“When I think of Gerry, I always think of someone very calm with water exploding all around him,” Tomson said. “He was always very calm and unperturbed in that deathly situation he was in.”

Lopez last surfed Pipeline in December during an exhibition as part of the Pipeline Masters, an event he won in 1972 and 1973. Although fit and trim, he allows that he has slowed down.

“It’s a whole different deal,” he said. “I’m old now.”

About Pipeline’s famous lineup, Lopez said: “It’s probably the most crowded spot with good, top-level surfers. It’s like that any time it breaks. They really want it badly. I don’t want it that badly.”

He will most likely retire from surfboard shaping in a couple of years. In the meantime, Lopez is riding the new wave of stand-up paddling, which has caught on here along the Deschutes, especially a section that courses beneath a footbridge through the Old Mill District in town. Folks from Lake Tahoe to the Mississippi River, and from the Great Lakes to New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee, have begun to figure it out, too. All of which has caught the surf industry somewhat off balance.

“I get media inquiries from Midwest outlets asking about S.U.P. because their lakes are starting to see more and more of it,” Mandy Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association, a leading trade group, wrote in an e-mail message.

The manufacturers association says it does not have sales figures on stand-up paddling because it is so new. But three magazines cover the sport. And Action Sports Retailer, a board sports trade show held in August in San Diego, will host a stand-up demonstration this year  on a lagoon, not the ocean.