More than a pioneering surfer, the old cat had profound insights into sex and good living…
One week ago, BeachGrit was the first to jump on the Doc-is-Dead bandwagon. We saw a Facebook post, knew he was rattling the gates of the Jewish afterlife (Wait! Their ain’t no afterlife according to the Torah. It’s all about focussing on this earthly life! How…real!) and proclaimed his death.
But he wasn’t dead. He was close. Ninety-three-year-old Doc hadn’t eaten for three days yet he was hanging on. And so he did for nearly another two weeks. Two days ago, Rob Machado pronounced Doc dead on Instagram. But he wasn’t and Kelly Slater told him so in the comments pane.
Half-an-hour ago, however, word came. Doc is gone.
So let’s celebrate the most remarkable of lives! Of a man who threw in a career as a doctor to surf, raise kids (nine of the bastards) and raise hell in a 24-foot camper van. No money, no fatty food or sugar, just waves and beans and rippling six-packs everywhere you looked.
Doc also loved sex. Who don’t? He even made it a life goal to improve his sexual technique by screwing 100 girls and awarding each a “male deficit score” depending upon whether or not they knew more about the game than him.
On his 25th gal, however, he met Juliette and away they went. Every 13 months another kid came along until there were nine. Living on the beach, in cars, vans, without money, not even going to school. Each morning the kids woke up to Chairman Mao’s wake-up song, fed gruel and just… surfed.
Their seventh kid Salvador says in the documentary about their life, Surfwise,
“Most parents say ‘Go to school. Don’t go swimming with sharks, that’s dangerous. Our parents said, you can go swimming with sharks, but you’re not fuckin’ going to school — that shit’s dangerous…”
And what’s Doc’s parting words: “It is easier to die when you have lived so I say to young people, go make memories.”
Buy his remarkable book, Surfing and Health, here while you can…