Posted on 12/02/2003 11:39:49 AM PST by stainlessbanner
MARGATE, N.J. - He's a diehard surfer, an eccentric millionaire, a sun-seeking recluse. Given all that, Ron DiMenna's choice of retirement home makes perfect sense.
Who else would spend $500,000 to buy an RV, equip it with a slew of high-tech electronic features, paint it to look like a 21st-century woodie and then hit the road, destinations unknown?
But DiMenna, the 66-year-old founder of Cocoa Beach, Fla.-based Ron Jon Surf Shops, is not the retiring type. He has three shops in Florida - Cocoa Beach, Orlando and Sunrise.
More than 40 years after he started selling boards on nearby Long Beach Island, the Ron Jon brand - plastered over billboards, T-shirts and bumper stickers - has evolved into a $49 million-a-year juggernaut synonymous with surf chic and lavishly decorated stores.
While his peers creep toward retirement and his clients chase waves, DiMenna follows the sun from behind the wheel of his 20-ton rig, one eye on the weather forecast, the other on his empire.
Today, it's Margate, a Jersey shore beach town just south of Atlantic City he's stopped in to visit a friend.
Yesterday, it was Henniker, N.H.
Tomorrow, who knows?
"This is how we live," said DiMenna, who travels with wife, Lynne, and two dogs. "We've only been home for six months in 18 years. We never go home. Would you, if you had this?"
Maybe not. "This" is a 2003 Monaco Coach, the latest in a series of rolling pleasure palaces he has called home. At first sight, it looks like the bastard offspring of a 1956 Mercury woodie and a Greyhound bus.
The rear half's trim looks so much like wooden siding that people swear it's real until they run their fingers across it. It's just paint.
"In the `50s, they made cars like this," one gawker told his three young sons, eyeballing it while the DiMennas refueled during a recent pit stop somewhere in Nebraska.
Well, not exactly like this. In addition to the faux wood trim, the vehicle has intricately detailed likeness of a short board surfer on one side, a longboard surfer on the other side and a Hawaiian surfer up front, above the woodie-style grille.
The surfing accents continue inside, where surfboard-shaped throw rugs - embossed, of course, with the Ron Jon Surf Shop logo - sit atop thick wall-to-wall carpeting in the main part of the cabin.
Equipped with "slide outs" that extend the sides of the motor home out for more room, the cabin consists of two swiveling, plushly upholstered captain's chairs up front, an open living area and a kitchenette, while a private bedroom and bath occupy the rear.
The vehicle's gadgetry is equally over the top: There's a satellite dish on the roof, a 42-inch flat screen television that drops down from the ceiling at the switch of a button, three exterior-mounted cameras - that serve as rearview mirrors - that broadcast images of the road surrounding the vehicle onto screens on the dashboard.
Then there's the small black bulb the protrudes down out of the ceiling, just above the driver's seat, which contains a surveillance camera trained on the living area. It projects images onto a screen that sits on the nightstand next to the king-size bed, so DiMenna and his wife Lynne can keep tabs even when they're out of sight.
Of course, his super-woodie is not exactly a fuel saver, getting about 7 miles to the gallon. Good thing the tank carries 250 gallons.
In addition to serving as a home, it's an office when need be - it's equipped with FAX, telephone, computer, printer - and a rolling advertisement, with Ron Jon Surf Shop decals on all sides.
DiMenna doesn't use a Palm Pilot or a BlackBerry handheld.
"Here's my office," he says, throwing a three-inch think leather-bound spiral notebook into a visitor's lap. It's stuffed with irregularly shaped pieces of paper, some bearing the words "Day to day" scribbled longhand across the top.
He keeps tabs on the shops - besides the three in Florida, there's one in Ship Bottom, N.J. and another in Orange, Calif. - while he hunts new products and new ideas for them.
By his count, he's been traveling for 35 years. He doesn't count seven years living in Australia, or the time he spent fighting a 1987 drug possession charge in New Jersey that was eventually dismissed.
"The material wealth is unimportant to him," said longtime friend Lloyd D. Levenson, a lawyer who defended him in that case. "The way he dresses - Ron Jon's T-shirts, flip-flops in the summer, desert boots in the winter - shows it. He cares about the motor home, having enough for gas and touring. That's about it."
At 6-1 inches tall and 185 pounds, DiMenna is still built like a young surfer, except for his thinning red hair. It's been months since he rode a wave; he's getting fussy about where he does it now.
"This water's too cold now," he says, gesturing over the bulkhead at the Atlantic Ocean on an unseasonably balmy November day. "And in the summer, with the crowds, it's like driving on the (Garden State) Parkway."
He's full of contradictions. He loves it when passers-by stop to look and take pictures of his motor home. But he wouldn't let an Associated Press photographer shoot his face.
He doesn't want it known, doesn't want to be immediately recognizable as the Ron Jon Surf Shop guy wherever he goes. But he doesn't mind being seen in a motor home with the brand name all over it.
He does own a house. It's on 150 acres in Merritt Island, Fla. But he'd just as soon avoid it.
"This time, we left Florida three years ago," he said. "That was for two weeks. The time before that was a 10-year stint. We never get tired of it. It's not the road, it's home. The home just moves. If you can follow the weather, why not?"
Sounds like those Oscar Meyer Weiner vehicles I have seen on the road.
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