NPR on Kook: Making Orange County An Adventure


NPR's All Things Considered has featured Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave by travel writer Peter Heller.

According to the report, Heller “has sailed the Antarctic Sea with eco-pirates in pursuit of an illegal Japanese whaling fleet, and traversed the deepest Tibetan gorge with kayakers bent on conquering the Tsangpo River.”
But when Heller, an award-winning journalist who has written three books, found himself in a midlife crisis and wanted his next adventure he flew to Orange County.

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“I'd seen the Gidget movies and The Endless Summer,” writes Heller, who lives in Denver. “I booked a ticket and in early April I flew into John Wayne Airport, Orange County, California. Andy picked me up wearing a Hawaiian shirt with surfboards all over it. We drove with the windows down. I was excited, he was excited. We were going to be boys, have an adventure.”

​So what is a kook? No, not Ron or Rand Paul. Says Heller, “It's a clueless, hopeless beginner [at surfing].”
Heller is verbally assaulted by an angry veteran surfer the first time he tries to surf at Huntington Beach.
No surprise there.
Go HERE to read or listen to the NPR report. 
Or go HERE to see Heller's Amazon.com page.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

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