Oregon Drift

The first time Nick Stephens met Memo Jasso on a beach in 1968, he didn’t care much for the curly-haired man who laughed at his thick wet suit.

Stephens had just emerged from the water near Cape Arago, where he had been scuba diving, when he saw a group of surfers, including Jasso, in short johns — something like wrestler’s singlets.

Two years later, Jasso turned Stephens on to surfing. The men have been best friends ever since, along with surfing buddy Ed Ellingsen.

‘I can’t go to the beach anymore without him,” Jasso said.

Now in their 50s, the three men look for any opportunity to surf together.

Busy with their businesses and families — Jasso operates Brown’s Studio in North Bend, Ellingsen owns Nasburg Insurance in Coos Bay, and Stephens works with Ellingsen as an insurance broker — they don’t often have the time.

But that makes surfing in their golden years all the sweeter.

‘To me, it’s more fun now,” said Stephens, 58.

‘I took it for granted when I was younger.”

Ellingsen agreed. When you’re young, you expect to catch 50 waves, he explained.

But ‘now you catch a few waves,” he said. ‘It’s a reaffirmation of your youth.”

‘The fact that you can still do it makes you realize that you’re not done.”

Jasso, who traded an eight-track tape deck for his first surfboard, said he simply enjoys getting his fix.

‘You can ask any surfer why he surfs and you’ll get 1,000 different reasons,” Jasso, 59, said.

‘But, once you’ve caught your first wave, it’s an addiction.”

The men, who all grew up in the area, said a lot has changed since their days of chasing waves and women.

The water is more crowded with new — often brazen — surfers, the wet suits are thicker, and the guys often track wave conditions through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s buoy center sites before heading to local beaches.

‘They don’t realize some of the spots they’re surfing have never been surfed before we started surfing them,” Ellingsen, 54, said.

Although they surf in areas up and down the coast, they refused to disclose their favorite spots.

‘One of our true natures as Oregon surfers is to not reveal the places we surf,” Ellingsen explained.

Although he didn’t get into surfing in his youth as did Stephens, Jasso and Ellingsen, Coos Bay Mayor Jeff McKeown has found his own Zen moments on the water.

McKeown, 60, began surfing in March while on a trip to Mexico. He took some lessons, then got a few more from the owner of Waxer’s Surf & Skate.

‘I wish I had started when I was young, but growing up here it just didn’t occur to me,” McKeown said.

‘I feel at my age I better get with it or I’m never going to learn.”

As an old-timer, Ellingsen said he appreciates the precious moments when he can surf.

‘Every time I go out, I wonder if this will be my last time,” Ellingsen said.

But he and his surfing buddies have come up with a motto to ward off that final wave:

‘We gonna die,” Stephens said, ‘but not today”.

By Jessica Musicar