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Surfing is not a sport one expects a 63-year-old Member of Congress to claim for a hobby, but then again, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is no ordinary Congressman.
The 12-term California Republican has had a storied political career that is peppered with adventure. His tenure includes sneaking off to the front lines of the war in Afghanistan weeks before being sworn into office, maintaining a lifelong friendship with President Ronald Reagan and hobnobbing with celebrities such as John Wayne and Sammy Hagar.
But through all these escapades, surfing has remained at the top of his priority list.
Rohrabacher grew up on the West Coast and has been riding the waves since he was in high school. In fact, his space in the Rayburn House Office Building is decorated with three surfboards in honor of his favorite pastime.
A nearly 9-foot red, white and blue surfboard, which Rohrabacher refers to as his “East Coast surfboard,” is mounted high above a couch. The opposite wall displays the pair of boards that Rohrabacher and his wife, Rhonda, used to surf on their European honeymoon. The trip was one of their first marital compromises.
“When I first proposed and we decided to get married, I wanted to get married where we could go surfing on our honeymoon, and she wanted to get married in Europe because she loves Europe,” he says.
As luck would have it, Rhonda Rohrabacher’s great-great-grandfather hailed from Biarritz, a town in southwestern France that is widely regarded as the surfing capital of Europe. The couple wed in the church frequented by Rhonda Rohrabacher’s ancestors and then set off to surf their way through Europe.
Even now the couple enjoys hitting the waves. In fact, Rohrabacher is in the process of teaching his 6-year-old triplets how to surf.
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