Episode 5, On the Rocks.

I love the ocean, don't you?

The beach, the waves, the sand.

Growing up in Northern California, I loved to go to the ocean.

But the water was too cold. We didn't have any wetsuits in those days.

When I was 13, I visited LA with my father, and I discovered why so many people wanted to live here.

Turns out, I did too. It took me years to get back. I finally found a place to live just a mile from the Venice

pier, but you know, it's not all sun and serenity around here anymore. Our beaches are now

the front line in the battle against rising tides, a major consequence of climate change worldwide.

But beaches were always changing. The problem now, well, they're disappearing.

I'm Mormon-Alnie and this is In Our Backyard, a six-part series about the local impacts of climate change in Southern California. The second I'm in that water, I'm just not thinking about anything else anymore.

For me, and I can speak for my son, my good friends. Our minds are somewhere else.

We're fully engulfed in that, you know, liquid,

and we're waiting for this magical wave to come,

and we're always chasing that last best wave,

so we're hooked, you know?

It's a ritual.

That's Chris Hiltos.

He told me about growing up on the shores of Maryland,

where he learned to surf and to dream about finding a surfer's paradise. I'm going to go way back here. When I was just a young, little surfer in middle school, dreaming of doing this thing. In the back of the surfing magazines was all these surf camps. And they were all located in San Clementi. San Clementi, in the U.S., at least, was like the Shangri-La. It was the place you wanted to get to. It was where all the magazine photos, it was either taking it in San Clementi or they were taken in off the wall or pipeline, Hawaii. So you wanted to get there. I finally got there.

It kind of fulfilled my dream and then ended up opening a surf school.

Now, the San Clementi Surf School began to attract celebrity clients, including a fitness

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