Terror in the Water: Man paddles out on expensive board playing Jackson Browne!

"Running on Empty" to be exact.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. I was enjoying a mid-day solo surf in fun south swell conditions ay my local quick hit spot. The sun was shining. It was warm for the first time this Southern California spring. There was nobody out.

I was happy.

Then my perfect little wiggle session was horribly interrupted.

Lumbering down the stairs came a man who appeared to be in his mid-late forties. He was carrying an oversized Slater Designs Omni under his arm and a SoloShot over his shoulder. He set up the solo shot and paddled out. I assumed this would be fine. This guy was probably a VAL and was excited about capturing his session.

“It’s the two of us”, I thought. “You’ll get yours, waters warm, the sun is shining, no need for vibing today,” I mentally said to myself.

I WAS WRONG.

As the guy paddled out, I began to hear music. Not just any music, Jackson motherfucking Browne music. “Running on Empty” to be exact. It got louder as he approached so I turned to see that the guy has a Speaqua Barnacle affixed to the nose of his Omni.

There can’t be more you say? Wrong, below the Barnacle was affixed a Trace thingamajigger. Definitely required for the waist to chest one maneuver waves we were catching. Many valuable data points to be extracted from that session I am sure.

I tried to surf but was so distracted by the guy’s obviously incorrectly sized thousand dollar surfboard, thousand dollar robot camera, waterproof speaker (now playing “Doctor My Motherfuckin Eyes”), his Trace, and by the fact that he had been swiping on his fucking apple watch for the majority of the lulls in the swell, that I caught one and went in.

Like Don Quijote tilting at windmills, I wondered, “Was that a tech-nerd VAL ignorant of the lineup etiquette or was it a fat-wallet power move by a guy who didn’t give a singular shit what I thought about him or whether I wanted to listen to Jackson Browne while surfing on a Tuesday afternoon?” I am frankly still confused by the whole thing.

My brain quickly moved past that question when I came to the realization that surfing has reached technology saturation. GPS watches, GoPro, Trace, robot cameras, waterproof speakers, watches that send and receive texts from the line-up. Wasn’t surfing supposed to be a distraction from all of this?

Wasn’t the whole point of the whole thing to paddle out in quietude and catch a couple so you can leave the rest on the beach? Wasn’t the lineup, by design, supposed to be Jackson Browne free?

YES.

Do you, Mister Perepetual Intermediate, really need to know the velocity and turn radius of your wave captured by your Trace? Do you really think anyone at work wants to see your shoulder hopping antics as filmed by your robot assistant from the beach? Were the GPS trace lines of your waves captured by Rip Curl watch really important to capture? Do you really want to send texts from the lineup?

NO.

I understand most surfers bring only their board and a suit, but what I am seeing here is the potential for a very slippery slope. If one man can ruin my entire focus with his techno gadgets, it can happen to you. The more the market gets filled with connected TOYS the more people will buy them. Maybe the lineup will one day get polluted with things most of us wanted to leave on the beach- noise, technology, connectivity, obligation. Where is our escape then?

Please stop the madness, or at least stop it until I build my private wave pool in a cellular dead zone behind an off-the-grid cabin high atop a mountain away from all of you, and Jackson Browne.