Surfing still shapes the life of a landlocked Gerry Lopez

One of surfing's most famous tube-riding icons makes his home not in a balmy, palm-lined paradise but in central Oregon.

But Gerry Lopez, 60, still answers the siren call of the ocean.

A master at the notorious Banzai Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu, one of the world's most dangerous breaks, Lopez says he continues to surf "pretty much any time it looks good," even though doing so requires making the four-hour drive between his home in Bend and the distant waves off Pacific City.

"It's not the Pipeline," he says, "but it can be pretty fun."

Revered within the sport for navigating Pipeline's treacherous barrel-shaped breakers with a signature soulful detachment, Lopez moved his family from his native Hawaii about 15 years ago after shuttling back and forth for years.

"When our son started the first grade, we kind of had to settle into one or the other," Lopez says of his family of three, including wife Toni and son Alex. "So we tried Bend and we've been here ever since."

Do other surfers find it odd to spot him off the coast of Oregon?

"They do," he says. "I don't."

His son, now a college sophomore, prefers snowboarding to surfing, his father says, and Lopez frequently joins him on the slopes.

"I enjoy snowboarding a lot," says Lopez, whose home on the eastern edge of the Cascades is only about 15 minutes from Mt. Bachelor ski resort. "But surfing is and always will be the foundation of pretty much everything I do."

Lopez, who helped launch the Lightning Bolt brand of surfboards in the 1970s, still shapes boards. Either as an actor or playing himself, he has appeared in numerous surfing movies and documentaries, and in 1982 he co-starred with Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Conan the Barbarian."

A collection of his short stories about surfing was published last spring, and he works as an ambassador for Patagonia clothing company.

"I test their winter gear," he says, "and their surf gear."

One of surfing's most prestigious contests, the Pipeline Masters, was renamed in honor of Lopez, who not only made the break famous but won the event in 1972 and 1973.

Lopez returns to Hawaii each December to dole out the awards. (This year, one of the prizes was a Lopez-designed surfboard that event winner Kelly Slater, a nine-time world champion, said he would "cherish.")

It has been years, though, since Lopez last surfed Pipeline.

Too crowded, he says.