Surfing: Shooting the Tube

Riding a board through the surf is a little like going on hashish. The addicts—and there are 18,000 of them in the U.S.—have their own fashions in everything from haircuts (long, but not too long) to swimsuits (cotton, a size too small). They speak a lingo of words like "hook" (the lip of a breaking wave) and "tube" (the cavern under the hook) and "wipe out" (a spill into the boiling froth). They listen to apostles, who preach: "When the surf is good, you've got to go and get it. Work is secondary....