What happens when a VAL completes his metamorphosis?
It’s the year of the VAL, the Vulnerable Adult Learner whose behaviour and habitat has been well documented on this website.
Here, here, here and here too.
But what happens when a VAL eventually gains enough confidence in his, her, ability? They become an Emerging Intermediate, a more aggressive and threatening form of surfer than the VAL.
Don’t believe me?
Let us, as they say in polite circles, start the conversation.
The EI is unassuming because he has a carbon-wrapped board it discovered while being self-radicalized by surfboard review clerics on YouTube. There is also a hipster sub-sect that can afford one-thousand dollar “artisan”, asymetrical twin-fins.
Emerging Intermediates further blend in and confuse everyone else because they actually make a legit wetsuit purchase from a mainstream company, be it an Xcel or perhaps a Matuse (see again hipster sub-sect).
The problem:
Newly radicalised, weaponised, and over aggressive, they will come to your peak and start shoulder hopping waves with their heads down. They are oblivious to everything. The newly anointed martyrs will make suicide missions into set waves, tomahawking down the face. The real treat comes when they actually make the wave but you’ve burned them. Tantrums and a detailed explanation of “The Rule of Surfing” will follow.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bse3Bs9BBwK/
You have EI’s who vacay in Bali to surf waves out of their league. They wear reef booties and tell everyone they hate wearing them. Secretly, they wish the booties came up to their knee caps and they proudly stomp around in them as proof of being battle-tested at Uluwatu and so forth.
The overarching problem with EI’s is that aren’t as easy identifiable as VAL’s. Therefore, you don’t know where the enemy is and you don’t know where the enemy fire will be coming from.
So what can be done?
Do we place a travel ban on VAL’s in Tourmaline, Pacifica, Venice, and Bondi, assuming that they one day will be radicalized as EI’s?
Is it our responsibility to de-radicalise EI’s by suggesting they go back to a fun board and a surf trip to Costa Rica?
Many questions.
Hey guys reading your comment boards alot, just because i find it really amusing haha.
But please be serious for a moment, imagine my situation: I am an adult learner (23) but i skate alot and snowboard just you know where i’m coming from, and i just really enjoi surfing even tough i suck but i nver steal waves and try to respect locals and dont get in their way! So do your negative mentality also apply to me? just curious hahah- btw i live in spain
It’s best to be kind to these people. Give them some waves. Encourage them as they learn more and more. Usually they’ll open up and absorb the finer points of etiquette and line up hierarchy. Plus once you’re friends you can look them right in the eye and smile as you snag the nuggety set wave off of them that they never would have made anyways. Win. Win.
Why is it that every EI, is on a Hayden or Tomo/firewire? FML I really want a Seaside but I feel like it is a total EI board and I will get shit on telepathically (surfers cannot engage in face to face conflict but only by telepathy and message boards) and I have struggled too long and too hard to finally reach the AI Level. (Advanced Intermediate, you know the guy who gets one or two set waves off you, but surfs them like shit and it pisses you off all morning). FML – I have to surf some shit board shaped by some local asshole, wtf.
Who wants to support a ‘local’ shaper when I can look all hollywood with my haydenwire.
I’m not liking VAL, I think EAL, is more appropriate – Entitled Adult Learner – we’re the one’s who are vulnerable, not those adult pioneers with their baseless sense of entitlement!!
Ahh dammit you’re right. Thanks for making me feel like an asshole
Well if he hangs out with Chas then he should be thick-skinned enough to take it, if not welcome it like Chas.
Wait I got it!! Arm bands!!! We will make all the EI’s wear bright yellow arm bands and anyone who is not wearing one will be stopped by a centrally appointed police force that checks surfing heritage and purity that goes back a minimum of ten years on an official surfrider foundation passport. I call it my Good Enough Plan.
ha , alternative boards …fucken Hipster cop out…drink piss smoke ciggies….FFS try coke and heroin …or anything that has been done to death…as a retrofied state of red neckus is what seems to be the current MO of a culture that once was…..different… is now like limpus dickus non eructus on a par with tennis/golf for excitement and progression!
Speaking of tennis, maybe Torren could bring back the Donnay wood rackets…he kinda looks like Bjorn Borg.
Goddammit, I just realized that I’ve been saying Venerable Adult Learner instead of Vulnerable Adult Learner all week. Could be worse, I could be a guy from Cali, Florida, NJ, Ohio, Oz, anywhere but HI who uses the phrase “talk story” without irony.
Watch the cutbacks they do, always good for a snicker.
oi! CB. are you and wiggs missing an ironing board?
I still don’t see the threat. Am I supposed to be worried by their damage to the image of surfing ? Boards being ditched in bad places? People being nice in the water?
I’ve said it before: I would much rather surf with a bunch of these people than aggressive pro-wannabes or hardened locals any day. Am I wrong?
Apparently we need another new category: VEI (Vulnerable Emerging Intermediate)
No, I’m with ya
Depends how annoying they are with shitting on good waves and dropping in on you.
Indeed.
Nobody wants to talk shit about scales with me. Why? I listen to about half the pods and every time want to gouge my ears out. Yet I still keep listening.
I play a game alone while I listen to the Spit Podcast. When DLS says “rad” I take a hit of the vape pen. When Scott says “chop hop” I slam a shot of Flor de Cana. Typically by the end I can’t see anything and I’ve been reduced to a stuttering slob crawling around my office. Lo
Try it whenever the word…like…is used in a non-comparative sense.
“self-radicalized by surfboard review clerics on YouTube”
Soooo good FFF.
Individualists of the surf world unite!
We need to demand a complete travel ban on certain VAL and EI countries. Germany, Russia, Israel, Norway are clearly playing the long game, infiltrating our culture with their sinister techniques – months in Bali, bi-annual trips to Costa Rica, multiple summers in France (thanks to CNNazare, they’ve even discovered Portugal now!), plus of course, surf adjacent real estate purchasing, unbridled enthusiasm, unshakeable determination, a whole echo-chamber how-to YouTube vids and, in many cases, physical gorgeousness. FACT: before we know it many of our surf population will be half-breed surfer-VAL offspring. If that doesn’t make you want to buy an Owl Chapman gun, consider this: many of these groups don’t even try to integrate with our culture. Short shorts! Pastel colors! Party waves! Blatant mutual encouragement in the lineup! They don’t speak our language, brah; they learn sanitized, corporate versions of our sordid history and don’t even know to claim to know someone who knew someone who may have been marginally involved; they don’t worship – either ironically or hook-line-n-sinker – surfing’s semi-underground idols and numerous false prophets. Last, they entirely fail to appreciate surfing’s inherent narcissism, absurdist profundity or, dare I say, radicalism. This is a true emergency! Our gr8 leader, Surfy Sophie, needs to sign something to protect our cultural purity, ASAP, have it go through the WSL’s content department, run it by the non-endemic sponsors, have the lawyers check it over, send a press release to Outside, Men’s Health and Bored Housewives magazines and … etc. etc. …
That was great . I am Australian grumpy local married to a German X VAL. Members of the Tribe were worried about future cross cultural problems and though the children are bi-lingual , it was decided before they were conceived to baptize them into Grumpy Localism , the one true faith . A men A women .ps My wife is many things but she ain’t vulnerable! I am going to have to upgrade her to X-AL .
#IamEI
Agree you know the sport is going backwards when regression is viewed as progression. Never understood the retro thing. Each to their own but rather surf at my potential (not the highest bar mind you) rather than ride some board made obsolete 40 years ago cause it sucked….
I have to agree . If the modern high performance surfboard is Formula 1 then the retro movement seems a bit like driving in a vintage car rally ?
I think todays designs are more like nascar, certainly not F1 ….I wish there were regulations that made shaper/designers have to change their formula’s every year , and actually work at designing and not just making 20 of last years best board …sad sad
I going off subject but I remember vividly in the 80s when people from different parts of the same beach rode boards from different shapers and most of them customs . Was surfing in the Baltic Sea on New Years Day this year and their were 40 guys out and 25 were riding Lost Puddle Jumpers (but I schooled them at 53 on a 6’2” 18”1/2 Tokoro in freezing 1ft wind chop) .So much for progress ?
ahhhhh the baaaaaa of it all!!
Oh, Brutus, you do…not… wish there were more regulations. You’re a man of Country. You don’t want more binds…
there are no regulations , no real compettition ..imagine if a shaper had to change his design 10% every year , for his team rider…..imagine if you had to change the technology 10% every year…..there actually might be design and surfing progress!!
pretty simple really , very little design going on, so people go back and plunder ye old shapes of olde…..like beaks are now fashionable again, EPS is the new have to have , unless you surf over Waist high……nothing like watching great surfers manage to even ride some of the old relics , and call it performance…but the bottom line is sell and make profit!
I went down the “retro” road about ten years ago and I now I feel like I’m a level 9 wizard. I have way more tools and options than some people i know who only surf shortboards. There are definitely shitty, poorly designed “retro” boards out there but there are also beautifully designed, super FUN boards that are based off of historical designs, ie, my gf’s 7’ 4” Mctavish Rincon, or Takayama’s Howard Mini. Last week, I spent two days sliding into overhead barrels on her single fin Rincon at a place that I wouldn’t paddle out on a shortboard, and I’m still savoring the joy. Riding different boards has made me a better surfer/waterman, and ironically, a better person. I definitely understand the addiction to high performance surfing but I can’t stress enough the joy one can attain by mastering other types of surfing, ie, cross stepping/nose riding, single finning, etc. And I definitely feel that riding other types of boards has made me a better shortboarder. Anyway, like you said, to each their own, and I’m sure we can both agree that poor surfing is poor surfing no matter what a person is riding. https://www.mctavish.com.au…
Pretty sure the difference between a VAL and the EL is a go pro mount.
A VAL is too busy getting pounded to worry about capturing the money shot.
Actually it’s the girlfriend/significant other having their beach day ruined by having to film their soon to be reconsidered life partner
I’l go you one better: it’s the guy at the harbor who sets his solo shot thing up on the lifeguard tower everyday to have his camera robot film his ill-timed turns and bogging. He has every Tomo Firewire ever made and loves to impart his wisdom of how helped spread the word on Tome boards way before they were chic. I want to hurt this guy but it would be on film and thus far easier to prosecute. Maybe I’ll just throw rocks at him from outside of the solo shot.
Actual question … do Tomo boards suck?
Not sure, but this guy at the harbor sucks. I see a ton of them on Craigslist when I’m trolling for sex workers….
FUUUUUCK those turns on the midlength were cringeworthy
Yeah but he had the T. rex arms going so it was super hip. Or something like that.
I feel we need to distinguish between the Emerging Intermediate and the Eternal Intermediate.
One guilty by sin via VALity, and one doomed to unending torment in purgatory via genetics and availability of water-time.
A Venn Diagram is also available in pleasing pastel shades if required.
Aka the chrysalis phase, where the subject doubles in size and becomes fat, rubbery, pale, almost see through. You can see something squirming inside, some sort of inner life-force battling to get out. But the mess of soupy organs and partly formed limbs lacks the structure to do much beyond wriggle indistinctly. Only a few make the metamorphosis to fly away, the rest shrivel on the vine, beset by disease, frustration or family commitments. Nick says give it 3 years…
Just wanna point out; insects are not grapes.
#mixedmetaphors
#powerfulbrew
#suppingontearsofinnocents
But then… I’ve been wrong before!
Fair!
Leave some room in your Venn (and lineup) for the Eternal Beginner.
Are we pegging DL Scales as an EI? I will agree with you sight unseen.
Pegging is so…now! https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Have you tried? You like?