Tourmaline Surfing Park

Name: Onika Miyashiro

Home: Pacific Beach

Vehicle: 1992 Dodge Dakota

Surfing: Tourmaline Surfing Park Onika Miyashiro surfs competitively -- a couple years ago she took second place in the Junior Women's category of the PB Surf Club's Summer Longboard Classic. Onika, 22, has surfed since she was 12. Her favorite spots are Pipes, Swami's, and Tourmaline. Her pickup is a 1992 Dodge Dakota. The bed of the truck contains all of her gear. Her 9'1" Sullivant board fits back there without the use of a rack. A gray Tupperware tub contains her clean clothes and keeps them neat and organized. She doesn't use a separate tub to carry her Body Glove "Crush" 3/2 mm wetsuit. "I just throw it in the back," she says, because the pickup has a plastic bed liner that prevents rust. Between two metal clips on the passenger's side of the cargo area, she's stretched a bungee cord that acts as a clothesline to hang her wet swimsuits.

Onika's seen a lot of crazy things during her ten years in the surf. "There are a lot of fights, mostly verbal confrontations, but some have ended up as fistfights on the beach. Other than that, there are a lot of animals out there. I saw a guy get knocked off his board by a dive-bombing pelican."

Besides pelicans, Onika says kite surfers have become a hazard. "Kite surfers can get up a lot of speed, and they cross the waves instead of following them. They think it's really funny to get up close to surfers and then carve away. That can freak the beginners out a little. They think they're going to get hit."