Or maybe just be sent to Tasmania with all other
adult learners.
As you know, I am currently in San Francisco
and I’ll be damned if the weather is not a most pleasant 70
something degrees Fahrenheit (22.7ish for my Australian and
European friends). The sun is shining with not a hint of that
classic biting cold wind. The bum urinating on the telephone pole
seems to be enjoying himself and the one who asked me for a
quarter, then a dollar, was chipper even after I turned him down
both times.
See that chubby white manboy across the street? Yes, he is
headed to an open floor plan tech startup with 40 million dollars
in series B funding but guess what he left at home? His black North
Face fleece! Or maybe it’s just tucked into his over-the-shoulder
satchel.
In any case, last night I had a lovely dinner, an adventurous
take on contemporary American cuisine, with even more wonderful
people. The conversation, as it does, turned to surfing at some
point and the struggles in learning. The bobbing around helplessly,
going over the falls, getting in the way of everyone, fin cuts,
leash tangles, face getting exfoliated by sand.
And it made me wonder. What kind of sick bastards are we, the
ones who stick with it?
Not including those who live in warm water places with enough
waves (Hawaii, parts of Australia etc.) learning to surf is
perverted masochism. There is nothing even remotely fun about it.
It is awkwardness coupled with pain coupled with more awkwardness.
And helplessness. And looking like a complete spastic in front of a
beach packed with spectators.
I thought back to when I first learned to surf and suppose I was
so young that I stunk at everything. I couldn’t hit a baseball with
any sort of consistency or a three-pointer. I played quarterback
but was so small that I couldn’t see over the center so would just
heave the football downfield before getting bone-crunchingly
sacked. I was as good at surfing as I was at anything which is to
say bad.
So I guess I wasn’t really a sick bastard. Childhood, in and of
itself, is a sort of perverted masochism.
But what about the adult learner? How miserable must his life on
land be to stick with something so absolutely impossible to learn?
How driven must she be in order to spend the minimum 500 hours in
the water required to poke down the line with a poo stance?
Miserable like Hitler? Driven like Pol Pot?
Yes, the adult learners, the ones who really stick with it, are
unstable should be locked up with the key thrown away. They are far
too dangerous for society to contain. Or maybe they can all just go
live and learn together on Tasmania. I heard, at my lovely dinner
from a wonderful person, that 1 in 4 Tasmanians is directly related
to a convict.
(A very funny classic from our friends at Australia’s Surfing
Life)
Two days ago, while checking a surf spot called Spookies,
next to the more famous, though less exciting, Angourie Point, Will
says he saw a “fifteen-foot” Great White breach “seven foot in the
air.”
On his Facebook page, Will wrote: Just saw a 15 foot
Great White breach off Spookies !!!!! Fucken raddest thing I’ve
ever seen !!!!!!
“I just went to check the surf and sat down for about 10
seconds; it was probably about a kilometre out and the thing just
jumped out seven feet in the air.
“This thing was definitely hunting, so I told a guy who was just
going out that I saw a giant Great White out there, and asked him
to tell the others. One guy came out of the water and he had a
cut on his head and it was bleeding, but the others stayed
out.”
“It was about a 15 footer and had its whole profile from the
top. It came out like a freight train, if that thing hit you you’d
be in half.”
Shaking and in awe of the predator’s sheer power, Webber
rushed down to notify the four surfers who were in the water at the
time.
“This thing was definitely hunting, so I told a guy who was just
going out that I saw a giant Great White out there, and asked him
to tell the others. One guy came out of the water and he had a
cut on his head and it was bleeding, but the others stayed
out.”
Webber said he had always wanted to see a shark, just not
when he was in the water.
“I’m definitely not surfing today and I’ll be surfing very close
to the rocks from now on. It’s burnt into my brain. I’ve
always imagined but now I know what it looks like… it was like a
missile.”
Meanwhile at Ballina, an hour or so north, and the current shark
capital of the world, four Great Whites were just spotted near
surfers at North Wall.
From Surf Stitch: "The MODOM Ambassadors including Jack
Freestone, Taj Burrow, Craig Anderson, Kalani David, Noah Beschen,
Alana Blanchard, Tom Whitaker, Mark Mathews. We have also had a
number of tour guys like Kelly Slater test out the product during
Bells." Did anyone here get attacked by a shark? Well? It works! |
Photo: Modom
“Modom didn’t give us a cent for what you read here (yes, we’d
tell you). We’re just fucking thrilled to have something that’s
potentially effective at discouraging sharks.”
Modom’s magnet leash sprung from a license agreement with
SharkBanz, a subsidiary of SharkDefense, which is
a New Jersey based company founded by Eric and Jean Stroud in 2001.
SharkDefense is the proud owner of numerous shark
repellent patents. In addition to magnets, they also sell a line of Batman style shark
repellent spray.
Considering the company employs numerous “scientists,” it’s
worrying that there is a total lack of peer review or access to any
of their “research” data.
Sure, they have some “research” posted on their
site, but it amounts to little more than a collection
of data gathered by others, with no indication of how they
proceeded with real world testing.
Lucky for us there are concerned citizens willing to double
check claims for them.
Take a gander at the following video. Does an excellent job
demonstrating the efficacy of the Sharkbanz’ magnetic
wonder.
Sharkbanz are not designed to prevent sharks from eating
visible bait. They have a hierarchy of senses and can override the
electrical sense in the event that visible bait is present. Again,
Sharkbanz are meant to deter curious sharks from biting a person
while in investigative mode, not prevent them from eating bloody
fish bait.
All this is just arm chair speculation based on lack of evidence
and contradictory marketing material. I really need to talk with
someone in the know. Ideally that would be a person who studies the
creatures for a living and doesn’t have an economic interest in
promoting the product.
I’m yet to see any rigorous testing on Sharkbanz carried out
by independent scientists, and I am fundamentally skeptical about
the ability of these devices to deter sharks from biting people.
Decline in magnetic field strength is governed by the inverse
square law. Thus even a couple of inches from your Sharkbanz the
magnetic field is extremely weak – weak magnetic fields do not
inherently repel sharks. Basically, the device has a very small
magnetic footprint – most of your body will not be within this
footprint.
The inverse square
lawstates that “a specified physical quantity or
intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance
from the source of that physical quantity.”
Dr Meyer continued, “I’ve seen some research data showing
aversion to solid state magnets by small sharks held in close
proximity to the magnet. The problem is that field strength is
declining exponentially with distance from the magnet, so to a
propagate a strong magnetic field over an area the size of a human
body would require a tremendously powerful magnet (=large magnet)
at the field center. For full effectiveness, we would also need to
understand the minimum magnetic field strength threshold for shark
repulsion, and design a field that was at least this strong
immediately surrounding our body. This threshold will likely vary
as a function of shark species, size and motivational
state.”
Basically, even if it works (it doesn’t), the Modom leash will
only protect the foot your leash is attached to. The other leg,
your arms, your head, they’re still up for grabs.
The biggest problem I have with devices like Sharkbanz is
that people are clearly buying them with the belief that they will
be either entirely protected from shark bites, or at least less
likely to be bitten. Neither of these facts have been
scientifically proven, and there are fundamental reasons why these
devices are unlikely to deter a shark from biting you. These
devices are in a grey area, exploiting peoples fears, without being
held to the high standards required of other safety devices (i.e.
that they actually work). The burden of proof of effectiveness is
on the manufacturer, and in my opinion, they are a long way from
demonstrating effectiveness in preventing shark
bites.
Pretty crazy price point, especially considering it’s just a
normal leash with a neodynium magnet attached. The same type of
magnet you can buy on Amazon for under twenty
bucks.
It’d be damn easy to rig one of those things to a leash, maybe
wrap a cord around it and fashion a necklace. It’d not work just as
well, and you could spend the balance on whatever it is that dumb
dumbs blow their dough on. ICP concerts and lottery tickets, I
suppose.
I am going to San Francisco this evening for a
little slice of business. Have you been? Many of my favorite people
in surf are either from there, have spent lots of time there or
love it there. Matt Warshaw, honored historian, occasional zealot,
spent years bundled in black, I think. Ashton Goggans who is at
Surfer did too. Taylor Paul, the ex editor-in-chief of
Surfing magazine grew up just down the road in Aptos.
Louis Samuels, whom I have never met, still plies his trade
somewhere in Fog City. Etc.
The town features wonderful food, grand architecture, an
interesting history, activities for both the young and young at
heart and also features the worst climate on earth. Mark
Twain is attributed with famously saying, “The coldest winter
I ever spent was summer in San Francisco…” and I’ll be damned if
that doesn’t just sum it up nicely.
Fog descends from the sky, beginning sometime in May. A
freezing, thick and miserable fog. It blankets the bay morning,
noon and night refusing to release its grip for weeks, even months,
at a time. The locals, shrouded in thick wool, turn into strange
moles scurrying about their business. Children weep for the sun.
Mothers hush them, saying, “The sun is for weaklings. You’ll grow
up tough, dear. Tough like Courtney Love (who was born in the
middle of one of SF’s “summers” in 1964).”
And the surf? Relentless! Ocean Beach is one massive test of the
human will. Waves march like Napoleon’s army pouring their fury
upon the Russians at Austerlitz. The surfer, shrouded in thick
rubber, must put his head down and ram it against futility. If he
is lucky he’ll wind up outside where the peaks shift and the sharks
wait and crusty old men with beards shake angry fists at the sky,
daring “God” to show his face.
I don’t surf to test my will and want absolutely nothing to do
with OB but am very impressed by the masochists that crave its
slap. And equally confused by them. If surfing is a Nietzschean
struggle then what joy is there in life? What pleasure?
A six-foot wave at Long Beach, New York, took my
manhood and made me an object of derision…
cuck·old
nounarchaic
noun: cuckold; plural noun:
cuckolds
1. The husband of an adulteress, often regarded as an
object of derision. verb. (Of a man) make (another man) a cuckold by
having a sexual relationship with his wife.
Its true. Kinda…
In 1936 Ernest Hemingway published an amazing short story called
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. In it, Macomber
and his wife travel to Africa for a hunting safari. Their guide is
a strapping, rugged and emotionless stud (a fear in and of
itself for every belly bulging, hair-line receding hubby) called
Robert Wilson.
Macomber hits a lion, but it doesn’t die. It stumbles into a
heavily wooded/grassy area. Their guide, Robert Wilson, tells
Macomber he can’t leave the lion that way. He needs to go into the
bush and finish the kill. Macomber becomes terrified. Wilson says
he will go with him. Macomber’s wife, Margarate, is watching this
all unfold. That is to say, the first piece of her husband’s
masculinity starts to fade when she senses his fear.
They go into the bush. Macomber succumbs to fear. Wilson kills
the lion. Macomber is stripped of his manhood. His wife, Margarate,
on the ride back to camp, kisses Robert Wilson right in front of
her husband.
There’s more.
Later, Macomber wakes in the middle of the night to find his
wife absent from her cot. She walks in some time later. He calls
her a bitch. The next day she “accidently” shoots him to what
Wilson says “will be a certain amount of unpleasantness at the
inquest. The gun bearers will serve as witnesses …but you should be
ok.”
A six-foot wave at Long Beach, New York, took my manhood and
made me cuckold.
(It wasn’t big. Pretty good form from the higher tide.
East-south-east angle. The water was cold though. Around
forty-one degrees.)
Actually, now that I think back on it, that bulging swell of
salt water did look like a lion rushing out of a tranquil bush.
Long Beach (NY) locals (who rarely surrender a set wave) posed as
the gun bearers and surrogate wives watching and waiting for me to
turn and pop up. The current had drifted them toward the end
section of the lineup. I had just paddled back out.
So I sat there alone. Waiting.
I paddled toward the peak. The hoots continued. I turned toward
shore, dug my hands into the water and started paddling. As I
looked down the line, a cadre of NY locals staring through me, I
realized I did not like the look of the wave. Looked like a
closeout. Didn’t feel like getting pinched by fifteen cubic yards
of ice cold Atlantic with a fraction of possible Hep C. Sorry.
Eight hooded black rubber suits bobbing at the end of the
line slowly making their way back to the take-off point. Watching
me sit there. Detached. About 60 yards out to sea, we all saw the
peak of a set wave begin to pyramid. It marched closer.
In the ocean, amid all that expanse, there are no buildings or
cars to muffle noises or calls. Especially when your sitting there
alone and the signals are meant for you…
“YEWWWWWW……”
“YEAHHHHH…..”
“EEEEEUUUUUU…”
These howls translate to “YOU BETTER GO PUSSY!!!”
There was nowhere to go. There was no other surfer around to
relinquish priority to.
I paddled toward the peak. The hoots continued. I turned toward
shore, dug my hands into the water and started paddling. As I
looked down the line, a cadre of NY locals staring through me, I
realized I did not like the look of the wave. Looked like a
closeout. Didn’t feel like getting pinched by fifteen cubic yards
of ice cold Atlantic with a fraction of possible Hep C. Sorry.
The pull back was awful.
Open mouths. Shaking heads. A couple of “un-fucking
believables.”
Whatever……
However way you try to play it off like it doesn’t bother you,
like Hemingway and Macomber, there is a side of us that is sickened
when we cower. When we shy away from the reality of a manhood
challenge. I felt that tinge of nausea in my belly.
I walked back to the car some time after.
Hoping my wife was not on the beach. Hoping the ammunition store
was not open yet.
