Article by Jon Hamilton, npr.org
Nearly 200 miles from the nearest ocean, nine surfers are bobbing beneath the Texas sun in what looks like a tropical lagoon.
Then a sound like a muffled jet engine fills the air, overwhelming a reggae song coming from shore.
One surfer starts to paddle, and a head-high wave rises seemingly from nowhere to carry him down the line toward the sandy beach.
Seconds later, two more waves materialize and two more surfers glide off.
One of them is 12-year-old Dane Grochowski.
“I pumped down the line and did a little snap, and kind of got caught behind the section” he says, when I wade out to ask him about his ride. “So I pulled into the barrel. But I wasn’t going to make it out.”
Welcome to the BSR Surf Resort in Waco, Texas, where the machine-made waves are so good they attract top professionals as well as casual surfers.
Hawaiian surfer Carissa Moore trained here and at a similar wave pool in Japan before she won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics this summer.
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