Parker: 10 Things I Love About Surfing

I love being afraid, I love failing, I love knowing we're pointless and preening… 

“….how about a straight, non-ironic piece. Ten things I love about surfing,” Derek says.  “Surprise ’em”

Harder than it looks, ten things.

Because it’s just one thing. All that other shit is peripheral, inconsequential.

I love watching the ocean. Seeing how the water moves through rocks, currents form, how depth is reflected in surface conditions. Knowing how peaks can shift, when to stand my ground as a set feathers outside. Knowing that it’s nothing magic, it all makes sense, a powerful pattern that’s crystal clear if you just know how to look.

I love knowing how to move through the water. That off rhythm paddle beat on a windy choppy day. Reaching and tucking during a freedive freefall, feeling the water move past you, able to swoop and soar with a subtle flex. Hiding in the reef with a speargun, anticipating a surge and bracing in advance. Swimming with minimal effort, surging flowing forward. Never fight it, use it.  Kicking for the surface with a heaving diaphragm and tingling fingers and toes. Bright scattered spots at the surface, deep breathes and poor motor control.

I love watching the ocean. Seeing how the water moves through rocks, currents form, how depth is reflected in surface conditions. Knowing how peaks can shift, when to stand my ground as a set feathers outside. Knowing that it’s nothing magic, it all makes sense, a powerful pattern that’s crystal clear if you just know how to look.

I love being afraid. Timing a set on a big day, finding a keyhole, sliding right out. Getting taught again and again that it doesn’t hurt as much as you think. Always a challenge until you stop looking.

I love failing a million times and hating myself for it. The frustration and humiliation, over-amping off the bottom on the wave of the day, ass over teakettle into the flats. Stalling too hard and getting eaten, taking a rail to the shins on your way over the falls.

I love that no matter how hard you try, how talented you are, you’re never good enough.

I love hooting someone in far over their heads, watching the fear in their eyes on the way to destruction.  I love laughing and clapping as they surface and sputter.

I love the meaninglessness, the sheer absurdity of being a grown man playing. I love looking down my nose at the tragically unhip, the ones who think they’re onto something special. I love being jaded and cutting and cruel because it all began when I was a child and whatever magic there was is long gone.

I love knowing that we’re pointless and preening and immature and conservative and sheltered and privileged and self-destructive and selfish and wasteful and irresponsible and never ever satisfied.

I love that the people with whom I share the most in common are those whose company I enjoy the least.

I love that surf art is terrible and uninspired and we pretend it isn’t.

I love the countless times my sinuses’ve drained salt water onto my wife’s face while we’re making love.

I love that moment when your ankle stops pulling and you don’t know if it’s your leash or board that’s broken.

I love the countless scars. Putting your forearm through the deck of your board and leaving flesh in the fiberglass. Getting your arms over your head just in time to leave skin on the reef. Razor-thin slices on the bottoms of your feet after getting caught inside at Rocky Rights. I love walking up the beach with blood running down my leg or arm or face or chest. Diluted by salt water, only a scratch, but you look so damn tough.

I love surfing until your arms are limp, then stretching out the pain when those muscles tighten hours later.

I love that I’m an ungainly lumbering ogre on land, but in the water I can move like a dancer.

I love watching a guy on a rental take the beating of his life ten feet from the shore on a head-high day.

I love the smell of a fresh bar of Sticky Bumps.

There.  That’s gotta be ten, at least.