Photos: Cover Photograph by Mark McEvoy/MILLENNIUM; Design by Allison Saltzman,
Norman at a year old on dad's back: Pat SolomonHow exciting was life for you before you were a teenager? Maybe your folks took you to Disney World one summer. Or maybe you got to go on an "adventure" with your parents on some cross-country trek. Any way you look at it, it's highly doubtful that any of us have lived quite the life that Norman Ollestad did by the time he was 11.
In Crazy For The Storm, Ollestad recounts his days growing up on the beach in Malibu, and on the ski slopes of the California mountains. His father, who was a former FBI agent and attorney, introduced him to surfing and skiing at an early age and Ollestad soaked it all in.
But the perfect life that Norman was used to came to a grinding halt on February 19th, 1979. On a chartered flight with his father and his father's girlfriend, disaster struck. Their Cessna airplane crashed in the San Gabriel mountains - leaving Norma Ollestad as the lone survivor in fridgid temperatures. Norman describes his tale of survival in great detail in this book - a great read sure to catch the interest of many surfers this summer as we wait out the inevitable flat spells.