind of this like rough and ready thing that needed to exist within. I don't know whether that's like cowboy culture or something like that. It's all kind of faded away into whatever modern, safe zeitgeist that we're living in, but the bottom line is that the ocean is not safe and it is dangerous, and so there is going to need to be structures in place to keep people safe, because that's just what humans do. People safe, because that's just what humans do.
Speaker 2:It gets contorted in its journey to keeping people safe by, like kicking kooks out of the water, which I still think, as a lifeguard, needs to happen to a certain extent. There are certain people that are showing up with a degree of entitlement to beaches and surf spots that think that the ocean is as safe as every other aspect of their life and it is not a place of consequence, because they live lives of no consequence, and that is becoming more and more prevalent. Um, as society kind of commodifies into whatever it's becoming, especially our proximity to tech, and like how much of a bubble it is over there, not just like a tech bubble, but like yeah, a bubble, a control bubble and a way of thinking that is, looking at things through a vessel of consumption, and this is another thing for them to consume when they show up here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they put themselves in a situation where it's like, oh, the ocean's this big, giant place, there's plenty of waves, and then they drop in on this guy who's been serving there for 30 years, kick their board in this face like, maybe even hurt them you know, or hurt like a kid that's son of somebody you know, or hurt like a kid that's son of somebody you know like, or just anyone else, and the natural reaction to that is going to be anger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the thing that sits underneath the anger is a sadness about something that's clearly like wrong. There's something that's not right here and it's impacting our community in a deep way. It's impacting how I feel it's impacting our safety. It's down to, like, our base level needs like food, water, shelter, like survival. There's something off about it, and so the anger that gets to sit on top of it is protective and so it's validated. But when you get to just be angry and you don't necessarily get to talk about the issue that lies underneath it of like, oh no, this is a massive safety issue that we don't have kind of this formalized structure for people to like know where to go when it's 30 foot out. It's like don't go out at all like it's not your day to learn how to serve.
Speaker 2:If you're asking yourself should, I probably know yeah, exactly, and then even on a regular day where it's like three to four feet, but it's high tide, yeah, yeah, there's not enough public information for people. And ultimately it's not being titrated through the system that it would normally be done, where you either have like a beach club that people go to where they learn about certain things, or they have someone that can take them under their wing to teach them surfing, or yeah, Well, I mean yeah.
Speaker 2:Lifeguarding is supposed to fill that vessel. I'll say that.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and you're headed to Australia tonight. Yeah, you know you're about to go to one of those beach clubs and participate. You know, in a different region with a society that has supported surfing 100%, that has really embraced it as an entire culture on the life-saving side, really embraced it as an entire culture on the life-saving side. All the other board sports, apart from surfing, that actually happened in the ocean also, paddling, all the different boat races, all the stuff. They've embraced the water in a different way than we have, because we're so segmented here, than we could. To be honest, yeah, and I feel like it's heading that way a little bit, there are far more people who would consider themselves watermen as opposed to surfers or even lifeguards in town we have a lot of lifeguards that they're watermen, they're athletes and they want to be athletes.
Speaker 2:They don't necessarily want to save people, but they're stellar athletes, yeah but, um, you know, to your point there.
Speaker 2:You know you in essence kind of go through the clubs or can go through the clubs to get an idea of what it means to you know, frolic in the ocean in some way yeah, and like they have little nippers program, the junior guard program, which I'm really grateful that I was, I got to be in a junior guard program, which I'm really grateful that I was, I got to be in a junior guard program and, um, the little nippers out in Australia, those, those are where you kind of develop a hub of people that are going to become, um, your future lifesavers, whether that's informally or through the structures that are already in place like a lifeguarding organization. Junior Guards is so great because it's this environment that's designed specifically to get you as comfortable as you can in a dangerous environment. And there's so few places like that for kids, um, especially now, where it's like we're just pursuing safety rather than safety in within the chaos of everything.
Speaker 1:Right, right yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just like how do we make the environment more safe rather than like how do we make this person safe in the environment?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Which is what junior guards is all about, and that's, I feel like that's a better um guidepost than the opposite of like. How do we make the environment more safe?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know how that would apply to like these different swell events, you know, but there's, there were definitely. There was one incident where it was the day before and there was a ton of swell in the water and the tide had gotten low enough and then this guy had been walking up with his kids, who were all in spring suits, to like go look at the tide and he's got like one kid and like the kid backpack, like front pack thing. Dad's pretty strung out. He's obviously got like a lot of. He's got like four or five kids with him clearly not all of them his and they're all kind of scrambling around the point and the waves are huge.
Speaker 2:Nobody's really paying. Everybody's noticing him, but they're not really paying attention. They don't notice that like okay, all these kids are dressed to go get in the water. Um, dad's not ready to get in the water. He's got boots and overalls on and he's carrying a, an infant. If any of those kids that are getting near the water line are entering the water, he is not going to be able to help them right he's going to set down his child really quickly and like go swim out in his overalls and boots.
Speaker 2:Like no, that's not happening, he's a rescue. Um, I went up and talked to them. I'm not in my lifeguard uniform. I was like, hey, dude saw that all these kids are in spring suits. All right, what do you? What are you guys gonna go do? Like, oh, we're just gonna go. Like look at the tide pools. I'm like that's great. You should keep them as far away from the water as possible. It's so dangerous. We've been having people die. We've been having rescues like all year. Waves areaves are as big as they get. Like they really shouldn't even be anywhere near the water. You probably shouldn't even go down the cliff. It's like, oh, thank you, I'll definitely. Like keep a really close eye on them. Yeah, like just that small.
Speaker 2:Like implanting that mind virus into that like person's head where it's like, oh, this is a possibility, into that like person's head where it's like, oh, this is a possibility. Because when he's getting his kids in to a spring suit, he's not thinking like, oh, I'm about to throw my kids into this lion's den of like death. Uh, right, right, but that's what he's doing. He's thinking I can't wait for these kids to get their energy out. I can't wait, like I'm clearly like the solo dad with like several other people's kids, like what the fuck, the fuck am I going to do for today? Like we're going tide pulling, like I just need them to get their energy out. He is not in the right mindset to like enter into the environment that he entered into, and so I had to hold the vessel of self-awareness for him, like as a, as a fellow member of the community. I wasn't just being a lifesaver, I was just being a community member at that point, because you don't, as a member of my community, I don't want his kids to die. You know that's, that's what you should do.
Speaker 2:I think that there's an opportunity for people who have water knowledge to speak to people in kind ways, without doing the whole like scoff at the kook thing or like let people like live their consequences out.
Speaker 2:That's a job, that's a decision for professionals to make. I there's there's this phenomenon within lifeguarding where you kind of let your rescue cook for a little bit, which is not recommended for any lifeguards that are listening. This is not what you should do. This is not any policy, but it is something that all of us do, where we have assessed that the environment is either safe enough and the equipment that they have is adequate to keep whatever victim that we see afloat for long enough to kind of learn a lesson. Essentially, if they are someone that you've safety contacted, they have put themselves into a rip current, you've got them out of that rip current, you've tried to give them education, and then they put themselves back in that rip current again. You're going to let them, like, struggle a little bit more than you did the first time so that they really understand that you are not just this babysitter that's there to rescue them.
Speaker 2:And then you have a harder conversation when you get to the beach Like, hey, like, if I just let you go, like you're just going to die.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which I feel like a modern or modern uh, recent localism has skipped all the way to that step. There's no middle space of like a dialogue between people that are coming into our towns to learn how to be close to the water and, like you, want to be in this amazing beautiful environment.
Speaker 2:you know there's steps between beat it kook and um oh, like please come surf with me, and like there's there's steps in between. There's like, oh yeah, like maybe you shouldn't go to this surf spot, maybe you shouldn't go to the hook first, or maybe you should go to the point first. When it's like a big day out, maybe there's a better spot like capitola to go learn at um and I think that city agencies are finally picking up on that, that there's maybe like a tiered system that we should be looking into the like great waves and um accessibility, and that that especially good life gardening gets done, which this is a kind of a beef that I have, with a little bit of with some of the agencies that are here in Santa Cruz, because of the nature of resources that they have available is one thing. Like they, they have budgets that they're working under, and so I'm not like coming for anybody in particular.
Speaker 2:I just think this is just a by byproduct of a bunch of different factors, but the gold standard for lifeguarding is preventative action. Every agency in the world agrees on this, except for some of the ones in Santa Cruz. There's like a debate that's going on about like how preventative do we get? When do we start letting people learn their lesson by making decisions where they're going to put themselves in an environment where lifeguards get hurt not necessarily even just surfers and so I will always lean towards preventative action and as much preventative action as you can Like. Education, surf education clinics, swim equity programs All those things are going to pay dividends in the long run to lifeguard agencies, so that they're not having to put rescue swimmers out at the slot in the lane and then have to pay out medical bills to lifeguards For someone that just shouldn't have been out there in the first place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, it was fun speaking with Lucas. Yeah, you know, because he's developing those programs here. Yeah, right now at the pool.
Speaker 2:There's a bunch of people that are, yeah, yeah, it's so good, it's not like a hopeless situation. I did say that in a very yeah you did.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, as we close this thing out, um uh, about to go to australia in the middle of a reboot life move back up here.
Speaker 2:Well, australia, then indonesia, where I'm going to be running uh lifeguard academy through isla, which is the international surf life saving association. Really cool organization. Everybody should check him out, isla what?
Speaker 1:what gives you hope right now? Like what? What's the thing that that, when you close your eyes, look forward to? You know what are you focused on that brings a little joy to your heart yeah, you can feel the temperature shifting.
Speaker 2:There's like this phenomenon in lifeguarding called like uh, I don't know, I call it like the third year itch, where, um, you are so in the job and you've rescued so many people that are clearly like just idiots, like lowest common denominator that's who you lifeguard for.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, um, you feel like you're kind of doing, uh, like the darwinian evolutionary perspective, a disservice of, like keeping people in the genetic population that really should not be continuing their journey, you know, based off of the decisions they made. Um, that thought sneaks into your mind, especially when you go on, like the types of rescues where the person does not want to get rescued and it's like or they don't want to get rescued by the girl, and then you're the guy who has to go and get rescued them. They don't want to get rescued by the girl lifeguard, um, or it's like, yeah, just fucking let them drown. Like that's the internal dialogue. That is not what we do. You, there's obviously a very um.
Speaker 2:There's a totally different process that gets yeah, where the person loses agency.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when they're not compliant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when it happens live you're like, there's this very professional lid on a lot of unprofessional thoughts about those kinds of people and especially, I think, around the third year of lifeguarding, it really sets in of like, do people deserve to get helped in the ways that I help them? And it creates a dynamic where you are working a job where your only purpose is to help people and then you resent the people that you're helping because they should know better. And and it's a byproduct of again, like that anger sitting on top of the sadness of like, oh, this system is clearly not working. This is that like there's, there's a need that's not being met, and I and young people feel that when they're in this job, like, why doesn't this 40 year old dude know that he should not be in the water right now? Why do I have to get in the water for him? I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a McDonald's employee makes more than I do. That, I think, is being healed by a group of bleeding heart individuals who are so stoked on life-saving that are going to, I think, shift the entire field in the next couple of years here, just because we're doing so much, we're going on cool shit, we're using cool equipment Everybody thinks we're sick. There's a bunch of cool TV shows out about lifeguarding. I I feel it changing. Yeah, um, and so that's what gets me stoked, yeah and it keeps the salt off, breaks the salt off, it it helps.
Speaker 2:it helps you shift away from, yeah, just that negative mindset that has crept its way into a job, and this happens in a bunch of different jobs.
Speaker 1:I'm sure people relate to this resentment, I mean these notions that you're operating in, work for, I think, a lot of things when we see bureaucracies failing, institutions failing yeah you know, they're going to show up either way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was a moment in the pandemic where it's just like yeah, like I still want a lifeguard. Yeah, like if the government shuts down, or people are still going to show up to the beach to lifeguard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100 yeah, yeah, it happens all over the world. You know that. You know there are good institutions, there are good institutions, there are great institutions. There are most institutions other than that, but you know, in those places there are good people and it's really what's required anyway, and I think that's what I'm hearing from you.
Speaker 1:That you know your hope kind of lives in this reality, that you can feel this new thing emerging where good people are showing up to do the right thing, right, and I think that's probably going to happen everywhere. So, anyways, well, thank you for taking the time Third time.
Speaker 2:Third time's the charm. Yeah, I really hope they record it.
Speaker 1:Oh, we totally recorded. Yeah, the things on the cards. And thanks for letting mom and I experiment on you. Oh God, you've been the most expensive one, but you've actually gotten like a little freak.
Speaker 2:All right, brother, well, I love you a bunch, have a good trip. Thanks, dad, it's still going. We're actually recording you right now. Still again, say, say hi.