It's a miracle!
Every single day, over the course of the past six or so months, I see a story in the lamestream media about wave pools and their potential benefit to Olympic hopefuls. They sport such titles as Where’s a great place to train for Olympic surfing? Maybe Central Texas, Olympic surfing hopefuls head inland to find perfect crests and Have board? Will travel to the San Joaquin Valley for Olympic dreams.
The first story listed reads like this:
What makes a better training ground for surfing’s Olympic debut — a wild and unpredictable ocean wave, or a manufactured, freshwater one generated at a pool in Central Texas?
Officials with USA Surfing are betting on the latter, for at least part of the time. A few weeks ago, they sent their 2018 World Junior Surf Championship Training Team to BSR Surf Resort outside of Waco, where, more than 200 miles from the nearest ocean, 16 young Olympic hopefuls caught air and got barreled in human-engineered waves dyed a peculiar shade of blue.
“An hour here is equal to a week in the ocean,” said 16-year-old team member Samantha Sibley of San Clemente after a dawn training session during which she practiced a move called an alley oop that involves launching herself into the air and slowly rotating. “Surfers coming out of these pools are going to be insanely good, and they’re going to get good fast.”
“This wave is so rippable, so fun,” said team member Taro Watanabe, 16, of Malibu, Calif. “You can do anything you want. It’s a weird feeling sitting in a pool, not the ocean, but it feels like a normal wave.”
Now, I love the BSR tank don’t get me wrong. It has proven itself as the People’s Pool and I look forward to someday surfing it. My only real beef is that I don’t know how many more “Guess what? Surfing is now in the Olympics and all the Olympic hopefuls are training inland. Super weird, right?” stories I can take.
Because it’s not super weird. It’s just normal now. Stop writing about it because I don’t know if I can take it anymore. I don’t know if I can see one more of them pop up in the feed when I Google “surf.”
Fucking dipshits.
I’m sorry.
I didn’t sleep last night because I drove from Bellingham, Washington to Portland, Oregon after a wonderful book signing, arriving at an airport hotel at 2 am with one smoking room left that smelled like my grandma who died of emphysema. That was fine, even took me down memory lane, but next door a bunch of rock n rollers were having a smoking party and being loud. My flight left at 7:00 am so I was up at 5:30 but also never really fell asleep.
Forgive the grumpiness.