From sea to shining sea, two surfing buddies found waves wherever they went.
Stefan Hunt and Jonno Durrant hung 10 on a prodigious pile of sugar beets in Idaho, caught “swells” in back of a boat in a Mississippi swamp infested with alligators, and were towed by a rope through a puddle of mud behind a cowboy and his horse in Texas.
The mates from Australia went to great “wave” lengths to fulfill their quest of surfing in all 50 states, even dressing up as Dorothy and Scarecrow during a “Wizard of Oz” production in Kansas and being pulled across a stage, their surfboards strapped to their feet.
Hunt, 21, and Durrant, 27, spent nearly seven months traversing the nation in a run-down ice cream truck, putting 20,000 miles on the clunker in pursuit of the perfect pipeline.
They surfed down the steps made famous by “Rocky” in Philadelphia, were dragged through a cornfield by an all-terrain vehicle in Nebraska, and dressed up as a big red lobster and a fisherman to catch waves in Kennebunkport, Maine.
“We surfed sand, snow, grass, staircases, rivers, lakes — you name it, we surfed it,” Hunt said of the adventure that ended in spring 2007. “We surfed some crazy stuff.”
The duo is back on the road for a different endeavor, promoting the movie they made about the pilgrimage.
Their goal, of course, is to show the 62-minute documentary in all 50 states.
Hunt and Durrant produced and edited the film themselves, whittling 80 hours of wave-chasing frivolity into a condensed package, complete with pumping music provided by artists they met along their journey, plus a few Australian bands.
“You go back and look at the film and you’re like, I forgot all about that,’ ” Durrant said of the movie. “We crack up laughing at some of the things we did.”
A novel launched the idea.
Durrant was reading Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” when he was suddenly struck by wanderlust. An environmental scientist from Melbourne, Durrant’s passion has always been surfing and he decided his board would be his ticket to explore America.
He fired off e-mails to friends, and only Hunt, who’s from Sydney, could get the time off.
With five donated surfboards, Durrant and Hunt landed in Los Angeles on Aug. 10, 2006, and met with their primary sponsor, Hurley, who agreed to give them a dilapidated ice cream truck.
The truck turned out to be a money-eating machine, churning through two engines, a battery, two alternators and a fuel tank. It also required three tows.
Itinerary? They had none.
They’d simply pull into a town and ask random folks what was famous about their state.
Ever ask an Iowan the best place to surf in the “Hawkeye State?” Or someone in Montana? It can lead to some bewildered looks.
“We’d always start out by saying, ‘I’ve got a bit of a crazy question for you. We need to find a way to slide a surfboard around your state,’ ” Hunt said.
Every state had its own charm, giving them a unique slice of Americana.
But there were some that stood out over others, like their experience in the “Sunflower State.” They stopped at an information center in Kansas and asked if the “Wizard of Oz” was playing anywhere. When told there was a festival in Wamego, Durrant and Hunt navigated the truck to the small town.
When the townspeople found out what they were doing, they dressed Hunt up as Scarecrow and Durrant as Dorothy, strapped surfboards to their feet, hoisted them on a harness and flew them across the stage.
“It was great. We surfed through the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ ” Hunt said. “And then they actually helped us get hooked up with people in Nebraska.”
That’s their favorite part of the trip — the people.
In 200 days on the road, they never paid for a hotel room, and slept in the truck only 14 times.
“That’s one thing about America — it has great hospitality,” Durrant said.
And interesting cuisine. They ate bear stew in Alaska and frog legs in Louisiana.
“I’m a fan of frog legs,” Hunt said. “Jonno isn’t because of the blue veins.”
They met a person in South Dakota who let them surf off his roof and into a pile of leaves. Even more, he gave Hunt and Durrant words to surf by: “If you’re bored, you’re a boring person.”
Hunt and Durrant were rarely bored spending so much time on their boards.
The pair introduced surfboards to the slopes, barreling down a mountain run in Vermont — while wearing wet suits. They also descended a sand dune in North Carolina and attached wheels to their boards to roll through Beale Street in Memphis, Tenn. — in full Elvis ensemble, naturally.
In addition, they surfed in an “abstract postmodern contemporary concrete wavelike formation” at the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Museum and, since Texas is so big, “tanker surfed” in Galveston, waiting for a supertanker to leave port and riding the waves it created back to shore.
Hunt and Durrant had a touching tribute to “The Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin along the Oregon coast, dressing up in khaki outfits as they skipped into the breaking waves on the anniversary of his death. Irwin, a fellow Aussie, died in 2006 after his chest was pierced by a stingray barb.
The journey concluded in an appropriate place — the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii.
“A beautiful way to end the trip,” Durrant said.
They unsuccessfully tried to get the ice cream truck back for their movie tour of America. Instead, they were loaned a truck, which promptly blew an engine.
“The ghost of the ice cream truck is still with us,” Durrant said.
With no truck, they’re taking planes, trains and a Greyhound bus to see the states, showing the movie in living rooms of friends they met along the way. Just recently, they showed up in Milwaukee for a screening of 20 people.
Their pay? Free dinner and great conversation.
“Sold enough movies to catch a train to Chicago,” Hunt said.
