Grad's sport brings wind of hope to river community by Cynthia O. Stowell Ryan Rooper ('78) wants to change the city of The Dalles, Oregon forever, Rooper's love for his hometown has combined with his love for the up-and-coming sport of windsurfing to create a bit of new hope for the economically depressed town in the Columbia River Gorge. It happened at Hood River, 20 miles downstream, so Rooper feels it can happen at The Dalles. If the flock of colorful sails traversing the half-mile width of windswept river at The Dalles on a recent weekday is any indication, it's already starting to happen. There, on a tiny strip of sandy beach, Rooper and his assistants have been busily rigging up rental sailboards and giving lessons to a growing number of enlhusiaslS. - Ryan and Beverly Rooper, avid windsurfers themselves, anticipated the popularity of the Columbia River when they opened Gorge Windsurfing in 1981. Still the only shop of its kind in The Dalles, although Hood River now has five, Gorge Windsurfing has doubled its sales each year and grown from a seasonal operation to its own year-round storefront on one of the town's two main streets. Inside, beyond the awning that still reads "Dresser Drawer," a reminder of the previous tenant, Ryan and Beverly offer a wide selection of boards, sails, rigging, wetsuits, and windsurfing paraphernalia to friends and strangers who stop in. local kids come by after school to inspect the small skateboard i n v ~ t o r y . and a cross section of the public is lured in'by the town's first frozen yogurt machines. Occasionally an older native hesitates outside the front window and peers quizzically al the array of colorful but unfamiliar equipment. . ("What's that?" Rooper repeats a typical Interchange from the early days of windsurfing in The Dalles. "A surfboard," answers the visitor. "Oh, aren't you a long way from the ocean?") The windsurfer, or boardsailor, is still a bil of an anomaly in The Dalles. "Windsurfing is a little upper crust right now," says Rooper. " It attracts a lot of doctors and lawyers with BMWs. It's like skiing was 25 years ago." It's not an exceptionally expensive sport, however. A board, mast, sail and boom can be nad for as little as $500, says Rooper. Throw in a wetsuit, life jacket, and a couple of sails (fOf different wind conditions) and you're up to $1,500. Access to the water is usually free. Windsurfing may appeal to young urbanites in part because of its portability, suggests Rooper, who says that it takes just ten m i n u t ~ to get an outfit from rooftop to wave skipping. "You might call it the apartment dweller's sailboat," he added. It may seem a little risky to base one's livelihood on something as tenuous as the wind. Bur in the Gorge, there's plenty of it, and that's what the Roopers are banking on. In fact, the Columbia boasts such strong winds that board sailors who are profiCient elsewhere need extra coaching when they come to the Gorge, says Roopef. "The attraction to the Columbia River is that the wind comes from the west and the current comes from the east, and that creates waves," e ~ p l a l n s Rooper. "This is real high-performance windsurfing." But that combination also makes it easy for beginners 10 get back to shore. Rooper feels The Dalles is an ideal spot for a wide range of board sailors because it is situated on a bend in the river, which rakes a little of the edge off Qorh the wind and the current but leaves plenty of excitement. The key to bringing windsurfers to The Dalles is development of the waterfront, believes Rooper. The Pori of The Dalles recently aCQuired 80 acres of riverfront property from Union Pacific Railroad, and Rooper is helping to improve len acres of it (or recreation. "Beverly and t and Gorge Windsurfing have put a lot of our individual time into cleaning up the area," said Rooper. "But we didn't think up the idea. A lot of people did a lot of legwork before us_It High school kids wanting to raise money for band uniforms asked local individuals and businesses to sponsor a clean.up effort. A slide show documenting their glass-picking and tire-burning campaign has been used to raise funds for further development. A local architect did J scale drawing of Ri"erfront Park, as it came 10 be called, and more money was raised to build a scale model. Growing up in The Dalles has been a real ildvantage for Rooper in his efforts 10 promote windsurfing, " I know who 10 call and it's easier to get things done." Still, it's a slow process, "The locals are nOI all jumping on the bandwagon to turn Ihis into a resort town overnight. But when windsurfing caught on in Hood RiveT, people could see that the future of the Gorge was going to include windsurfing." Beverly, who went to high Khool in The Dalles, is still amazed by even the subtle changes brought by the new sport. "We never would have thought that people would come to The Dalles and Slay overnight in motels!" But they are coming, from all over the Northwest and as far away as the East Coast. "This is the first summer people have moved here to windsurf," remarked Ryan. The Dalles certainly needs the business. Hurt by the weakening of the timber industry and the closure of the Martin Marietta aluminum plant, the city is looking 10 the tourist trade. "We've lost a 101." said Rooper. "Windsurfing is not going to replilce lumber and aluminum, but it will make a dent." Windsurfing tends to bring more than sailors to town. ''It's not just a participatory sport, it's a spectator sport," said Rooper, who described it as "little butterflies flitting across the water." Ryan and Beverly were bitten by the sailboard bug in Jackson, Wyoming, where they worked in a ski shop after Ryan graduated from PSU. Homesick for The Dalles, the two natives returned and went to work at Stone Ski & Sport. "We tried a few boards (in the ski shop) and losl our shirts," said Ryan. Undaunted, they pulled together $2,000 and opened a separate shop. Using some of the business acumen he'd gleaned from his accounting studies at PSU. Rooper "kept dumping receipts back inlo the inventory" and the doo(S have stayed open. This year they hired a director for their windsurfing school so they could spend more time managing and minding the store. Their seven·month-old daughter Stephanie, who spends her days spinning skateboard wheels and smiling at customers in the store, also keeps them off the beach more than they like. Maybe when the sfX>rt and the city are better acquainted, and Stephanie is old enough for her first board, the Roopers will have more time for the river, the wind and the sunshine they've been promoting. PSU Perspective, Summer 1986 , _ 5
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