This sounds like a project that Ohio Sea Grant should definitely fund, my vanilla title is "The Recreation Benefits of Surfing in Lake Erie":
It was the kind of day that lives mostly in Cleveland surfers’ fantasies. Pushed by the storm’s winds, water the color of chocolate milk rose 10 feet in the air before slamming onto a beach of boulders and logs. The temperature was 40 degrees and falling. One surfer, Vince Labbe, climbed onto his board only to get blown backward by 40-mile-an-hour winds.
Mike Miller, known as Chewbacca, managed to tuck his head and left shoulder into the barrel of a wave before being crushed by a wall of water.
One question: There's more than one Chewbacca in Ohio?
The methodological innovation of the study could be the endogeneity of location and recreation choices:
And Cleveland surfers are not playing around. Many of the roughly 25 committed surfers here work nights all year to keep their winter days free for surfing. Mr. Weeber quit his job as an advertising art director and makes less money as a summer landscaper. He moved his family closer to the beach, to spend more time on the waves.
In the greater Boone area (aka, the high country) we have rock climbers and skiers that exhibit this behavior. I think they know each other as "dirtbags."