Australia turns its back on Wright!

Is it time for the champ to find a new home?

This year’s women’s tour race, heading into the final event of the year in Maui, is far more exciting than the men’s. We know that John John is going to win. They could give him the trophy right now and even Brazil would collectively shrug and say, “No próximo ano, destruiremos o diabo colonizador, mas este ano … sim. O garoto loiro nos pegou.” But the women. Oh the women are neck and neck.

Sally Fitzgibbons leads Tyler Wright by a score of 52900 to 51200. A virtual tie with Courtney Conologue nipping at their heels. Sally and Tyler are, of course, Australian and you would think the nation would be split in its allegiance but apparently it is not. Apparently all of the sporting stars have broken in favor of Fitz and let’s read Australia’s Daily Telegraph.

Sally Pearson. Layne Beachley, the Jillaroos, Socceroos, Southern Stars and Matildas. Name an Australian sporting great or team and Sally Fitzgibbons has them in her corner as she prepares for the biggest fight of her career.

The Australian surfer is drawing inspirations from the recent performances of Australia’s top sporting women, men and teams — and a few legends from the past — as she chases a debut world crown after a decade of trying.

While main rival Wright opted to relocate to Hawaii weeks in advance of the showdown, Fitzgibbons says she was able to train uninterrupted on the NSW south coast in a perfect preparation for the finale.

Wright is the defending champion in Maui and with her two worst results calculated into her scorecard holds a narrow lad over Fitzgibbons and Conlogue.

The least complicated way for Fitzgibbons, Wright or Conlogue to win the world title is to win the Maui Pro.

If Fitzgibbons or Wright both finish third in Maui and Conlogue fails to advance into the final, Wright will defend her world crown.

If Fitzgibbons and Wright finish fifth, Conlogue doesn’t advance past the quarters and neither Stephanie Gilmore or Carissa Moore win the event, Wright will again defend her crown.

“Name a Australian sporting great or team and Sally Fitzgibbons has them in her corner.” How do you think this makes Tyler Wright feel? Do you think it makes her want to emigrate and leave those rude bastards behind? What country do you think she should take her talents to and call home?

Denmark?

Greece?

There are many options.


Hey racist: “Stop surfing today!”

You are a cultural appropriator!

I was driving in my car through unseasonably brisk weather today and listening to the radio when a story came on  about cultural appropriation. Apparently there is a reggae group in England and when they are performing the lead singer will stop the show if she sees white people wearing dreadlocks and ask them to leave. Cultural appropriation she says and wrong. The journalist asked her if it were any exceptions to her rule. She thought for a moment before answering, “No. It is always wrong.”

“Hmmmm” I thought while chuckling about white people who get dreadlocks while also thinking about surfing.

Our favorite pastime either began in Polynesia or in Peru, depending on who you ask, and was a component of religion or old-school fishing, depending again on those same people. It did not, in any case, begin in southern California or Australia.

And that makes us all cultural appropriators and likely racist.

I think, in a gesture of good faith, everyone at The Inertia should stop surfing. I also think anyone who listens to reggae should stop surfing too. And anyone who prefers açai bowls to ice cream. And anyone who drives a Korean-made car. And anyone who uses, “Mahalo” unless Hawaiian and/or ironic. And anyone who celebrates Taco Tuesday.

It is only right.


wipeout
Blowing a shoulder at Pipe or getting the breeze squeezed out of your lungs at Sunset, either way y'dancing with the devil. | Photo: WSL

Wipeout: Sunset vs. Pipeline!

Which wave would you rather wear?

The boys, our boys, are ready to tackle Sunset next, the second jewel in the Triple Crown, and the forecast is for big, burly surf. Heavy, rolling surf and do you like watching Sunset? Do you love the size of the field? The unpredictability? Back in 1980, famous surf journalist and editor of Surfer magazine Drew Kampion wrote Sunset “…is the standard by which other waves are measured, and the best surfers here are the best surfers, period.”

Over the years its shine has dimmed coinciding with Pipeline’s nuclear glow but I do think that Sunset is primed for a comeback. It is a wave that mocks the very idea of wave tanks. A wave the ocean should be proud of.

I’ve sat near the lifeguard towers there for a few World Cups, watching the boys, our boys, traverse the huge canvas. It’s a marvel that anyone knows where to sit. Pipeline seems easy to understand or at least easier. Everyone has a marker. Everyone has a corner. Sunset seems unknowable.

Yes, I’ve seen many big wipeouts at both Sunset and Pipeline and always felt worse for the ones who wear Pipeline on the head but a recent conversation with the great Michael Tomson has changed my mind. Tomson, of course, made a name for himself at both waves as part of the “Bustin Down the Door” crew. And let’s listen to him compare wipeouts at both.

I’ve nearly died at Sunset twice. At 50 and 52. And this one time I was out there and this set popped up and I said, “Fuck it. I’m gonna go.” And there it was, life on the table, got pounded, held down, thought I was dying right? Next thing is I’m being pulled up on a board. I couldn’t focus on anything, had to go to the hospital, it was all fucked. So I had another one like that at Sunset and I have become so careful now because when you fall there it is worse than Pipeline. Pipeline is violent but short. Sunset gets a hold of you in a fucking half-nelson then keeps you down for the longest time and then there is always seven waves behind it. I get cold thinking about some of the wipeouts I’ve had there…

And there you have it. A little something to think about as you watch the action either today or tomorrow.


surf-ears
A little man protects his precious hearing holes with Surf Ears for kids.

Review: Surf Makes Kids Deaf!

Protect his precious little hearing holes!

One year ago, almost to the day, I wrote about being overcome by deafness. A few months of cold winds and my left ear was as useless as a two-hundred dollar shark repellent leg-rope.

(Or Anne Frank’s drum kit, inflatable dart board, a sense of humour at a Greens Party convention etc.)

Have you ever been deaf?

You smile inappropriately in conversation and look blank when asked questions. You narrow your eyes and stare at lips, trying to read whatever they’re saying. All you hear is the thump of your heartbeat and the swishing of water when you surf, as if you were watching raw footage from a GoPro. Your voice becomes a honk and your vowels so blunt to be incomprehensible.

Then, I was talking to Tom Carroll for a political book project (the two-time world champ boycotted South Africa in the eighties because of the White Devil’s apartheid there) and we were talking about how shitty it is to be deaf.

Tom suggested I might wanna look up Surf Ears, a Swedish start-up he’s involved in. Even with Tom’s enthusiastic endorsement I wasn’t entirely convinced they’d work given his championing of the shoulder-zip wetsuit in the nineties and shark repellants recently.

But I called ’em in Malmo, spoke to an impressive man called Magnus Ekermann.

Told Magnus I was writing a story.

In return, they sent a gorgeously presented ear-plug kit (very Scandi). Aesthetically, they were better than any ear plugs I’d seen. I threw ’em in every time I surfed.

Gradually my ear dried out. Soon, I could hear.

And wearing these things wasn’t so bad ’cause there’s a small opening that allows sound to enter. You know how you talk to someone in the water and they pull out their plugs out to talk? It ain’t no way to live. The Surf Ears allow a conversation to flow.

Anyway, I liked ’em so much that when I lost my complimentary pair a month or so later I didn’t hesitate to pay full freight on a new set.

Recently, Surf Ears released a kid version. If you’ve got kids you’ll know they’re a catch-all for disease and all sorts of syndromes. And the little ingrates act as if you personally jabbed ’em with the virus, the pain. All-day, all-night whimpering.

Ears are the worst. Get ’em inflamed or infected and…oowee… tears, wailing, tantrums.  There isn’t enough paracetamol in all the world to calm ’em.

My kids surf so I plug their holes up with adult Surf Ears. Which work good enough (my kids got big heads) but, as Magnus told me recently, he’d just loosed a little version for average-sized kids, aged four to twelve.

How about I throw ’em a plug?

And here we are.

If you love your children you’ll pre-order here. (They’re out in January and distributed globally by Creatures of Leisure.)

If you surf okay, hit ’em up for a sponsorship and save your parents the fifty bucks.

Apply at [email protected].

 


Kelly-Slater-John-John
Here, Kelly explains to an agog John John how he proved the earth to be curved. | Photo: @tsherms

Blood feud: Slater’s challenge to flat-earthers!

Prove the earth is flat and win money from Kelly Slater!

Do you remember, in July this year, when flat-earthers turned on Kelly Slater? It’s a must read! (Click here.)

Pertinent quotes: “WHAT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS YOU DUMB SHIT? WHAT AREN’T YOU GETTING? I KNOW YOU ARE STUPID, BUT I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE THIS FUCKING STUPID! NO VERIFIABLE CURVE MEANS NO CURVE DUMMY.”

and

“NOW GO FIND THAT CURVE WITH YOUR MILLIONS OR SHUT THE FUCK UP OR CHOOSE TO CONTINUE TO LOOK LIKE A BITCH! ALL YOUR DUMB ASS HAS TO DO IS SHOW US WHERE TO VERIFY THIS CURVE OF EARTH!”

Kelly bit back, as is his wont, despite the folly of engaging simpletons for whom Pythagoras, Aristotle, Hellenistic astronomy, Magellan and Isaac Newton are just names in the ether. 

Yesterday, the noted jiujitsu figure, Eddie Bravo, posted an excellent satellite photo of Lake Tahoe.

Eddie asked his 326,000 followers, “Real or fake?”

Real or fake?

A post shared by Eddie Bravo (@eddiebravo10) on

You can guess what happened.

Amid the 864 comments came Kelly Slater, with a challenge!

“The education system has truly failed half the people on here in disseminating information and analyzing truth. The govt has made you all paranoid. I told Eddie this,” wrote Kelly. “You flat earthers get your money together, charter a flight from Santiago Chile across the South Pole to Perth, Australia. If you find an edge I’ll reimburse the price of the flight. Let’s quit talking and be done with this conjecture and assumption you have. I think flat earth people want truth and are attempting to fight division in society at their core yet they’ve gotten stuck in the pitfall and created more division in its wake. Let’s do this. Put your money where your mouth is. We can hold the money in escrow while the flight happens.

Quickly followed by.

“Study storms and swell charts. Watch where the swells begin and how we follow them around the great circle lines of the earth. A swell can start off the east coast of Africa and reach Alaska about two weeks later measurably while being followed across the entirety of the ocean in between. Go study your maps and tell me how that’s possible on the flat earth. I’ll be waiting.”

Now, the problem with going to battle with people who believe the earth is flat, the moon landing was faked, chemtrails are poisoning us all, the Jews were the real villains behind 9-11 etc, is the debate becomes very silly, very fast.

Bravo’s follows flew into battle:

…yelling at and over people in debates to get your point across shows you’re uncomfortable with a rational conversation about actual factual evidence. 24 hour sun in Antarctica thoroughly disproves and debunks any theory of flat earth. So does the flight from Sydney to Santiago alone! This photo just looks wide angle/fisheye. That would be too great a curve at this altitude.

kellyslater@timbeatham it proves a lot actually. Truth fears no scrutiny. Not letting people get a word in is just avoidance or immaturity. @king_khan21 wrong about what? Saying someone is wrong doesn’t make it so. Use some facts here if you want a rational debate on topic.

kellyslater@kvnblckdr keep parroting. While you’re at it go and debate someone who actually shows proven tests on his YouTube channel and attempt to debunk flight paths, surveyor’s level testing horizons, ships disappearing etc. wolfie6020.

kellyslater@kvnblckdr name any flight and let’s talk about it. Or should I? Use the ones dubay talks about. He’s wrong about most of the flight paths he references cause I’ve taken them. I’m fine to be proven wrong also so let’s have one.

omarlcc@kellyslater I don’t think I’ve seen Eddie yelling at it over anybody in a debate. He is normally pretty level headed and is usually the one being yelled at and ganged up on for pointing out what is seemingly obvious. The flight from Sydney to Santiago doesn’t prove that we are on a spinning ball or that we are not on a flat plane (haha get it, airplane), if thats what you were implying. If you like facts whydont you look into the physics of airplane flight. Planes can’t stop in midair to turn land on a runway perpendicular to the takeoff runway without veering off. Also you speak of factual evidence about 24 hour sun in Antarctica but I doubt you’ve been there. What factual evidence of 24 hour sun Antarctica do you have? I haven’t seen any and believe me I’ve looked. I have on the other hand seen morphed videos, cameras cutting out for a few hours every day, and other simple tricks. Please do tell.

kellyslater@omarlcc I’ve had numerous friends see the 24 hour sun in Antarctica. But I suppose they’re lying also? And every clip anyone has ever made of it cause they were paid to be in on the conspiracy also, right? Do you know how many things that are proven you have to disprove to have a flat earth? The flat earth map has Santiago and Sydney about 23 hour flight or roughly 13,000 miles apart yet I’ve flown that many times in about 13 hours. Spherical geometry and distances and direction between cities easily proves a globe. Please go educate yourself. Learn

omarlcc@kellyslater You’ve had numerous friends go to Antarctica? What were they researchers? Sightseeing? Doesn’t pass my smell test tbh and regardless that’s not proof to me or you. Proof is proof, and I don’t know you beyond your surfing abilities, so sorry it’s nothing personal. Not sure what map you’re talking about but I’ve never seen a flat map that was 13k miles in diameter let alone from Sydney to Santiago. No map is perfect, especially not flat projections of a globe.

It goes on and on…forever. Follow the trail here.

And watch Eddie Bravo in action below.