{"id":49013,"date":"2025-07-08T15:27:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T15:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/49013\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T15:27:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T15:27:19","slug":"encinitas-local-shares-stories-from-60-years-of-surfing-in-a-surfer-at-heart-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/49013\/","title":{"rendered":"Encinitas local shares stories from 60 years of surfing in \u2018A Surfer at Heart\u2019 \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

A day after graduating high school in 1972, 17-year-old Brad Gessner packed up his Chevy van and drove out to Encinitas from Texas, following his California surfing dreams. An early pioneer of van life, he parked in an empty lot near a surf spot then called Tomato Patch in Leucadia. After a few days, the young surfer was shuffled off by security as they were getting ready to build a new townhome development.<\/p>\n

That spot became the Seabluffe condos, where Gessner has owned a place for over 30 years. Gessner now lives there for a good chunk of the year, splitting time between Encinitas and a home in Carefree, Arizona. When in town almost every day he heads down to the beach to surf with friends, carefree: \u201cIt\u2019s a good life\u2026I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

With his newly published book \u201cA Surfer at Heart\u201d,\u00a0 Gessner shares stories of his 60 years of surfing, from his childhood in Hawaii to adventures in Baja Mexico, Australia, El Salvador and on the big waves of Tavarua, Fiji.<\/p>\n

\""A\u201cA Surfer at Heart\u201d, a newly published book by Brad Gessner. (Karen Billing)<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m certain life\u2019s time clock spins backward whenever I\u2019m surfing,\u201d wrote the 71-year-old. \u201cI\u2019m still healthy and in good enough condition to make the paddle out, catch plenty of waves and ride them fairly well. But just as importantly, I\u2019m still stoked to be doing it. And with friends that share the same passion for riding waves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book is Gessner\u2019s second after publishing \u201cA Life Backstage-A Facility Manager\u2019s Memoir\u201d in 2023, a retrospective on his career that included senior leadership positions at the San Diego Convention Center, WestWorld of Scottsdale, the Los Angeles Convention Center, and the Del Mar Fairgrounds, a job that afforded him the perk of surfing at 15th Street and 21st Street in Del Mar before work and sometimes at lunch.<\/p>\n

For \u201cA Surfer at Heart\u201d, one of his Seabluffe surf buddies John Kiechle helped edit the book and wrote the foreword that includes this swell gem: \u201cHis story reads like a travelogue of a man wholly devoted to the pursuit of waves,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Gessner first learned to surf in the idyllic, warm waters of Waikiki. Born into a military family, his father was an Air Force pilot and took surf lessons and became hooked during a two-week family trip to Hawaii in 1960, introducing surfing to Gessner and his two brothers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will never forget my dad, the bomber pilot, learning how to surf,\u201d Gessner wrote. \u201cI didn\u2019t know it at the time but it planted the seed in me that would grow into a real passion for travel, exploration\u2026and surfing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gessner was born in California but experienced the nomadic lifestyle of a military family.\u00a0 They went from California to Topeka, Kansas, then to Honolulu in 1964 (a move to paradise he likens to going from black and white to Technicolor a la \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d), and next to San Antonio in 1967. In those formative years spent as a youngster in Hawaii, surfing had become a big part of his life and moving to Texas was admittedly a bit of a letdown.<\/p>\n

After high school he spent summers surfing in Encinitas and took a semester off from college to live in Hawaii with his brother. While it was a lot of fun being a \u201csurf bum,\u201d he realized he needed to make a plan to finish school and make a living, hopefully close to surf. He ended up back in school in Texas, where he met his future wife Debra.<\/p>\n

After graduating, they got married and moved to Fort Pierce, Florida. In 1986, he moved his wife and two children out to Encinitas, still his California dream.<\/p>\n

\"BradBrad Gessner surfing Barbers Point, Hawaii in 1964. (Courtesy Brad Gessner)<\/p>\n

Gessner thinks of himself as a storyteller more than a writer. Since the 1970s, he had journaled about his experiences on the job and adventures in surfing since and friends were always encouraging him to write a book\u2014the words were already there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s considered a memoir but it\u2019s not all that much about me, it\u2019s about experiences with places and people and growing up and getting a focus. I mainly wrote it for my grandkids,\u201d said the grandfather of four. \u201cI wanted them to know a little something about their grandpa\u2026and hopefully inspire them early on to find something you love that you can travel, make friends and have an experience like I had because it\u2019s been the best thing that\u2019s happened to me.\u201c<\/p>\n

One of Gessner\u2019s life adventures was buying a 12-acre pecan farm on the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country, in a beautiful area named Comfort. He and his wife moved there in 2020 but due to the pandemic, they had challenges with the pecan farming so they sold the farm and in 2022 moved from Comfort to Carefree. He now spends half a year in the foothills of the high Sonoran Desert, keeping an eye on the surf report, knowing that he is only about a six-hour drive or quick commuter jet flight into Carlsbad away from being in the water in Encinitas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m as much into it today as I was when I was 10,\u201d he says of his surfing.<\/p>\n

It is both \u201cone hell of a workout\u201d and a pleasure, soaking up the uniquely positive effect of having toes in the sand and being out on the water\u2014Gessner said he never feels healthier or better than when he\u2019s walking out of the ocean after a surf session.<\/p>\n

For him, surfing has also always been a lot about friendship and camaraderie, all of his surf buddies egging each other on out on the waves and sharing treasured memories of exploring different cultures and experiences on surf trips.<\/p>\n

While he has been fortunate to travel and surf all over the world, his favorite spot just might be here in Encinitas, the place he discovered back in 1972. When the waves are good, he and his Seabluffe buddies meet up at the condo complex pool and head down the Grandview stairs and all surf together.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have so much fun with my friends,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not crowded and on a two- to-three-foot day, surfing for an hour and a half, with the sun out and dolphins jumping, it\u2019s probably the best experience today in the 60 years I\u2019ve been surfing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA Surfer at Heart\u201d is available for purchase on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"BradBrad Gessner surfing Cloudbreak in Tavarua, Fiji in 2000. (Courtesy Brad Gessner)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A day after graduating high school in 1972, 17-year-old Brad Gessner packed up his Chevy van and drove…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,7352,17792,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-49013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-encinitas-advocate","12":"tag-encinitas-advocate-news","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114818321393165905","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}