All Aboard For The Big Flush

Everyone knows that you need rain for farming, water for things like bridges and boats and an ocean for surfing. Everyone, that is, except the sun-baked optimists of Arizona. Near Phoenix farmers grow hydroponic tomatoes in plastic tents; at Lake Havasu City workmen are rebuilding London Bridge across acres of sand; and at Window Rock the Navajo are thinking about buying paddle-wheel steamers to take tourists from Glen Canyon Dam to Rainbow Bridge.

Arizona's never-say-dry spirit makes its biggest splash, however, at Big Surf (SI, Nov. 10, 1969). This is a 20-acre oasis on the outskirts of Tempe where the genius of man and $2.5 million of Clairol Surf, Inc. capital have created a long, keyhole-shaped lagoon that has a wave-making mechanism behind a wall at one end and a wide sandy beach at the other, 400 feet away. Unlike an ocean, which has mysterious moods, Big Surf can turn its five-foot waves on at 8 a.m., send them down the lagoon at programmed intervals and turn them off at closing time. There are no waves during the winter, when the lagoon is filled with the tumbleweeds that roll across the Valley of the Sun.

For its grand pre-reopening last month Big Surf announced its second annual Collegiate Inland Surfing Classic and offered $1,000 in scholarships for individual winners, trophies for the best teams, a free practice day in the lagoon, a water show, and free food, music and a party. Invitations were accepted by 102 surfers from 23 schools, including such salty institutions as Oklahoma and the College of Artesia, N. Mex. Big Surf has palm trees, Polynesian-style buildings and office girls who go barefoot and say "aloha" when they answer the phone. But Hawaii it ain't. Instead of sandpipers and gulls, it attracts road-runners and cactus wrens. It has beach bunnies, but it also shows off a few jackrabbits.

Bill Chrisman, president of Clairol Surf, Inc., was asked if the lagoon ever had oil spills or sharks. "No," he said, "but someone put a 10-pound carp in our circulation basin last fall."

Most of the questions were about making waves. Water from the lagoon is periodically pumped back into the reservoir behind the end wall. At intervals 15 gates open, sending 70,000 gallons or so of water against an underwater baffle, which creates a wave. The contestants termed this operation "the big flush."

"In the ocean you paddle around and maybe see a big wave coming a quarter of a mile away," said Dulene McGough, a United Air Lines stewardess who came to help with the water show. "Here you paddle out to a point near the middle of the wall and wait for the explosion. It's scary at first."

When waves are fired at intervals of a minute or more, each one usually moves in a wide V-pattern with a curl that breaks right and left all the way to the beach. "But last year," said Mike Wilson of Long Beach State, the 1970 champion, "they were firing waves at 30-second intervals, and when they rebounded back from the beach the whole scene looked like Victory at Sea."

Some saltwater surfers said Big Surf was another sign the Establishment was taking over the last free sport in the world. Linda Benson, five times U.S. women's surfing champion, disagreed. "It's a lot better than I thought it would be," she said. "Not the greatest surf in the world, but it's here. If we keep losing beaches in California and things get more crowded, we may need places like this, even along the coast."

Each contestant was judged one at a time, unlike in ocean contests where as many as five surfers paddle out at the same time to pick their waves within a time limit. To some the Big Surf method seemed fairer, but to the free spirits of the sea it looked as if the Establishment were confining the individual to a very narrow groove.

One of the judges, Mrs. Brennan McClelland, who as Marge Calhoun won any number of contests and helped found the U.S. Surfing Association, saw it both ways. "On the ocean," she said, "part of the game is reading the surf and picking an excellent wave. The spectators enjoy it because a gambling surfer may wait and wait, using up most of his time hoping that better waves are due. Here it's a repetitive situation. Most of the waves are the same, and you take what's given. But the challenge is to do more, and we judges will be watching to see what tricks these kids will use on this spilling-type wave."