Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual

by Yvon Chouinard

Those days were the height of the cheap fossil fuel age. You could buy a car for twenty dollars, gasoline was twenty-five cents a gallon, camping was free, and you could get a part-time job anytime. The land was fat and we took full advantage of it. In the fall of 1962, coming back from climbing on the East Coast, Chuck Pratt and I were arrested for riding a freight train in Winslow, Arizona, and we spent eighteen days in jail. The charge was “wandering around aimlessly with no apparent means of support.” By the time we got out, we had each lost twenty pounds on the jailhouse diet of Wonder Bread, beans, and oatmeal. We had only fifteen cents between us, it was snowing, and the cops gave us a half hour to get out of town. Yet we never entertained the thought of calling our parents or friends for help. Climbing had taught us to be self-reliant; there were no rescue teams in those days.