Surfer girl has packed her sticks in her quiver, looking to ride the perfect wave. Stoked to shred it, baby. That’s surf slang.
And that when she talks that way, most people in the dry dimension — aground — don’t have a clue what the 19-year-old is going on about. “There’s definitely a bit of lingo that I use as a surfer that, OK, sounds silly to people.’’ Eggy, for instance: “Like, a bit of a bummer.
Like, not great. Like when I walked into my hotel room and I met the person I’m staying with, I think I used that the first couple of sentences. And I was like, oh, maybe it doesn’t make any sense to her.
’’ It’s all part and parcel of the surfing culture, a lifestyle that oozes cool, with a sub-orbit of dudes and gurfers (girl surfers, or wahines) who “have boards will travel” around the globe in pursuit of the breaker to die for, the Zen of riding through the hollow of a quintessential barrelling wave. A journey that has taken Dempfle-Olin from Tofino, in British Columbia, to Teahupo’o in Tahiti as “Surfing has its own culture,’’ the teenager was explaining from Montreal, during a break in competition. “You don’t really notice when you’re in it.
Then you step outside of it and you’re like, whoa, I really am a surfer. You don’t realize how much of a surfer you are until you’re in a different world.’’ Dempfle-Olin has been subsumed in that culture for most of her life, both she and older sister Mathea — a 2019 Pan American.