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During a trip to Mexico in the fourth grade, junior Andy Landgraf experienced most people’s nightmare. He was attacked by a shark.

Landgraf was bodysurfing in the ocean when the current sucked him out to open water and he came face-to-face with the underwater creature.

He tried pushing the shark away and caught his wrist on the shark’s tooth. Luckily, he managed to escape without any other injuries.

However, not even a shark attack could keep Landgraf out of the water.

“I kind of look at it like, you have to get back in the water or you never will,” Landgraf said.

It has been a long time since the shark incident and Landgraf said he’s enjoyed many different activities in the water. But he said his newest water obsession is one he’s been dreaming to experience all his life.

Since January 2004, Landgraf, a business major, has learned about and fallen in love with the art of surfing.

Making the dream a reality

Landgraf, a New Berlin native, said he’s always wanted to surf but never had the opportunity to do so.

Landgraf said he never knew too much about surfing, only what he had seen on television or in the movies.

Right before Landgraf headed off for his freshman year at UW-Eau Claire in 2002 he saw the movie “Blue Crush.”

After that, he said, he really wanted to take a year off and move to California.

“I had this idea that I could bartend by night and surf by day,” he said.

However, college was a mere week away and it just wasn’t very practical at the time to jet off to California.

After Landgraf had been in Eau Claire for a while, he heard about the study abroad program. He applied to study in Australia and was accepted for the spring 2004 semester.

“I thought, the first thing I’m going to do when I get to Australia is buy a surfboard,” Landgraf said. “And I did.”

When Landgraf got to the beaches of Australia he decided to try out his new board and teach himself how to surf.

“Surfing is so frustrating because it takes a while to finally be able to stand up,” he said.

Junior Eddy Kaiser was on the trip with Landgraf and also bought a surfboard. He said they both had a great time but Landgraf had a much bigger obsession.

“We had two boards for three to four guys, and he would disappear for hours,” Kaiser said. “We’d go back to look for him later and he would just be getting out of the water.”

Although most beginners find the sport challenging, Landgraf said being a beginner from Wisconsin made it even more of a challenge.

“You’re not around the ocean all your life so you don’t really understand ocean breaks, currents, swells or what a good wave looks like to go surfing,” he said.

Landgraf said it took him a month to finally understand what a good wave looked like and what a good day to go surfing would be.

He said it took him about six months to fully learn how to surf and feel comfortable.

Junior Anna Nicholson joined Landgraf on the study abroad trip to Australia and said Landgraf probably spent four days out of the week on the beach surfing while they were there.

“He would leave by five in the morning to get the early waves or right after his classes,” Nicholson said. “Or he would not go to his classes at all and instead go surf.”

Hitting the waves

Landgraf said the first time he rode a wave and really planted his feet and dropped down on top of the wave, it was a great success.

“It was only maybe three or four seconds but right after that I had my hands up in the air screaming and hollering,” Landgraf said.

He said everyone there looked at him a little goofy and thought he was crazy.

“They didn’t understand that I was just a kid from Wisconsin that fell in love and found a new dream,” he said. “I won’t ever forget that day.”

Landgraf said during the trip he had a chance to go surf in Fiji.

“Fiji was a pretty well known surf spot, but had waves averaging seven to eight feet and what I was surfing in Australia was two to three feet waves,” Landgraf said.

He said he was nervous before he went but caught a few smaller waves and had a great experience.

He said he was very fortunate as far as injuries went with his surfing experiences.

“I had a few bumps and scrapes from the rocks,” he said. “But nothing too bad. I was pretty lucky … no sharks, either.”

One of the best surfing experiences Landgraf remembers occurred in Byron Bay, Australia when he encountered a group of dolphins. He said he paddled out to them and two of the dolphins went to the right of him, two went to the left of him and two went straight underneath him, gliding past his foot.

“That was really cool,” he said. “(While surfing) you got to see so many things you can’t see in Wisconsin and that’s the part I’ll really miss the most.”

Nicholson said she can tell he really has a passion for the sport.

“You can just see it in his eyes when he talks about it that he absolutely loves it,” she said.

During his eight-month stay in Australia, Landgraf experienced many other thrilling activities. He did everything from climbing the Sydney Harbor bridge, kayaking through a crocodile swamp stream, jumping off a 50-foot waterfall and much more.

“But through it all,” he said. “I still see surfing as the greatest adventure thrill in the world.”

Although Landgraf had to leave his days of surfing in Australia behind, it wasn’t too long before he found a way to keep surfing a part of his life in the Midwest.

Surf’s up … in Wisconsin?

Now that Landgraf is back at Eau Claire he said he plans to stay involved in the sport as much as possible.

Just last weekend he drove to Sheboygan for a surf competition.

The 10th Annual Dairyland Surf Classic is the largest gathering of freshwater surfers in the world, according to its Web site.

“The Dairyland Classic is for any surfer and is more of a gathering than a competition,” he said.

People travel from all over to participate in the Classic, Landgraf said.

“The best part about it is that there are people there that have been doing it all their life and they have the greatest stories to tell,” he said.

Landgraf plans to bring surfing to Eau Claire as well. Landgraf is a member of the Eau Claire Water-Ski and Wakeboard Team and hopes to bring a new dimension of surfing to the group.

“There’s a type of surfing called ‘wake surfing’ or ‘skurfing’ where you can actually surf behind the boat’s wake,” he said.

Landgraf said he has learned through his experiences not only how to surf but also how to live life.

“I think of the Vince Lombardi quote, ‘It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.'”