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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. The last time I did anything on the Oregon Coast Sand Dunes, it didn't exactly go well. Some longtime listeners may remember I had a bit of an ATV mishap a couple of years ago that sent me to the hospital for nine days. Well, when I heard about the somewhat obscure and relatively new sport of sand surfing, I thought, "What could go wrong? While my wife didn't share the sentiment, she let me go anyway. Today on the show, I'll bring you the story of a sport seemingly tailor-made for our Oregon Dunes, and bring you the voices of the guys who have made Florence a kind of sand surfing mecca. And no, I didn't get hurt at all. Then, at the end of the show, we'll introduce you to our newest reporter, who comes to us all the way from Liverpool, England. While Crater Lake and the majestic Cascade Mountain Range may steal the show in terms of recognized natural splendor in Oregon, the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area is a magical place all its own. And while many people love to attack these dunes on ATVs, dune buggies, and SUVs, there's a quieter and more serene sport that is starting to take hold on these same hills of sand, it's sand surfing, and it's exactly what you'd think: hiking up to the top of a dune, mounting a wooden board, and then sliding down, kind of like a ski hill made of sand. I recently saw a story about this sport and thought it would be great to give it a try myself, and it stood to reason that I'd go visit the man and the team that basically brought sand surfing to Oregon.
I'm standing in the storefront of Sand Master Park. It's part rental facility, part equipment dealer, and part shrine to the sport of sand surfing. Founded in the year 2000, born from the vision of sandboard pioneer Lon Beale, aka Dr. Dune, Sand Master Park has introduced sandboarding to the Oregon coast. I was able to talk with Lon and hear how it all started. We're talking to Lon Beale, Mr. Sandman, who invented this this this this operation. Talk about the experience that people have coming here, renting boards, going for a first-time lesson. Describe what it's like, and sort of what your vision was for this this this operation and this sport.
Lon Beale: Well, real often people come and they're a little apprehensive because they don't know what to expect. Of course, there's a fear factor involved until they make their first run or two and they realize that sand's pretty soft. You take a pretty good fall. Doesn't do much. You will get sand on you, but it's not real. It's not a real jolt. We see people come here, and many of them are snowboarders. Many are surfers or skateboarders. So, they're about halfway there. But sand is its own beast. It's just a little bit different. So, once they take a lesson, they get it. They make the crossover. If they don't take a lesson, there is a little bit more of a struggle, but they still seem to get it. And regardless, Michael, they have a good time.
Dunne: Yeah. When you started this, did you have any idea that that you'd be able to develop so many different material boards, and the fact that you know people here in in Florence, Oregon, are sliding down the dunes. You talked about coming from a desert environment. Now here you are. Talk about sort of the evolution of this entire sport, and as well as your business.
Beale: Okay. Well, of course, people love to slide on anything, whether it has wheels, ice, snow, sand, waves. It doesn't matter. People just want to do it. So, it was pretty much. We were convinced from the start that this was going to be successful. It really came down to what could we provide and how could we provide it to the people so that they could find it and try it out. So, when we first started, it started off slow, like any board sport. Caught on fairly quick. Each year was a record year, and then the next year was another record year, and so now it's to the point where we're probably pulling about 20,000 visitors a year. Wow! And then my last question for you, Lon, is talk about this environment-the sand dunes. We're very familiar with, but many people haven't done this. What makes this so special? Okay, I'd say what makes it so special is you're out riding the elements. It's a beautiful day. You're seeing birds flying overhead. It's very peaceful. It's very calm. There's a serenity to it that you may not get on a snow slope or with crashing waves. But here, as you found out, it's pretty quiet. It's pretty peaceful. And I think that that's a draw. But also because we're here on the Oregon coast, we're surrounded by forests. The ocean is just a minute or two away. It's got a lot of outdoorsy appeal, and I think that's a big factor too.
Dunne: He is Mr. Sandman Lon Beale. Lon, thank you so much.
Beale: You're welcome, Michael.
Dunne: Then I headed out to the dunes with Lon's right-hand man, David Edge to get a lesson and also learn about this new sports appeal, especially in this special place, the Oregon Sand Dunes. How long have you been attached to this?
David Edge: I've been involved in sandboarding since 2012. Wow! As a passionate amateur, but I haven't been employed in the field of sandboarding prior to this year.
Dunne: So obviously, you know, we're here on the coast. A lot of people are very knowledgeable about surfing on the water. Talk about sort of the evolution of this sport.
Edge: Well, what I know of the evolution of sandboarding all comes to me from Lon Beal, who started Sand Master Park here in the year 2000. So, they've been here for 26 years. Prior to that, they were working in Southern California, where Lon grew up, and I know that he started there as a kid or an adolescent, sliding on pieces of cardboard and plywood and all that, and later worked in the surf industry, and decided that he would take what he knew of board dynamics and apply that to what he knew of sand. What got you interested in it? Just being here as a tourist, I was living in Europe and visiting my parents, who had relocated from Salem to Florence while I was living over there. So, with my two oldest kids, I rented a board one day, and I believe I bought that same board the following day.
Dunne: So you know, obviously, a lot of people are very unfamiliar with this. How? And I guess I'm going to find out myself. But how easy is it, or how difficult is it for beginners to kind of take this sport up?
Edge: That depends entirely on the rider, Michael. I would say that it can be far easier to pick up than a snow sport, but the main enemy of any learner of any new sport is going to be fear. Okay, and despite the fact that our slopes are nowhere near as large as those that you might encounter on a ski resort, there is still that fear factor, and any postural changes that might result from leaning into that fear or leaning away from the slope will definitely slow down your learning process.
Dunne: Okay, let's just kind of start. Why don't you sort of take me through, you know, how you begin a lesson? How do you sort of start someone off on these very interesting looking boards? That again, to a layperson, they look to me like snowboards, but the bindings are quite different. And sort of talk about how you start.
Edge: All right. So, the bindings are actually where we start because the first thing I need to do when I'm beginning a lesson, Michael, is to determine the dominant foot of the rider, as you can see from the bindings, unfortunately the listeners may not be able to pick this up. They are generally symmetrical. There is a foot strap mounted in the middle of the board and a heel strap which can flop from one side to the other to accommodate different riding stances. Okay. So, picking up terminology from skateboarding, we call a stance with the right foot in the back a regular stance, and a stance with the left foot in the back a goofy stance. So, we determine that, and then I show the student how to wax the board, which is something that we do before each descent. Oh, okay. It's nowhere near as complicated a process as waxing a ski or a snowboard. Just a quick application, scribbling with the corner of a little block of wax, specially designed for sandboarding, on a specific portion of the board. Okay, and we apply so little wax that we want it to burn off over the course of a single run.
Dunne: Well, and I would imagine this kind of medium must be much more abrasive than perhaps snow or water, right?
Edge: It absolutely is, and you can see the wear and tear on the board itself, where the board has been polished beyond the initial color of the laminate material we use on the boards. It's actually far slicker than that first surface. So, taking the example of my own board here, this is the one I bought 14 years ago, and it was showing just a little bit of brown through the black. Now it's been polished down to almost exclusively brown in the areas where there's the most friction. Okay, but that does not make the board perform any less well. It actually improves the glide over the sand. Okay, and when I was in the store, it seems like the vast majority, if not all, of the boards are wood, and that's a difference from snowboards, which tend to have a lot more synthetic material. Absolutely, and that is one of the things that Lon prides himself on: is that it is a fairly low impact sport in terms of environmental cost. So, the boards are made of laminated maple veneers and a plastic laminate on…
Dunne: And is the wood because does that also add to flexibility?
Edge: It does determine the flexibility, as you can see, looking at my deck, which is an older one, and this one, which is a newer one. We've gone from a thick, rather stiff deck to a more flexible one. And that does change the way it behaves.
Dunne: So after some instruction, it was my turn. We started on a modest dune, and David showed me the way. He glided down with an almost effortless grace. But when it was my turn, I leaned forward over the lip of the dune, and after maybe 10 feet, ended up on my backside. David was a very patient and thorough instructor, so after a few turns, I actually made it down to the bottom, standing up. I have to say it was a thrill. Like other types of sports, once you get over the initial fear, it kind of clicks into place. And unlike wave surfing, where tons of water can crash over you, or snowboarding, where sometimes very hard ice awaits your fall. Sand surfing is very low impact when it comes to falling, but also has the added bonus of giving you a good workout. Because let's face it, there are no chairlifts here, so one has to walk back up the dunes after your run. One of the first things I learned during my lesson is that wax is everything. Unlike snowboarding or surfing, where waxing happens at the beginning of your day, you need to wax constantly because of the rough surface of the sand. David explains.
Edge: We never wax this nose here. This portion of the board is relatively infrequently in contact with the sand. You'll know it when it is because pressure under that forward foot will slow you down sometimes to the point of taking a tumble. So, avoid waxing that. If you do wax it, it's just likely to build up and pick up sand and eventually slow you. There are visible bolts on the underside of the board, and those are our framework. We want to include all four bolts in this pattern of waxing, which, as you can see, is just a matter of scribbling four lines to either side of the bolts. That's very simple. That's it. And then the next step is to buff the board on the sand slightly. We rub it back and forth. On a wet day, this is less of a concern, but as we glide over this hand with these boards, we generate all sorts of static electricity. So the wax serves two purposes: it is both a mechanical lubricant and a dampener of that static electrical effect. And there is a huge difference, not so much in the middle of the run, but at the beginning and the end of a run, you'll know if you haven't waxed.
Dunne: Toward the end of my time on the dunes, David explained how special the Oregon sand dunes are to the sport and to the coast in general. What's so fascinating, and so many of us know about the sand dunes out here. Talk about how this is very different than, say, going up to Willamette or Hoodoo, and that the environment changes so much.
Edge: That's exactly the case, Michael. I ski when I ski up at Hoodoo, and I know what I'm going to encounter on any given day because the slopes are stable, the slopes are groomed. Here on the Oregon Dunes, the environment is far more dynamic. We're not going to get a fresh sand fall of 10 feet overnight, but we can see changes in elevation of any given dune face or ridge of about two or three feet in a big wind event. And as any visitor from the Willamette Valley to the Oregon coast will know, sometimes in summer we have driving wind for days at a time, so the dune field that we are in right now, which is within the city limits of Florence, is perhaps one of the most dynamic because it is exposed to the elements. We are about a mile from the coast itself, from the from the estuary of the Siuslaw River, and there is no high elevation land between us and the ocean. So, the wind here is extremely forceful, and over the course of a single day, sometimes I have to choose different locations for my lessons because I may start in one place in the morning and find that that slope is no longer adequate by afternoon.
Dunne: Okay, and talk about the difference between both the wet and the dry sand, and correspondingly the different boards for those different environments.
Edge: All right. So, this morning I brought out two different sorts of boards for us. I have wet boards which have a Teflon surface on the underside, which is ideal for sliding over wet sand. We also have dry boards, which are ideal for sliding over dry. And as we're experiencing today, there is a fine line between wet and dry. Right now, we have just a little bit too much humidity for the dry boards and slightly too little humidity for the wet. But we're making do.
Dunne: Well, you're making do. I'm making. I'm making big holes in the sand!
Edge: I think you did very well. Speaking from experience, Michael, you did very well. But the major difference is in how one treats the board before each run. The dry boards receive a light application of wax before each run, and the wet boards require none of that. Another difference is that because the wet boards are not waxed, there is actually no physical limit to the length of run you can take on a wet board. So, in situations like down near Reedsport, where the dunes can reach elevations of 500 feet, if you've got a dune face of 300 yards, you can easily make that run without needing to worry about re-waxing on a wet board. On a longer run on a dry board, sometimes it is necessary to re-wax.
Dunne: And like you were telling me, if you're listening at home and you're thinking, oh boy, waxing a surfboard takes hours or something like that
Edge: It's a really simple and fast process. We're talking, Michael, about drawing about eight lines with a corner of a little block of wax along the length of the board. So, children, this is the analogy I use with kids. If you were drawing on the ground with chalk, you'd be breaking your chalk. We're putting on a little bit of pressure and just drawing a little scribble of wax. That's all it takes.
Dunne: Well, an hour blew by and my lesson ended. I had a blast, didn't get hurt, and will definitely be back to the park.
As we finish out the show today, we're going to bring you the newest voice on KLCC, our evening reporter Ellie Graham. Ellie Graham, our newest reporter here at KLCC, welcome into the studios. So, gosh, you've been here with us now. What? Just a couple weeks or so. Where did you come from?
Ellie Graham: Yeah. So, I was reporting and editing at the Highway 58 Herald. And I have always had an affinity with audio work. Okay. So, I applied. I applied to come here back in March, and then a couple of months later, I was welcome for an interview. Yeah. So, I was really excited about the opportunity to dip back into audio work because it's not something I've explored since my master's program at U of O in journalism.
Dunne: Okay, what kind of stories did you do for Highway 58?
Graham: A bit of everything. Okay, got to sample all things really. Okay, with smaller papers, you're not necessarily assigned to a beat. You're assigned to cover what needs to be covered. Okay, which can look like sport one day and local government the next. So yeah, it was very much a mixed bag. Did you like that variety? It was great for getting reps in and exposure, but it's nice to specialize a little more and really get stuck into a beat that you can, you know, really embrace.
Dunne: Okay, as many listeners can probably detect already, you don't have a standard Western Oregon accent! Where are you from?
Graham: I've been in the states for 11 years. Okay. The accent does not dilute. I'm originally from Liverpool, England. People know it as the place where the Beatles are from.
Dunne: Exactly. Exactly. Which to American audiences is a stronger accent than say London or something like that, right?
Graham: It's a thick northern accent for sure.
Dunne: So, what are you going to be doing for us?
Graham: Yeah, so I'll be covering a lot of the like evening affairs in Eugene, the Willamette Valley. So that'll look like city council meetings, school board stuff, and maybe some enterprise things as well. So, I'm also going to be doing some local election coverage. Okay. Yeah. So once again, a mixed bag, but excited to be getting stuck into things.
Dunne: Why do you like audio? I mean, obviously, there's a lot that you can do with it, but it's different than being a print reporter or whatnot. What first got you interested in it?
Graham: It's such an expressive medium. I think there's a real element of making audiences feel and land in a story. So, I love the creativity behind audio. Okay, there's a lot that goes in behind the scenes, you know.
Dunne: Yeah, and you've already filed a story for us. Talk about that.
Graham: Indeed, I yeah, I filed a story on data centers that would come into you potentially coming to Eugene, but it was more about local citizens, local residents, a lot of lot of them expressing that they didn't necessarily want that here.
Dunne: So you got your masters at the U of O. I mean, so you've been in Eugene now for the full 11 years, or just for the program?
Graham: No, I have lived in Utah and I've also lived in Las Vegas, so quite the juxtaposition. Eugene, Oregon, for four years.
Dunne: Okay. What do you like about Eugene? And kind of taking that forward into the into the coverage that you'll be doing. What interests you about what’s happening in Lane County?
Graham: Well, Eugene, and to speak to like Oregon as a whole, I love the outdoors here. Such a beautiful place that we live. That we're really fortunate. There's like you know a wealth of outdoor opportunity. I also think Oregonians are amazing. Having lived in a few other states, every state's a little different. Sure, there's a real warmth here, and I think people are passionate about their communities and really invested in them, and I think that translates to your reporting.
Dunne: Yeah, and certainly being from Northern England, you'll acclimatize well to our wet and cold and rainy environment.
Graham: Yeah!
Dunne: When you're doing an audio story, what are you looking for? What kind of what kind of is a hook maybe that you think oh this is going to be interesting and obviously you know you're going to get quotes from say a school official or city council person but what about being a journalist and like you said earlier about that being able to convey emotions what are some of the things that you're excited about to be to be covering?
Graham: Like capturing, of course, different sounds and opinions and you know perspectives, I should say. But I think being able to tell a story through that in terms of, you know, you're going you're going to see lots of perspectives and things, and each story looks different. Each story has lots of angles that you can go at it from. So, discerning and distilling the best way to do that that gives clarity to the audience, and can you know give you give you food for thought. Now you should always come away thinking differently about or exploring a different trail of thought and challenging the way that you may be initially felt about some of them.
Dunne: Okay. Well, you're going to be hearing her voice more and more here on KLCC. Ellie Graham, thank you so much for coming in talking to us. It'll be nice and slowed down in one of the stories.
Graham: Very good. Thanks so much.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Tomorrow on the show, you'll hear from a national business consultant and author who specializes in helping business leaders prepare their human staff for AI adoption. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon On The record. Thanks for listening.
