Are you a cosmic minimalist?
Why did you pick up a surfboard and get into the game? Maybe you wanted to sex a tan girl, maybe you wanted to tame the ocean.
Or, maybe, like me, you were attracted by the sport’s cosmic minimalism. Get a board and you have the key to unlocking a lifetime of dazzling experiences, incomprehensible mysteries revealed and so on.
If I can surf in trunks, and if I can avoid wearing a legrope, I will. Me, a board and a wave. It don’t get much better.
But I take ditching the leash seriously. Surf’s gotta be kinda empty and with no bumps on the face to surprise. For the duration of the session, I straighten out holding both rails and there are no flyaway airs.
I figure, we’re all citizens of the earth. Sometimes you gotta smother your own pleasures for the good of the whole.
For the past five or so years, a substrata of surfers have been pushing the retro logging thing to its authentic roots by completely shucking the leash. Look at the tail on the hipper looking logs kicking around and there won’t even be a plug to tie a leash onto.
But who can blame ’em, these beautiful boys in their billowing shirts and with the long balayaged hair? It’s like installing retractable seatbelts in that sixties wagon. Yeah, it’d make it safer, but it kills the vibe and the aesthetic.
Of course, flying through the windscreen of your old wagon kills nobody but you; a leashless ten-footer bisecting the face of a kid riding a softie in the shore break, well, that’s an issue, I suppose.
And so I wonder,
Does the thrill of leashless logging outweigh the smallish chance of someone else getting hit? And a stud who does get a face shot, isn’t he partially responsible for not diving under the loose board? Perhaps it might be a wakeup call, an incentive to examine the lineup more carefully?
And doesn’t a surfer who ride leashless have an incentive to not wipeout and, ergo, becomes a better surfer?
So, Real?
Or no?
Faux?
