More than four decades ago, Kemp Aaberg and Robert Perko met around a Rincon beach bonfire, two freezing surfers trying to get warmed up after catching some waves.
"When we started surfing, there were no wet suits, no leashes," said Mr. Perko, for whom local surfing spot Perko's Point is named. Winter water temperatures prohibited staying in too long, and standing next to a fire was the quickest way to warm up.
"I think I probably said 'g-g-great w-w-waves out there today,'Ê'' said Mr. Aaberg, joking about the cold.
Sunday, the two men were together again for an afternoon of anecdotes, life lessons and surfing wisdom at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum. It was the first talk in the annual Santa Barbara City College continuing education series "What Matters Most."
Both men talked passionately about their love of riding waves, trying to give the mostly nonsurfing audience a feel for what it's like to paddle into a 10-footer at Rincon, or watch a friend on a 30-footer at Oahu's Waimea Bay.
Mr. Aaberg, a retired UPS delivery driver, started his remarks by bringing out a huge poster of surfer Greg Knoll on that giant wave in 1964.
"At this time, this was probably the biggest anyone had ever gotten involved with," said Mr. Aaberg, who started surfing in 1956 at age 16. He was at Waimea that day and watched Mr. Knoll paddle into the wall of water. Today, extreme surfers are usually towed into big waves by Jet Skis.
Both men started their surfing days on balsa wood boards, which didn't turn the way today's fiberglass boards do. Instead, they rode straight forward.
"Surfing in essence is simple. You pick up the swell at Point A, and let it take you to Point B. That's what it is. We've spent our lives trying to do it right," said Mr. Aaberg, 64.
Mr. Perko, 66, got his start in the sport at Hendry's Beach. His family lived nearby on the Mesa. In 1957 he met the son of Gates Foss, a local credited with being one of the area's first surfers and one of the earliest riders of Rincon, the area's best break.
"Surfers here were their own little group. We didn't have too much contact with anyone surfing past Rincon," Mr. Perko recalled. Two years after he got bit by the bug, the sport took off among kids in Santa Barbara, and there would be a couple of dozen guys out at Hendry's every weekend, he said. To meet the demand for equipment, he made trips to Manhattan Beach, bringing back Gordie boards to sell.
To feed the craze for waves, some surfers have gone to extremes. Mr. Aaberg is no exception. One of the surfers in documentary filmmaker Bruce Brown's early surf movies, he slept in the back of a Nash Rambler station wagon at the Ala Moana yacht club on Oahu's south shore, with only a damp towel for a blanket because he couldn't afford a hotel. In Australia, where he lived and surfed for two years, he worked in a brick factory to make money.
"Whatever passion you have, somehow you have to figure out how to support that or how to get the free time to do it," said the self-described "antique surfer."
Both men still live in Santa Barbara, and even though it doesn't have the greatest surf on the California coast, Mr. Perko said the boom in surfing they have witnessed during their lifetimes has impacted this city greatly.
"It was never really a surfing city, and now it's one of many surf cities around," he said.
Despite waves that weren't as big as those he grew up with down in Santa Monica, Mr. Aaberg was drawn to the area by the beach right next to UCSB.
"It was an obvious answer (to where to go to college). There was no place in the world like UCSB, with an ocean right outside the window of the zoology lab."