"Miles to Surf" is not simply about board riding. It more specifically focuses on wave riding in various and sometimes-bizarre forms. In Hawaii, locals slide down waves of lava rock, clay, and grass to get their surf kicks when the ocean dies out while writer/director James Fulbright chases boat wakes in Texas.
The film then falls back in time before X-Game hysteria to the origins of downhill and freestyle skateboarding as well as to the moment when wakeboarding took its first breath.
Still not cosmic, but a it's a hell of a lot of fun to watch these guys push the edge of the status quo in an everlasting quest for fire and stoke.
The film reaches an intriguing apex during it second half in which we visit a maverick group of surf maniacs who chase oil tankers miles off the Texas coast and surprisingly catch clean 20 minute peelers over a series of shallow shoals. It's both strange and exhilerating to watch.
Finally, we get to experience river surfing what is sure to be a hugely popular and exciting offspring of surfing in the near future. Elijah Mack and Gary Linden explore inward and inland to the ever-churning bowls of river rapids and tidal bores. These waves are peel forever in exotic locales with real open faces for carves and tricks and even tubes!
In retrospect...Maybe, just maybe, there is something to this "cosmic convergence". There are all these people around the world who are searching to release their inner-surfer, but they have no ocean waves on which to express their creativity and energy. Maybe being a surfer is just a state of mind, an myterious addiction,and it will eventually lead the afflicted to ride whatever waves are available whether its tanker wakes, river rapids, tidal bores, or a mountain sides.
Either way, I enjoyed the film. It's not a movie to throw in the DVD player to get amped before a session, but it is a unique and well-made movie to have in your collection that will remind you of the creative and adventurous spirit that resides in all wave riders. Okay, now I'm getting all syrupy.
