“I went surfing and was absolutely terrible,” he says. “I was ready to quit, but people encouraged me to get on a big, old, fat surfboard, and pushed me into a wave. All of a sudden, it was like I was back surfing in high school.”
Dr. Maki’s renewed interest in surfing quickly evolved into his favorite passion. The family moved again, to Florida in 2002. Dr. Maki has worked as a locum tenens hospitalist for Ob Hospitalist Group at various facilities in California and Florida.
Through his surfing network, he learned about tandem surfing. Although Kristine and his friends believed he was “too old” and “too much of a klutz,” he was determined. So, in 2007, he traveled to Hawaii and—at the age of 60—learned how to tandem surf. Ironically, Kristine found him the perfect tandem partner—a family friend who was five years his junior and half his size and weight.
Dr. Maki lifting his partner, Jaci, during a tandem surf competition in Cocoa Beach, Fla.
For almost two years, they trained with an Olympic gymnast learning lifts.
“He would have us lie down on the mat and, over and over again, get up as fast as we could and go into a lift,” he says. “Florida waves are very short-lived. We worked like mad at that.”
Dance, Dance, Dance
Besides surfing every other day, Dr. Maki has taken 90-minute ballet classes twice a week for the past five years. He works with a trainer for an hour, also twice a week.
“Without bragging, I have to say I’m much better now than I was when I first started surfing back in 1960,” he says. “I do pushups, calisthenics, and use a ballet bar and a balancing training board called an indo board.”
In 2012, he and his tandem surfing partner went on the International Tandem Surf Association’s world tour. They surfed in contests in Virginia, California, Hawaii, Florida, and France, earning 11th place overall.
But this year, he’s taking time off. Not to worry, though. When he turns 70, he plans on returning to the World Tandem Tour.
The break, he says, will allow him to focus more on his ballet. For the past three holiday seasons, he has played the role of Herr Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker at Cocoa Village Playhouse in Cocoa Village, Fla.
“I hope to be dancing ballet and tandem surfing until I can’t walk anymore, because they’re so much fun,” Dr. Maki says. “If you have a positive attitude and do your best to be happy with what you’re doing at work—some days can be brutal as a hospitalist—it carries over to your patients and they heal faster. You don’t get healed by medicine alone.”
Carol Patton is a freelance writer in Las Vegas.