Competitiveness never takes a day off.

And the accomplishments just keep stacking up, one on top of the other on top of the other. Youngest professional surfer to ever win a heat. Oldest professional surfer to ever win a heat. Eleven World Championships. BeachGrit‘s 2020 Man of the Year runner-up, just a few votes behind our friend the Great White shark.

But what can you give a man that has achieved everything?

Shoot his Oi Rio Pro contest singlet into space of course and let’s read how this monumental event came to be. Let’s study the fine print in Florida Today.

International Space Station astronaut Christina H. Koch, who has shown a love for surfing, even watching live telecasts while orbiting Earth, and photographing coastlines, recently displayed Slater’s signed No. 11 jersey from the Oi Rio Pro contest in Brazil, where the 47-year-old American lost to eventual winner Filipe Toledo in the Round of 16.

The jersey reached the ISS during a re-supply mission, undoubtedly thanks to the efforts of the World Surf League and NASA.

Kelly, himself, took to Instagram and let’s read his fine print too.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6_tBxbhoZF/

So my @wsl Oi Rio Pro Jersey made its way into lower earth orbit on the #ISS to my friend @astro_christina who is spending 11 months up there! (Her side hustle is taking pictures of coastlines/potential surf spots around the globe for me!) We recently did a live chat so I could get the lowdown on the Space Station. This coming Friday we will be doing a live public chat. When I have the details I’ll pass them along. In the meantime, give me some ideas below of questions you would ask an astronaut spending the years in space…what they eat, how they stay entertained, how much time they just gaze at the earth, etc. I wonder if we’ll get any flat earthers?

A wonderful time and place to bait flat-earthers. Perfect even.

Do you think they’ll engage?

Very quickly, though, do all Kelly’s competition singlets list every one of his championships?

More as the story develops.

Wash the hypocrisy away!

But did you watch Ricky Gervais’s gorgeous Golden Globes’ monologue from a few days ago? Oh, you must. The world’s second funniest man laid absolute waste to elite Hollywood hypocrisy, declaring at the end that they all work for gross polluters so spare all the green-washed, human rights-tinged speeches.

He’s right. Leo DiCaprio by hisself accounts for more naughty gasses in the atmosphere than a whole village of trash burning Peruvians. The only grosser polluter is Kelly Slater.

And us.

Our boards are downright toxic, no question about it, but… we like to surf so… somebody else should be greener.

No?

Well, a Milwaukee psychiatrist named Ken Cole has invented a progressive new surfboard technology from coffee bags and can we learn about him? Can we feel better about ourselves, slightly? Lets right now.

“Every single surfboard — approximately 400,000 are made each year and of those 99.999 are made out of foam and fiberglass and also toxic resins. And it’s going to go into the water and eventually break down,” he explains.

So, Cole decided to try making his own in his garage about three years ago. “Much to my wife’s and my family’s chagrin because making surfboards as you can see is extremely dusty.” Cole adds, “But that was the first time I used jute.”

Jute is a vegetable fiber used to make coffee bags. Thanks to a local roaster, Cole stitches donated bags together. They cover the core hand-cut by Cole.

Jute eliminated the need for fiberglass.

“So this board will have zero fiberglass whatsoever …. The process is a pretty long one because what I have to do is lay this jute down and pour bio-resin on it. All surfboards use resin of some sort — again an oil-based product,” Cole says.

He opts instead for a plant-based resin. “So you pour the resin on this, it eventually cured and then you have to massage it in and then you have a solid surfboard.”

Jute.

Are you in?

Kelly Slater should be.

Damned hypocrite.

Is the Shark Apocalypse taking a horrifying turn?

And 2020 has taken a nasty down turn as it relates to our ongoing Shark Apocalypse. The one where the vicious, unrepentant apex predators heed neither good manners nor shark repellant technology in order to eat men at a near record clip. The one where they flash their sharp teeth with reckless abandon from California to Australia, America’s eastern seaboard to Réunion Island.

Oh it is a scary time to dare venture into ocean waters, positively terrifying, and all hope is near lost. Near lost and possibly nearer with today’s troubling developments that marine biologists have discovered hovering off the coast of North Carolina. For it is there that a massive Great White named “Shaw” has displayed perplexing behavior, refusing to migrate south to warmer waters as is the norm.

But why?

The very latest suggests Shaw is a sissy mama’s boy refusing to leave his nursery and let us go straight to The Charlotte Observer for more.

A 10-foot-3-inch great white shark is entering its third month of mysteriously pacing up and down the same stretch of coast off Virginia and North Carolina, and experts now have a theory.

OCEARCH began tracking the 564-pound apex predator’s strange coastal fixation in December, and the shark, named Shaw, was still there Monday. Shaw showed up on satellite at 4:13 a.m. off Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks, tracking shows.

The nonprofit research agency believes this odd behavior may come down to a matter of ocean temperature, specifically a spot off Cape Hatteras known as the “faunal break.”

“White sharks usually cross it easily and spend the cooler months south of the break, but Shaw has been flirting with the line for over a month now.”

Other white sharks tagged by the nonprofit have “breezed past” the barrier, so OCEARCH isn’t sure why Shaw is so reluctant.

Some data collected by OCEARCH has suggested young sharks prefer to stay close to their nursery in the first two years of life. But Shaw is categorized as a “sub-adult,” not a juvenile, according to data collected Oct. 1, when he was tagged off Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

The socially unaware among us may be inclined to mock Shaw and even bully him, calling him names etc. but we students of uncomfortable behaviors know that many, if not most, serial killers have mother issues. That they were either too coddled, or entirely neglected, maternally.

Might Shaw be preparing to serially kill due some over-infatuation with mommy?

Like Norman Bates in Psycho?

More as the disturbing story develops.

A proud day for surfers everywhere!

If you have a young daughter, or had a young daughter at any point during the last fifteen years, then you are certainly aware of American Girl Doll phenomenon. The popular figurines have their own megastores, cafes, salons and complex storylines that “cover significant topics such as child labor, child abuse, poverty, racism, slavery, animal abuse and war in manners appropriate for the understanding and sensibilities of their young audience.”

Each year, a “Girl of the Year” is introduced. 2019 brought us “Blaire… a girl from Hudson Valley, New York with a passion for farm-to-table fare and some food sensitivities.”

This year brings us Joss, a hardcore HB local and let’s meet her together.

On the beaches of sunny southern California, Joss Kendrick™ can’t wait to hop on her surfboard. But is she ready for a new way to fly?

As a girl who’s all in when she takes to the waves, Joss won’t back down when her brother dares her to try out for the cheer team. What Joss expects to be a silly sport turns into something much more as she discovers the girls on the team are real athletes. Now that she’s waded into unfamiliar waters, will Joss sink—or soar higher than she ever has?

Follow Joss’s story as she strives to reach new heights while uncovering a whole new side of herself.

Now, Joss is has a slight hearing problem and comes with a removable hearing aid but, of course, that doesn’t stand in her way. What might, though, is this new interest in cheerleading. If Joss expects to follow in the proud footsteps of Kanoa Igarashi then she will have to focus, exclusively, on her air-reverse game.

And not getting swept into the underage bacchanal called The U.S. Open of Surfing where young teenaged boys and girls are dragged into a whirlpool of unthinkable debauchery.

The American Girl Dolls come with many accessories. I can only hope one of Joss Kendrick’s is a bottle of pepper spray. I also hope she is not part of Hurley’s flow team.

Much heartbreak.