Here's a hypothetical: you can only surf one wave for
the rest of your life. What's it going to be? Maybe a little slice
of France? No! Too damn cold! | Photo:
@surflodge_seignosse
Quiz: If you had to surf…one…wave for the
rest of your life…
…what would it be? It's a hypothetical that will
tie you into knots!
As Bill Cosby said, perhaps while boiling a
Quaalude broth, kids say the darnedest things. And
ol’ fuck-everything Bill was right.
This morning, on a school run, one kid fiddling on the True
Surf game, the other busy studying the lyrics to Eminem’s
Killshot (“If I was three foot 11, you’d look up to me, and for
the record, you would suck a dick to fuckin’ be me for a second,
lick a ballsack to get on my channel…”), the gamer looked and
me and asked:
“Dad, if you had to surf one wave for the rest of your life,
what would it be?”
I’ve been mentally playing with a move to Hossegor, lately:
cheaper than Bondi, a few less bankers throwing their SUPs around
and all those photos from around the Quiksilver Pro haven’t hurt
the dream.
I tell him, “Hossegor.”
“But what about winter?”
He got me.
Winter anywhere in France except the Alps sucks. The water
halves in temperature. Big fronts hit the coast and it
rains and blows without respite. In Hossegor, you hibernate in
houses built for summer and ruin your teeth with red wine; your
abdominal apron with cheese.
“So it’s gotta be tropical,” I say.
“Not necessarily,” he says. “Temperate works.”
Smart kid.
I tell him D-Bah. It ain’t my favourite wave in the world but
it’s consistent, the water never gets cold and if life ain’t going
the way I want it, I can always buy a package of ice and dream it
away.
One wave for the rest of my life?
I move to D-Bah.
Where you gonna go?
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Poll: How many photographs of yourself
surfing do you have?
I’m just gonna keep riffing here because it’s
Thursday and Thursday is for lovers. But real quick, how many
photos of yourself surfing do you have? I’m talking in any form.
Printed photo, digital photo, that digital frame that used to be
available for purchase that would scroll through digital photos,
magazine layouts, magazine posters, just regular posters, etc.
Please circle one in the comments below:
1-10
11-20
21-30
31-40
41-50
51+
Now, of course this question comes up due the World Surf League
President of Content, Media and WSL Studios’ elect’s prodigious
Instagram feed featuring 51++++ of him SUPing both with and without
paddle which makes me laugh heartily. But maybe I shouldn’t be
laughing. Maybe I should be taking notes and/or having someone take
photos because I have 3 shots of myself surfing and have to use the
same ones every time I post a story that somehow relates to me
surfing which is thankfully not often.
Should I have more?
How many do you have?
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Kolohe Andino surfed beautifully and was
beaten on the buzzer by an obscure rule apparently well-known to
WQS competitors like Pat Gudauskas. WSL
Quik Pro Day 3: “Kolohe Andino stabbed in
the neck; Julian Wilson, superbly sharp. Epic final looms!”
The superbly in-form Kolohe Andino loses to Pat
Gudauskas on obscure techniciality; Seb Zietz surfs out of his skin
to beat Griff C and more from Hossegor!
Dark days for both Toledo as a Title contender and my
professional reputation as a WSL correspondent. Despite
seeing that round three heat with Callinan looming like the nuts on
a pit-bull I tapped out.
Mountains of excuses come to mind: I’m an Indo-Pacific gal,
sleep deprivation, saturation marketing as psychological torture,
Erik’s people spiked my drink and therefore I was date-raped by pro
surfing etc etc but they would all be malicious fictions.
Reality is, one minute I’m on the tools tapping the keys the nek
I’m on the couch, tapped out. Missed a title heat.
Unforgiveable.
An incapacity to own a fuck-up is almost a defining feature of
the pro surf game. Thus we get Keanu Asing in the booth (Ranking
36, three heat wins 2018, average heat eat score 9.86)
pontificating on how to win heats hot on the heels of a heat loss
he should have won. No disrespect to Asing, big heart etc etc but
when he shows he can win heats his analysis has cred.
An incapacity to own a fuck-up is almost a defining feature of
the pro surf game. Thus we get Keanu Asing in the booth (Ranking
36, three heat wins 2018, average heat eat score 9.86)
pontificating on how to win heats hot on the heels of a heat loss
he should have won. No disrespect to Asing, big heart etc etc but
when he shows he can win heats his analysis has cred.
Till then, when it comes to viable pro surfing analysts: Kelly
Slater with 11 World Title= yes. Keanu Asing, about to be bundled
off tour for the second time = no.
My Toledo tap-out does illustrate what I call the “digestion”
problem for fans both hard-core and casual. You can think of it
like this: imagine a Wagyu steak, rare, or if vegan a piece of
silken tofu. To get to it you have to eat a bale of hay. The steak
is the Toledo heat, the bale of hay is the indigestible dross of
the ten heats preceding it. Even the hardest-core fan burns out
their digestion on the dross and taps out before the steak.
Cut the roster.
More steak, less hay.
Five heats completed today in declining hieroglyphic French
beachbreak, that being the balance of round three. Good
entertainment at that length. M-Rod bested Zeke after a fiery
exchange which Zeke put down to “competition, I’m competing”. John
Florence sprang to mind. Having your personal space invaded when
you’re set for life and a 48-foot Gunboat catamaran waits to be put
on a broad reach might seem a little less attractive now that two
world titles sit on the mantlepiece.
Mikey jogged past a Parko on his testimonial lap with one
savage, jagged hack in the lip worth the thirty minutes
invested.
The next heat with Patty Gudang and Brother was a classic.
Andino, 24, gave his fellow San Clementean Gudauskas, who is 32,
plenty of space. So much space that 1989 World Champ Martin
Potter chortled that the two pals were having a freesurf together
and any idea of competing was out the door. Kolohe carefully
gathered nuts and built scores. Patty G did not. With a clock
ticking down and a pair of mid to high sixes in Brother’s back
pocket next to a priority call Patty G paddled into a dismal
peak.
He took off as the horn sounded, which reset priority. It
motherfucking reset priority and Andino – who to my eye knowing
Patty G would not get the score – was laying down a little friendly
dominance play on him… got jabbed right in the neck by it.
Gudauskas gesticulated to the judges. What is this QS-level shit
I thought?
And then, when the brilliance of the knowledge was revealed and
Kolohe swore then buckled at the knees and Pat’s gal came sashaying
down the beach, twirling and whirling with pure joy in a bohemian
dream of leopard skin dress and red beret, it was glorious. An
underdog rising up! A roughie from the back of the pack!
And then, when the brilliance of the knowledge was revealed and
Kolohe swore then buckled at the knees and Pat’s gal came sashaying
down the beach, twirling and whirling with pure joy in a bohemian
dream of leopard skin dress and red beret, it was glorious. An
underdog rising up! A roughie from the back of the pack!
Underdogs end up in shallow graves in this sport. It’s cruel
like that. But good.
Zietz and Colapinto fought a really tight heat, another coin
toss. Griff landed badly on an air attempt then came back with a
couple of sizzling rides. Zietz took it on the final wave. Later,
Colapinto said he was “caught between two mindsets. Didn’t know
whether to wait for the best waves or go for an air”. When pressed
for his lessons from the heat a shirtless Griff said he needed more
time to digest the loss and he would get back to Rosie. Pete Mel
sensibly observed that Rosie was “comin’ in a little hot.”
Do I sound entertained? I was very entertained.
Last heat of the day and Wilson looked superbly sharp. Very
fast, very connected, very decisive in his turn selection and
execution. He easily dispatched a hapless Joan Duru, current rating
34.
More swell coming, with funky winds.
I see another epic Medina/Wilson Final looming.
Quiksilver Pro France Remaining Round 3 (H8-12)
Results:
Heat 8: Michael Rodrigues (BRA) 13.53 def. Ezekiel Lau (HAW)
11.16
Heat 9: Mikey Wright (AUS) 11.53 def. Joel Parkinson (AUS)
10.90
Heat 10: Patrick Gudauskas (USA) 8.06 def. Kolohe Andino (USA)
6.77
Heat 11: Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 12.70 def. Griffin Colapinto (USA)
12.33
Heat 12: Julian Wilson (AUS) 13.53 def. Joan Duru (FRA) 10.36
Quiksilver Pro France Round 4 Matchups:
Heat 1: Matt Wilkinson (AUS), Conner Coffin (USA), Jordy Smith
(ZAF)
Heat 2: Willian Cardoso (BRA), Adriano De Souza (BRA), Ryan
Callinan (AUS)
Heat 3: Gabriel Medina (BRA), Michael Rodrigues (BRA), Mikey Wright
(AUS)
Heat 4: Patrick Gudauskas (USA), Sebastian Zietz (HAW), Julian
Wilson (AUS)
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MeHab™ includes just doing normal easy stuff like
typing, scrolling through ELo's Instagram feed and drinking extra
vodka sodas. Then, one day you feel good enough to go
surfing.
How to: Bounce back from injury without
ever going to rehab!
I went surfing today for the first time in nine
months, or actually the second time but that other first time some
five weeks ago was really just paddling. Don’t let anyone trick you
into thinking that the Bristow-Latarjet procedure is easy business.
The doctors do this…
…essentially cutting off your bicep muscle and screwing it into
your shoulder so it’ll stop popping out. My nine-month layoff may
not have been helped by the fact that I skipped rehab entirely,
opting instead for something I’m working on patenting called
MeHab™. The theory is based around a 1972 MG Midget I owned just
after college. It was a very wonderful car but would break all the
time. The garage would replace the broken part with something new
and fabulous which would stress the other parts, breaking one of
them and I’d be back in the shop the next day ad infinitum. I
should have replaced that first busted part with something equally
shitty or just rubber banded it back together.
MeHab™ includes just doing normal easy stuff like typing,
scrolling through ELo’s Instagram feed and drinking extra vodka
sodas. Then, one day you feel good enough to go surfing.
Which was today, for me.
It was a gorgeous, peaky North County morning but I was gripped
by anxiety that something would go wrong, had no quick twitch
muscle reaction in the shoulder so it was difficult to pop to feet,
etc. but the paddling felt good and I knew that I’d be back to my
normal self after a few more weeks of surfing and drinking extra
vodka sodas.
My normal self is not very great and people like to point that
out from time to time, I assume to shame. Like Mr. Dingin a few
hours ago who wrote, “The best part about all this is that after
comparing Logan’s surfing and Chas’s hunchbacked poo stance from
that wave pool clip, Logan surfs WAY better, even if it is on a
SUP.”
But it’s also not not very great and as I sat today, observing
every surfer around me, I realized that I am the exact middle point
of surf ability. The dead center between utter kook on one end and
semi-professional on the other (professionals don’t count as they
are bizarre mutants).
The perfect average.
No one is more average and I thought, “Well ain’t that
something…” because it also means that I’m the bellwether. Now,
forget, for a moment, that a “wether” is a castrated male sheep and
concentrate on its cultural meaning, “an indicator or predictor of
something.”
Being the dead center most average surfer on earth means that
how I feel about surfing is the way it is going to be.
How you like them apples World Surf League?
Stay tuned for predictions you can take to the bank!
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Erik Logan watch Day 3: “My wetsuit is a
suit of armor!”
And thus it ends, me sitting on couch wiping
tears from my eyes, inspired. Was I wrong about the World Surf
League’s newest hire, President of Content, Media and WSL Studios
Erik Logan? Could I possibly have been wrong?
I don’t know but there appears to be a meeting on the books
between us, slated for January when he officially slides into his
role. If it happens, it’ll be the first high-level assemblage
betwixt the World Surf League and “that fucking
BeachGrit” in the Dirk Ziff era. A warming of
hostilities? A listening to The People and what they crave from
their professional surfing?
I don’t know but there is another tear in my eye because have
you heard Erik Logan’s story of conquering his fear of water and
learning to SUP? It is must watch but, in a nutshell, he was afraid
of the water and so his wife gave him a wetsuit and it changed
everything. The wetsuit became his suit of armor and he was able to
go slay dragons with his boat and spear.
If every wetsuit company in the entire world is not trying to
get Erik Logan on the team right now then they are utterly blowing
it. Matuse are you reading? Vissla? XCel? The Wetsuit of Armor is a
no-brainer.
An absolute no-brainer.
The rest of the chat is heart-warming too. Erik Logan speaks of
joining the tribe, leaving egos on the beach etc. This ego-less
surf tribe sounds very nice and you think I’m still joking, don’t
you. You think I’m still poking and prodding, digging for cheap
laughs. Well shame on you. There are issues to work through,
certainly, namely the SUP and his holding onto the debunked myth
that the “best surfer in the water is the one having the most fun”
but aren’t we big enough to give Erik Logan a legitimate shot?
Wouldn’t you like to be part of the ego-less surf tribe too?
