As a snow storm battered the northeastern coast on Tuesday, one surfer found himself stranded on the Long Beach boardwalk after drifting a mile down the New York coastline during an ice cold surf session.
Luckily, the PIX 11 news crew was nearby covering the storm.
When reporter Kirstin Cole approached the surfer for an interview about the weather, he pounced at the opportunity to hitch a ride.
“Do you have a van here by any chance?” asked the surfer, who was identified by the LI Herald as Adam Winerip. “Do you want to give me a ride back to my car?”
Cole pointed out PIX 11’s news “big news van” and told him that they “might be able to work something out.”
Dangling the promise of a ride, Cole continued on with the interview and asked Winerip if he “always surfs the crazy storms.” Winerip deadpanned that it was his first time surfing. Cole seemed to fall for his joke.
“You thought that this was the best day to go out surfing as a first timer?” she asked him. “This is a brave, brave man.”
Winerip and his surfer-dude demeanor went viral after PIX 11 shared the video on its Facebook page ― and he apparently had a lot of people fooled.
Many people criticized him for paddling out as a beginner during a dangerous storm, not knowing that Winerip is actually an experienced surfer, the Herald revealed in a follow-up report.
In fact, Winerip’s Instagram account is filled with photos from his recent trip to the Caribbean where he expertly surfed large waves in temperatures that were probably a lot warmer than a wintry New York.
“Never thought I’d make the news,” Winerip wrote on Instagram, alongside a post of his interview recording.
Cole was a good sport about the joke and wrote on Facebook Wednesday. “This surfer got me goooooood.... (can I plead Waterlogged Brain?!? 10 hours of storm coverage... oyyyy!),” he wrote.
The Huffington Post has reached out to Winerip to find out if the PIX 11 crew ever gave him that ride to his car. And we sure hope he did because that beach looked very cold.
