December 20th dawned a golden surprise along the Central California coast, this Sunday morning’s defiant response to an approaching storm front.



“This is so f-cked up,” said Jimmy.



“Really f-cked up,” I replied. “But really amazing.”



Because approximately 25 miles south of San Jose we hit the junction of Highway 152, which, had we taken it west, would drop us at Moss Landing, where we knew it to be six-feet and offshore. Instead, we headed in the other direction, away from the coast, driving due east toward Fresno and California’s Central Valley, in search of the perfect wave.



It had been less than 48 hours since I’d seen The Video. Having just finished a pleasant session at Cayucos Pier I was breakfasting with a buddy when two local surfers walked into the cafe. They seemed agitated. Ordering could wait.



“Watch this!” one of them commanded, and propped his IPhone down on our table. I dutifully squinted at the tiny screen, slightly baffled. Three minutes and forty seconds later I could hardly swallow, my mouth as dry as my toast. I’m sure every surfer who saw the video of Kelly Slater’s wave—and for the first time in surfing history that description can be applied literally—felt the same way. “What” was all too plain: the first man-made ‘perfect’ wave. The big question, most relevant to virtually every other surfer on earth, was “where?”

So that was that. No miracle today -- Lemoore’s perfect wave was flat. Which was, after all, a perfectly natural thing to experience when chasing perfection, even here so far from the sea.

By the time we got home the Internet was already abuzz, our in-boxes choked with wild theories and confident assertions: California, definitely (”Look at the eucalyptus…”) Central Valley, probably (“Gotta have cheap real estate and plenty of room…”) near some sort of population base, (Fresno? Isn’t there a university there?) The Google maps came out about an hour later and by early the next morning various sites and even actual addresses were being passed along like surfing’s version of a WikiLeaks blast.The most promising? Lemoore, California, a small farming community clinging to the flanks of Interstate 41, home to a lonely naval air station and not much else. Except, allegedly, a perfect wave. More significantly, a perfect man-made wave.It’s not like they haven’t been trying. Big Surf in Tempe, Arizona opened in 1968, its giant plunging tank and three-foot mush burger the very first attempt to synthesize stoke. Over the ensuing almost half-century, dozens of wave pools have been built and promoted, from Disney World’s Typhoon Lagoon and Pennsylvania’s Dorney Park (home to the 1985 Inland Surfing Championships, won by Tom Carroll) to more modern incarnations like Surf Snowdonia in Wales, U.K. All very novel, many looking fun as hell, none of them “perfect.”Until now. Which is why I eventually found myself east of the I-5, rolling along Highway 198 as it tracked straight as a frozen rope through fallow fields and arid almond orchards, searching for at least a glimpse of surfing’s first true miracle. Because that’s what Kelly Slater and his team of aqua-engineers have provided the surfing faithful. They’ve taken a page, so to speak, from the sport’s most potent canon and made it real: they’ve recreated The Endless Summer’s Cape St. Francis, our original ‘perfect wave,’ albeit with a few upgrades, and plopped it down in a field somewhere in California’s Central Valley—which means it could be anywhere. In your backyard, for example. A perfect wave. Like I said, a miracle.“But what is a perfect wave, anyway?” asked Jimmy, who, the further we got from the coast, and the more the air smelled of cattle feedlots, grew more and more philosophical. “The value you give it is the value you get. So perfect for what? And perfect for who? I don’t even think I could ride that wave. Not many surfers could.”“Doesn’t matter,” I told him. “The fact that they created it, that they turned lead into gold, that’s the accomplishment. That’s what makes this day so different from any other day in surfing history. It doesn’t really matter what they do with it. What matters is that they showed it was possible.”“If that’s the case then what are we doing out here?” asked Jimmy.He had a point. I’m not sure what I expected to find out here in Lemoore. A pack of pros already on it, fidgeting in line, waiting for their turn to pretend? Would GoPro’s Nick Woodman have already rented it for the day, choppering in his best bros for a private tube fest? Would Kelly himself be there, Frankenstein in a full suit, regarding his creation, laughing at the gods (“It’s alive, IT’S ALIVE!”) And, more importantly, what would I do if, by some miracle, I was given the opportunity to make the distinction between a natural wave and an unnatural wonder? Could Kelly’s Wave possibly ever be My Wave?As it turned out, the heartland held no answers for this surfari. After criss-crossing Lemoore’s backroads, orienting ourselves off our Google map images, missing a few turns and squabbling a bit we eventually found ourselves pulling off a quiet country road and parking in the muddy driveway of what looked like a large commercial site or maintenance yard. The air was redolent of cattle feed and the tang of fresh-cut redwood, an eight-foot high fence surrounding the acreage. A small guard shack, empty -- a dog barking sullenly from the farmyard across the street. No signage, no “No Trespassing” signs. We got out of the truck, dodging puddles, and approached the front gate. Peering through a gap between the gates was a young uniformed security guard.“Can I help you?” he asked.“We came to see the wave,” we said.“Sorry,” he said. “No visitors.”“We don’t want to ride it,” I told him. “We just want to see it.”“Sorry,” he said.“Has anyone been riding it?” Jimmy asked“There were some guys here about two weeks ago,” he said. “They were riding it.”“Did you see them riding it?” I asked.“No,” he said. “I was working in the guard shack.”“So you’ve never seen the wave?”“No. But you guys can’t be here. You’d better get going.”“Can we take a few pictures?”“Better not.”So that was that. No miracle today -- Lemoore’s perfect wave was flat. Which was, after all, a perfectly natural thing to experience when chasing perfection, even here so far from the sea. In fact, this search for the perfect wave turned out like so many of the others. After being rebuffed by the security guard we attempted to drive along the fence line to a high spot where we hoped to peek into Slater’s Magic Kingdom and got so stuck in the mud that we needed a local to tow us out with his truck. Last time that happened was on the way to Scorpion Bay. And when finally back on the highway, we were flagged down by two fireman out in front of their station—they had seen the surfboard.“Here for the wave?” they asked.“Sort of,” I said. “Have you seen it?”“No,” said Roy, the shorter of the two. “But we do a lot of surfing around here.”“Really?“ I asked“Yeah,” said Josh, the taller one. “Along the canals. We tow behind quads on shortboards.” He beamed with a surfer’s pride.“So Lemoore’s a real surf town.” I said.“Always has been,” said Josh.