BeachGrit previously reported that Julian Wilson would soon be announcing a new deal with Lululemon.
We have since learned that this is not true and that our reporting was indeed incorrect.
As such, we deleted the original article that included this false report and we wish to formally retract the statement in its entirety.
We have been advised that Julian remains committed to his long-standing partnership with Hurley under its new management.
"Maybe I’ll see you, you can’t miss me. I’m THAT kook, ecstatic to make it out the back on a small day, huffing and puffing like a steam train and grinning like a maniac."
Editor’s note: Two months ago, BeachGrit habitué offrocker wrote about being hit with cancer aged thirty-five. His story Quit-Lit in the Face of Cancer: Reflections on my Last Surf Ever (Maybe) was a real tearjerker.
“I am four-fifths salt water and I may be going back to Mother Earth after my three dozen goes around the sun. I’ve done my time watching the tides. Sandbars form and melt away. Storms. Rock ledges. Learning winds, and how they swirl down valleys, equating it to long period swell wrapping around seafloor features. All little tidbits of info with no relevance to my now landlocked life, but it gives me joy to know the natural world by force of confronting it and understanding my place in it.”
Christ.
Last night, offrocker emailed me, told me he’d had a little hit-out in the ocean and that he’d written a story.
“I feel like it’s twaddle in the same sentimental vein,” he wrote.
Sentimental twaddle?
You tell me.
**********
Have you ever had a reprieve? A second chance?
Been given a walk at a crucial moment?
Ten weeks out of the water and I was starting to adjust to my new life sans surf, dealing with a bunch of new bits and pieces.
The slow meat grinder of being poisoned every two weeks and watching your body break down in front of you. The chemo port implanted over your pec burrows down all the way into your heart. How the port tugs when you lift your arm above your head.
How to shower with a needle hanging out of your chest attached to a bottle of the same poison that’s killing you, and hopefully the cancer.
A thousand little adjustments.
My life is walking the dogs around and around the block, exercise bikes, core strength rehabilitation, hypervigilent handwashing. All very important, but monochrome.
No, not monochrome, but like when you adjust the filter on a photo… desaturated.
And then last week, out of the blue, I got the reprieve.
After a few rounds of chemo, my bloods were stable and my oncologist let me go in the ocean.
Something I thought was off the cards indefinitely.
Some moments transcend all the suffering in the world. I was with my wife, my best mate, and his six-year-old daughter.
Weak as shit, I waded out into the ocean.
Pink-purple sunset, crystalline water, two spotted eagle rays dancing in the shallows as I bodysurfed the tiny rip bowl. The kid was right into YouTube nature docos and told us all about the biology of rays, and mermaids purses.
I’m not normally sentimental, but to bathe once again at the salty font…
Reborn, I threw caution to the wind. I bought myself a stealth-belt and simply got back on my board.
Bugger what the physio said. I recklessly spent a whole afternoon packing the shorebreak. I was sore, so was my port – did I rip it out of the vein?
Seems to still work, so I guess the answer is no. Breaking down scar tissue before it had a chance to fully set and render me immobile, physically and psychologically.
I spent another afternoon chasing peaky swell in the same crowded line up I had last surfed. Kook central – hat, zinc, long-arm springsuit in twenty-five degree water, reef booties because chemo is killing my nerves and I can’t feel my feet properly anymore. Shame job walking down the water’s edge, but all forgotten with that first brace of whitewater.
A full two minutes of deep lactic breathing after every paddle back out.
Someone called me onto a good one, plenty to go around today.
A chilled vibe with familiar faces.
A chat out the back with people I only ever see out the back.
A chat in the carpark with my shaper, talking about my board that has been on hold since I got sick.
Did I want to change it to something a bit more… functional… given my condition?
Fuck no.
I need the dream that Indo step-up can give me more than I ever need to ride it.
Once again, in the lineup I felt like order had returned, a return to normality for a few short hours.
So I’m back in hospital this week. More complications.
The waves of samsara keep crashing.
This week it’s a fever, two days in hospital on hardcore antibiotics until they can rule out blood poisoning.
Three weeks ago, a threatened blood clot on the lungs.
Last week an allergic reaction to a new drug and a pustular rash.
These are all minor bumps in the road.
I’m looking forward to getting back out there already.
Maybe I’ll see you, you can’t miss me. I’m THAT kook, ecstatic to make it out the back on a small day, huffing and puffing like a steam train and grinning like a maniac.
ADDIT: They just found a big blood clot in the lungs. Sigh. Hence the shortness of breath. Blood thinners, small clean days and foamies for the foreseeable future. Maybe I’ll take up surf photography… anything to get in the water. And buy a Gath.
SURFERS, OUT OF THE WATER!
The human mind cannot fathom what occurs within the firing synapses of Great White sharks. We can make guesses, hypothesize, but are constantly caught off guard by the movements and purposes of the apex predators. By where they go and why they go.
Just hours ago a diabolically large female named Unama’ki (Land of Fog and Eaten Men in an indigenous Nova Scotian tongue) “pinged” within 100 miles of northwest Florida, coming dangerously near the shore and let us turn to the scientific journal Daily News for the absolute latest:
The shark, known as Unama’ki, is one of the largest and was tagged at 15 feet, 5 in. long by research nonprofit OCEARCH, which tracks this info “to help scientists collect previously unattainable data in the ocean” and hopes to “accelerate the ocean’s return to balance and abundance,” according to its website.
Researchers are looking to learn more about the breeding habits of great whites — also known as white sharks.
“As a big mature female, Unama’ki has the potential to lead us to the site where she gives birth and exposes a new white shark nursery,” OCEARCH said, according to USA Today.
Adult great white sharks can “grow to a maximum size of approximately 20 feet in length, weigh up to 6,600 pounds, and are estimated to live for 30 years,” according to the nonprofit ocean conservation group, Oceana.
Oh even the thought of a Great White shark nursery sends shivers up my spine. I imagine it would look like The Omen. Or The Conjuring. Or any horror movie where possessed little kids come to torment their parents.
Also, it is very suspicious that Unama’ki decided to get closer to shore today, as it was just revealed Florida is near passing a law that allows full frontal nudity at its nude beaches.
Could the “man-eating” beast be looking for some delicate, unwrapped appetizers?
Very possible. Terrifying.
More as the story develops and no surfing in Florida until the alarms turn off.
No nude sunbathing either unless gender transition surgery is on the horizon.
Free to be free.
And yesterday we read the extremely troubling news of one-time Arkansas governor, bass guitar fanatic, Mike Huckabee and his successful quest to privatize most, if not all, of Florida’s beaches. No more surfing unless you can afford a beachfront manse.
Today, though, there is good news coming to us from the Sunshine State for an important bill has been advanced to the legislature, without opposition, allowing full frontal nudity on the still public nude beaches.
A celebration of the human spirit.
A celebration of the human vessel and let’s learn all we can before shedding our trunks and paddling out.
One Florida state senator is working to make sure you can wear your birthday suit, worry free, at the nude beach.
Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Miami, wants to make sure folks who enjoy the states 34 or so nude beaches are not arrested and charged as a sexual predator.
SB 850 does not make it legal to expose one’s sexual organs in public, but does make it legal to be au naturale in the properly permitted areas,
Those areas attract about 2.2 million tourists each year pumping an estimated $7 billion dollars into the state’s economy.
There are cases where people have been arrested and charged while on clothing optional beaches.
“That’s ‘no bueno,’ as we say in Miami,” said Pizzo.
That is definitely ‘no bueno’ and are you surprised, even slightly, that 2.2 million tourists travel to Florida’s nude beaches and pump $7 billion dollars into the state’s economy?
I certainly am. I certainly am while thinking it would do BeachGrit real financial good to get in on the “au naturale” industry.
Have you surfed nude?
Did you like?
What did you buy afterwards?
VAL-friendly sex doll! "Aloha! Care for a surf lesson? It looks like you might need a few pointers. That rental board could use a nice wax, for one."
They say a good product sells itself.
Take, for example, the electric surf fin. I know an electric surf fin may get you excited, no paddling, roll-in takeoffs etc, but not as much as a new product from RLSD.
It costs $US1999 and is being touted as the most revolutionary invention in the surf world since Simon Anderson affixed three fins onto a board.
Meet Bree.
Aloha! Care for a surf lesson? It looks like you might need a few pointers. That rental board could use a nice wax, for one. You’ve been looking over here for a while! Now some girls might not like to be gawked at so much, but I’m open minded. Lucky for you! I know you don’t have a lot of experience, but there’s a nice swell coming in, and it’s the perfect time to go for it. I’ll show you what to do. First, you want to get on all fours, and paddle like crazy. Once you see the wave rising, get up on two legs and go for it. Don’t worry if you take a pounding – I know exactly how to handle that. Assuming you survive, we can have a little fun together! That was your original idea, wasn’t it? I can feel your gaze boring into me. Wouldn’t you like to have your way with such a pretty little surf bunny, with her long blonde hair, flawless bronze skin, and tight, athletic body? If you play your cards right, you can put your hands all over this perfect, soft and realistic TPE sex doll. I feel astonishingly life-like. You’ll want to touch me all over. I have an articulating internal skeleton, which allows you to pose me in all kinds of fun and nasty positions. Let your imagination go wild! I might be a doll, but unlike your little sister’s Barbie, I’m completely anatomically correct. Care to discover the details? I love the sand and surf, and I’m always wet!
Do you love sand, surf, wet things and articulating internal skeletons?
