Know before you go!

On Monday I tucked my favorite board under my arm, slung my backpack over my shoulders, and wandered down to the beach. The buoys suggested that there might be waves, which sounded damn fun to me and a break in the storm track made nasty winds unlikely.

There I was, happily scampering down the trail, blissfully ignorant of what I would find in the lineup. Oh, there seem to be a lot of people out, I thought, as I tugged my wetsuit over my hips. I shrugged. It is the first day without terrible, angry winds, of course people want to go surfing, I thought. It’ll be fine.

I did not know it was a Surfline Day, when untold hordes come crawling out from every nook and cranny. There is surf today! Everyone go surfing! Omg! And, obediently, Surfline Man and all his besties go surfing.

Surfline Man has the app and the notifications. Surfline Man gets the newsletter. Is there a newsletter? If there is, Surfline Man has it and reads every last word of every edition. Surfline Man spends many hours thinking about surfing. He scrutinizes every swell forecast meticulously. He loves all the colors and arrows. Someone once told him about a site called 17ft, but it was just a bunch of numbers. What the fuck is he supposed to do with that? Surfline Man needs his colors and arrows.

Surfline Man is an expert. He knows all the swell angles and he knows all the best spots. Rincon? Yah, brah, that place won’t be good today. It needs a longer period. Like, a 310-degree swell at 18 seconds. You don’t want to go there today. You’re totally gona get skunked. Surfline Man likes to believe he’s scoring somewhere no one else would possibly think to go. Surfline Man is generally wrong in his expectations.

Without his entourage, Surfline Man is nothing. He never surfs alone. If he went surfing alone, he would have no one to impress with his deep knowledge of surfing. Surfline Man always brings a carefully selected friend or two to surf with him. Carefully selected, because they must be worse at surfing than he is.

Surfline Man has a lot of opinions about boards. He privately thinks his friend’s board has too much volume, but he’s trying not to say anything. Eventually, though, he can’t help himself. It does have a lot of volume, bro, he says, eyeing the colorful fish that his friend is attempting to ride. His friend will play along, because after all, he got a free ride to the beach today. Anyway, he likes his board just fine. Sure, it’s got volume, but that’s how to catch more waves. Everyone knows that.

He’ll tell you all about his fins and how they work and how they’re so much better than the old fins he used to ride. He doesn’t really know why, of course. But he will go on and on for far too long about what he read on the website and what the reviewers said and what he saw on Youtube. Obviously, they’re better than your fins.

If you want to talk about boards in the lineup, Surfline Man is your guy. He’ll tell you in infinite detail all about why his board works so perfect, man. Taking ten set waves on the head is generally preferable.

You might be thinking that Surfline Man sounds like an Asshole, and it’s true that there is some overlap between the two species. When Surfline Man burns one of two women in the lineup on a decent day, he is also an Asshole with a capital A. Beneath his surface knowledge, Surfline Man is sometimes very insecure and he expresses his insecurity by acting like a sexist dickhead. Don’t be a sexist dickhead in the lineup. It is bad.

More commonly, though, Surfline Man is the golden retriever of surfers. He is stoked! So stoked! He wants everyone to know how stoked he is! Surfing is the best and he loves it so much.

He walks back to the car, reliving every single one of his waves. He’s generous, too. He’ll be just as enthusiastic about the waves his buddies rode when it’s all said and done. Dude, that one turn you did, it was so mental. Praising his buddies makes him feel good and helps him retain his feelings of superiority. He knows what a good turn looks like! He is an expert.

Surfline Man arrives at his car and carefully unfolds his changing mat. His precious wetsuit must not touch the ground, though he probably won’t get around to rinsing it out later. Life moves so fast. Check out my rinse kit, bro, it’s the best! Warm water, and I don’t even have to shower later. My girlfriend bought it for me for my birthday.

Yes, Surfline Man has the rinse kit and the changing mat and the poncho. It’s so hard to change with a towel, bro. You should totally get one of these ponchos. It’s so much easier. Surfline Man has a lot of advice.

But he had the best time! Back at the car, and he’s already checking the forecasts. Check this out, he says, showing his buddy his phone. Next Wednesday, it’s gona be firing! I bet we’re totally going to score!

With his technology, his accessories, and his perfect board, the Surfline Man is a perpetual optimist. It’s always going to be good and he’s always going to score. You just have to stay on top of the forecasts, bro. You just have to be in the know. It’s gona be so epic!

SOS!

We were introduced to our World Surf League President of Content, Media, Studios and Canned Cheese Erik “ELo” Logan on October 8, 2018 as he announced himself to the world and let us revisit the glory, the passion, the… wonder.

“Today, I’m announcing that I will be stepping down as President of OWN, The Oprah Winfrey Network. Working for one of the greatest leaders in the world has truly been the most incredible opportunity in my career. I have learned and grown more over the past 10 years professionally than I did in the prior 20. The accomplishments over the last decade have been many – from ending the Oprah Winfrey Show, transitioning the company to a studio, moving to LA, and making OWN the most high-profile turnarounds in cable network history. What has made these many years of work so memorable and enjoyable are the people who I had the opportunity to work and partner with. My “Next Chapter” (as Oprah would say) is truly an opportunity of a lifetime. To marry my passion of surfing with my career is something that I never thought was possible or even imagageable 5 years ago. SUP, surfing, loving the ocean, were all things I’d never thought would be a part of my life. Now, it’s my life, my daily passion, and something that propels me into my next professional journey. Joining the World Surf League is something I never thought this kid from landlocked Oklahoma would say, but it’s happening. I’m beyond grateful tothe WSL for the chance to join the already exceptional team for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If I have learned one thing from Oprah over the past decade, it’s this: there is a “divine order” to the universe and our job is to get into that flow. We must LISTEN to what the universe is saying. So here I am. Marrying my passion with my career in this way is something only a higher power could forge for me. I’m humbled by this moment and still in a state of “I can’t believe this is happening!” But it is…. You’ll hear me say this a lot, but it’s true: #followyourpassion #liveyourpassion

Whoa.

And along we followed, always on Instagram. Thrilling at this…

…this…

…and this.

A daily barrage of the hottest SUP action this side of Hermosa Beach and you think I fun make. You think I joke but I do not. Erik Logan is a SUP clown but also “surfs” better than me. Plus also high-performance longboards better than I asymmetrical surfboard.

Ashamed?

Yes.

But also the entertainment value, the glories, the… lack of typical surf pretension was… inspiring.

Then, near 30 days ago, the robust Instagram feed ground to an absolute halt. His penultimate post was this…

As you can clearly see, CHAS is rudely misspelled but at least not misspelled as CHAD.

And the last?

 

30 days.

A social media forever ago.

I’m worried.

You should be too.

So should we sent Erik another cake?

Also, why did he stop posting?

Is it CHSA’s fault?

More as the story develops.

Laugh in the face of this pure injustice while gluttonously mocking it!

We surfers, we here, are elevated. No? Yes. We belong to a special caste, an extraordinary caste. Our brains, calcified by ocean water, are able to draw parallels, find truths, reach apolitical consensuses where lesser-thans, the non-surfers, bog down in silly partisan name-calling and shrill nonsense. We are not like them and can discuss right things, left things, international things and without devolving into a Rachel Maddow-esque tragicomedy.

Yes?

But no, I meant purified. Our brains are purified by ocean water exactly like mine just was in the earthly surf paradise called Nicaragua.

Oh you followed along as I not only realized that family and surf can be joined in a perfect union but also attained enlightenment.

Nicaragua.

A beautiful land sparsely populated by a beautiful people. Fresh fruits and vegetables grown with love. Roads paved with paving stones. Rarely have I encountered such warmth and kindness in this world but the Trump administration just dubbed them all a “national security threat” and let us learn why from the pages of ZeroHedge.

A day after the US-backed far-right coup in Bolivia, the White House released a statement applauding the military putsch and making it clear that two countries were next on Washington’s target list: “These events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua,” Trump declared.

On November 25, the Trump White House then quietly issued a statement characterizing Nicaragua as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

This prolonged for an additional year an executive order Trump had signed in 2018 declaring a state of “national emergency” on the Central American country.

Trump’s 2018 declaration came after a failed violent right-wing coup attempt in Nicaragua. The US government has funded and supported many of the opposition groups that sought to topple elected Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, and cheered them on as they sought to overthrow him.

The 2018 national security threat designation was quickly followed by economic warfare. In December the US Congress approved the NICA Act without any opposition. This legislation gave Trump the authority to impose sanctions on Nicaragua, and prevents international financial institutions from doing business with Managua.

Trump’s new 2019 statement spewed outlandish propaganda against Nicaragua, referring to its democratically elected government — which for decades has been targeted for overthrow by Washington — as a supposedly violent and corrupt “regime.”

On it goes infuriatingly, detailing how the Trump administration will attempt to economically strangle Nicaragua, how many new sanctions will be announced in the coming weeks etc. and absolutely infuriating.

But we surfers, we here, can stick our calcified fingers right into the eye of bad policy. I mean purified fingers. We can laugh in the face of this pure injustice while gluttonously mocking it.

How?

You recall how I ascended into enlightenment at Rancho Santana, the gorgeous surf/family resort in southern Nicaragua? Well, go book a family vacation yourself. When you get to the end you can type CHAS into the promo code area and get 20% off a stay at the Inn, 15% off at any of the other accommodations and 25% off at the Spa.

Or just click here.

How you like them manzanas?

You can glare at wrong-headed foreign policy while getting a post-surf massage at a discount.

Win-win-win!

A peek behind the curtain!

The New York Times is one of the most well-respected journalistic institutions in the entire world. That sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel, always gimlet eye’d Gray Lady has published too many important, life-impacting stories over the last century to even count and so when she bends down and whispers of our surf, I listed with bated breath.

Just yesterday, live from Oahu’s North Shore, an important New York Times journalist sat down with John John Florence to discuss many things, including coming into the Pipeline Masters with a potential trip to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on the line with Kelly Slater, the greatest of all-time, the greatest to ever do it, possibly making his own Olympic push and let’s dip into the middle of the piece.

Florence, 27, has stared at and surfed this stretch of Sunset Beach all of his life. The house where he grew up is directly in front of Pipeline. His mother still lives over there, and Kelly Slater, the 47-year-old, 11-time world champion — a mentor, friend and rival to Florence — lives next door to her. Florence can walk there in just a couple of minutes.

Growing up looking at Pipeline, then surfing it, Florence’s favorite pro surfer was Slater, a seven-time champion of the Pipe Masters event. He used to watch Slater surf that break in the winter. He wanted to be Slater. Then Slater moved in. His hero became a neighbor. It took Florence years on tour to get used to competing against him.

“We had this cat at my mom’s house that kind of lived between the houses,” Florence said, choosing a story from a couple of years ago to illustrate their relationship. “And one day he called me and said — the cat’s name was Kitty — he said: ‘Kitty’s dead. I found Kitty under the house.’ He came over and helped us bury him, and he said a few words for the cat.”

What?

Kitty?

This parable seems extremely vital but what does it signify?

What does it mean?

The cat named Kitty is symbolic but symbolic of what?

The World Surf League?

Professional surfing in general?

Something more prosaic?

Help!

(And read the rest here!)