The harder the wind blows, the bigger the waves get on Lake Erie.
You've got to paddle hard to get out. It's a lot harder than the ocean.
You're dealing with colder conditions and you're going to have waves that are closer together
and they're not going to be as nicely formed as like an ocean swell.
I'm Neil Luwama. I'm from Asheville, Ohio. I was born here.
Lake Erie was in my backyard when I was born and been surfing since 1967.
Surf's up on Lake Erie.
Lake Erie surfing, hard but possible. This is me.
I was always in the water.
This is one of my memories from really small.
I remember my dad throwing me into the water saying, okay, let's swim.
I started swimming and I was out and that's what took me into this whole thing.
My dad really didn't buy the idea of me surfing on the lake,
but my mom had faith in me and she said, well, hey, he's not going to buy you a surfboard,
but I'll get you these plans on how to build one.
My buddy was going to build a wooden surfboard in our shop class in 11th grade high school.
We looked at the plans over and we said, well, we'll build them like the plans here.
We'll make a fiberglass foam surfboard.
We shaped our boards like from what we saw on the cover of a Beach Boy album.
We were so excited about surfing.
All day long, I used to surf from sunrise to sunset, come in and I'd be out there surfing
and it would be dark after sunset and I'd be trying to catch waves.
Frank and I decided that we wanted to build surfboards.
We needed a label because I used my middle name, Oscar, and his last name, Harris.
In total, we made over 50, probably around 55 surfboards, something like that.
We split there, you know, building boards, probably about 1976.
We went our own ways, but then we kept in touch, we're still in touch.
I just was talking to him like a week or so ago, so we're still trying to plan surf trips.
Boards that I built in the 1970s, I do let some of my surfing buddies use them
and they surf amazingly well on them.
They tear up the waves.
It's as good as the feeling as I had before.
I don't have as much energy as I used to have, but the feeling is still great.
The free ride is that magic.
