I’m back! Back with a screw in my motherfucking shoulder and a wobbly opioid spring in my step!

Mick Fanning, Kelly Slater and karma are all fucking losers ‘cuz baby, I’m back! Back with a screw in my motherfucking shoulder, wobbly opioid spring in my step and apparently Tourette’s.

Shit yeah!

Not even the world’s two best competitive surfers (pre-Brazilian Storm) and the World Surf League’s ingenious torture device could knock me from the surf journalism raft.

“Chas! Don’t be such a baby…” he wrote. “Laird got his hip replaced while he was conscious. Mick was almost attacked by a shark while HE was conscious. Do I need to tell you what Kelly has done while conscious? No! Don’t Goggans this! Shake it off!”

I was feeling very emotional at the thought of leaving you all yesterday but Nick Carroll knocked me straight.

“Chas! Don’t be such a baby…” he wrote. “Laird got his hip replaced while he was conscious. Mick was almost attacked by a shark while HE was conscious. Do I need to tell you what Kelly has done while conscious? No! Don’t Goggans this! Shake it off!”

Exactly what my ass needed to hear so up I woke at 5:00 am and not gentle I went into that good morning.

The stars were still twinkling overhead as I drove, listening to The Raveonettes’ Raven in the Grave and thinking, “I ain’t going into that grave like Goggans goes into Orange County Sheriff’s Departments ‘cuz Nick Carroll would think I’m a li’l poos!”

I checked in at the surgery center, put on my baby blue robe, had my hand poked with an IV then read uplifting trigger-free longboard stories and comments on my phone. 

Safe space achieved, bitches!

After that the doc came in, walked me through the procedure and told me to take druuuuugs.

I wondered, “What Would Nick Carroll do?” but didn’t have time to decide because a nurse said, “It’s go time…” and walked me down the hall to a cold room with very bright lights and one of those lethal injection beds in the middle.

I lay down and….

….woke up three hours later not even vomiting any blood, thinking I had just consumed a large gin and tonic. What miracle do they put in those fluid sacks these days? It was amazing and my head was clear as shit so I asked the nurse if she could fetch me my phone.

It was right then and right there that I read Derek’s reveal that Sin City is opening odds on professional surfing. 

Best! Fucking! Day! Ever!

And as soon as my perkaucet

Perkoset

Pirkesit

Purkyssed

Parcucit

Percost

Percocet wears off I’m driving to Vegas to get some more and lay 5000 of my wife’s money on Filipe.

I’ve got a lucky screw in my motherfucking shoulder and I can’t be stopped.

Do you tell girls you "air"? And "tube"?

I am no John. Nor am I Keanu Asing or even Glenn Hall.

A typical session for me consists of missing waves, sections and exits. And bogging. So much bogging. I surf, but I am only above-average in a crowded summer line-up filled with soft-tops. For the rest of the year I sit wide of the herd, waiting for leftovers. Waiting to eat.

To put it simply, I am trash. But at least I know I’m trash.

And usually, I would never claim to be more than I am. But, to garner the attention of the opposite gender, is over-exaggerating ones surfing ability ok?

She didn’t surf, but she like, totally loved surfers. They were super hot. I was a surfer. I was lonely. So here are some obscenities that exited my mouth. No lies, mind you. Only exaggerations.

Yes, I have done that thing where you surf inside the wave! 

*I pull in. I almost never come out.

Yes, actually, I totally can do that spinny thing in the air!  

*without my feet on the board.

Do I compete? No way! I shan’t be constrained to a jersey. I prefer creative lines. I prefer the free surfer life. 

*Creative bogging.

Am I sponsored? Of course!  

*I work at a surf school. They pay me. Sometimes I surf in uniform on break. Does that count?

The conversation then veered into a dark, dark place of douchebagery. I needn’t write what was said. But I’ll give you a hint. It was some Laird Hamilton-level shit.

So, is overstating your surfing ability acceptable when pursuing romance?

Or have I brought shame to my family?

Should I go full Freddy P and familiarise my board with a submerged rock?