Very cool.

Hitching an energy ride.

Billions of H2O particles work together to transport you from one place to another, which is very generous when you think about it. That last statement is, of course, airy-fairy soul-surfer bullshit-the wave doesn't care whether you're in it or not. Particles of water are inanimate objects that don't know anything, much less “care”; the water is just doing what water does when it gets goosed by energy.

It makes waves.

A wave, any kind of wave, has a specific shape. The particles knocking into one another don't just bump along in a flat line, but move up and down-hence the wave. Prior to the “disturbance,” the water particles are at rest, in technical terminology, equilibrium. What happens is that the energy disturbs the equilibrium; it “displaces” the particles from their state of rest. When the energy reaches its maximum potential “displacement” (“positive displacement”), the wave “crests.” Then it drops, below the equilibrium line, to its “negative displacement,” aka, the “trough.” Simply put, it has highs, lows, and middles, just like life its own self.

Yeah, except it's a little more complicated than that, especially if you're talking about the kind of wave that you can ride, especially the kind of giant wave that's right now rolling toward Pacific Beach with bad intent.

Basically, there are two kinds of waves.

Most waves are “surface waves.” They're caused by lunar pull and wind, which are sources of the disturbance. These are your average, garden-variety, everyday, Joe Lunchbucket waves. They show up on time, punch the clock, and they range in size from small to medium to, occasionally, large.

Surface waves, of course, give surfing its name, because it appears to the unenlightened eye that surfers are riding the surface of the water. Surfers are, if you will, “surfacing.”