A reader explains the difference between a "surfer" and "someone who surfs…"
“One of the great things I love about being in the water with the tribe that’s out there is that we leave our egos on the beach, you leave everything on the shore, because it’s there when you get back. The ocean is a great equaliser. I think it’s made me a better executive of the organisation. It’s made me a better family man at home. Since I’ve discovered paddling my life’s never been fuller. My life’s in balance now. Live. Your. Passion.”
Such are the ruminations of the incoming media and content director for the WSL, Erik Logan. But compare his words to your experience with surfing, and what it means to you. Because if you’re anything like me, a lifelong surfer mired in mediocrity, surfing is, mostly, negative.
Wasted time, money and resources.
That’s the difference between a surfer, and somebody who surfs. Somebody who surfs uses the sport as a bow in their quiver of a well-balanced life. A surfer will eschew any semblance of balance in the chase of an unattainable goal.
It’s lies to yourself. You’re still a good person for following this selfish pursuit, you say. You’re doing it because it makes you a better person in the long run. At least you’re not a roaring alcoholic or a 72-hour-week career hedonist.
But you know it’s not true.
All it does is hold a mirror back up to your own selfishness.
We lord it over others when we’re in the lineup. Surfing is all about ego. Exaggerated avatars are activated as soon as we slide on a leash. Mild-mannered paper pushers on land are transformed into roaring balls of testosterone in the water. Spindly-limbed junkies run their dowried lineups like mad dictators. Retirees on surf mats will straight up try and drown a woman all because of a tribal breach.
It’s smoking snow cones with a methamphetamine-riddled local named Rocket at three am on a Thursday morning so that he’ll let you sit on surge with him on the next big south swell, while you’re wife and newborn child lie alone at home wondering when they’re ever going to see Daddy again.
Being a surfer is to fall into the abyss of solipsism.
It’s smoking snow cones with a methamphetamine-riddled local named Rocket at three am on a Thursday morning so that he’ll let you sit on surge with him on the next big south swell, while your wife and newborn child lie alone at home wondering when they’re ever going to see Daddy again.
Give it anything less than that and you’re just another blow-in. A dilettante.
That’s the difference between a surfer and somebody who surfs. A surfer will tear down everything they love for a Sisyphean pursuit.
It’s what the WSL needs to realise they have inherited.
And it’s what we need to accept.
But hey, maybe we’ve got it wrong. Maybe we need to be more like Loges?
Live.Your.Passion. Here.
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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!
