I’ll call him Utah.

“How is it out there?” I said.

“It’s great. I mean back home, it’s snowing,” he said.

“Where’s home?”

“Utah,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, imagining snow-covered mountains, and glorious days spent skiing or snowboarding up at Brian Head.

“There’s a group of us. We have been coming up here since 2012. We went to school together and graduated in 2002. We decided to make an annual trip out here to surf ten years ago.”

I had more questions like where did you learn to surf if you live in Utah, where did you go to college, what did you major in, what type of work do you do now, how’s the housing market in Utah, but it was his morning, not mine. And I was happy to snap a few photos and watch him wade into the water, throw his board down and paddle out.