And a timely warning for surfers!

Florida, as they say in The States, is where the weird things are.

A champagne-disco potpourri running the gambit from eighteen-dollar gin and tonics in Miami to toothless reptile wrestlers near the Everglades. Whenever a faux pas is committed anywhere in the US, it can often be redeemed with, “Its ok, he’s from Florida.”

It does, however, have its share of heroes.

Richard Wilbanks, who is seventy-four, was walking his three-month old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Gunner around a pond close to his house when “it (alligator) came out of the water like a missile. I never thought an alligator could be that fast.”

The reptile grabbed the puppy in its jaws and dragged it underwater.

“I just automatically jumped into the water,” Wilbanks told CNN.

Wilbanks said holding the alligator wasn’t difficult but prying open the jaws was “extremely hard” adding he had no hard feelings towards the killer gator.

“They’re part of nature and part of our lives,” he said.

Alligators and crocodiles would be the last thing surfers would need to concern themselves with, you’d think.

But they’re around.

A British surfer was taken whole near Elephant Rock in Sri Lanka in 2017.

And, in 2018, in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, an American surfer got his leg and head spun like raw pretzel dough while crossing a river on his board.

On a simpler biological note, like the Tharu and the Danuwar tribes of Nepal who have built an immunity to malaria through centuries of exposure, has Mr. Wilbanks inherited an innate ability to wrestle gators by simply living in Florida? 

More important, how far would you go go to save a best friend?

Best I’ve done to date is change his hot water heater…

#blessed #theresnoplanB

It’s been six months since WSL heartthrob Drexel Wilson had an epiphany: climate change was real, was happening now, and if someone somewhere didn’t do something quick many of the world’s oceans would be rendered unrippable.

There and then Drexel slammed down his disposable plastic smoothie cup and phoned his agent.

Below is an extract from his diary as a climate activist.

15th June
Oops! Looks like old Drex gone broke the internet! Put it across my socials that I could no longer in good faith put my name on another “disgusting hunk of plastic based foam destined only to rot in a landfill or float for eternity in our pristine seas”. The socials blew up. Phone’s melting with calls from all the mags. Even New York Times and The Guardian lifestyle sections want a piece of Drex. Inertia’s coming over to do a video profile – full media engagement.

Board shaper calls raging, take issue with “disgusting hunk” phrasing. Agree to at least ride the warehouse load of signature models I already have. Pitched hemp as viable option and could shaper research it. I think he went through a tunnel at that point.

18th June
Read that some takeaway coffee cups aren’t even recyclable. Raging. Call agent and get the ball rolling on 500,000 non-disposable coffee cups with my logo on them (retail $20) and 800,000 non-disposable drinking straws (retail $10 per pack of 10) with my name written along them. Feel much better.

Cash some air-miles for a quick hop from sunny So-Cal to slightly less sunny Germany. Car company wants some optics on me driving around a beach in their new hybrid. Straight to the airport, straight back to So-Cal. Turn on my phone when I hit the tarmac – message from Nate. Swell hitting Mexico tomorrow morning. Lucky I’m already at the airport!

Feel this is karma for all the effort I’ve already put into saving the planet. You’re welcome planet! De nada!

20th June
Looks like we might finally be getting the ball rolling on my new range of signature boards. Nate reckons he knows a guy who knows a guy in Brazil who’s cultivated a certain type of bamboo that with a certain type of care and attention (I didn’t catch all the names of the chemicals involved) can be shaped into a right little ripper! Progress!

24th June
Call the energy bar sponsor and lay down the law: all products vegan from now on. They’re not happy, something something production costs, reconfigurations, contracts blah blah. Damn suits. Can’t stand conflict, messes with my aura. Fly up to Vancouver and have it out face-to-face. It’s me, some nerd from RnD, some desk jockey from marketing and my agent. The marketing kook comes up with a plan, different bars based on different spots around the world: mango from Indo, avocado from Costa Rica, chilli and chocolate from Mexico, orange from So-Cal, coconut from Hawaii etc etc.

I point out Costa Rica’s major kooksville but marketing dork says it needs to go “cross-markets to be viable”.

I agree provided that all the ingredients are the real deal, flown in, none of this additive shit. Done. #hustle4theplanet

25th June
Seems we went overboard on the non-disposable cups/straws idea. Agent calls to tell me a quarter of the batch won’t sell and will have to be blah blah blah. Didn’t catch her last bit. Saw a racoon licking a burrito wrapper and guess I kind of zoned out. #nature

27th June
Take a break from saving the world to actually get some surfing done! Tell Nate to do a ring around the gang – Aus trip! This weekend! No excuses! Put it across the socials. Greenpeace send over 500 vinyl stickers to hand out to the Aussie groms – brand optics etc. Get to the airport. Baggage over weight limit by a couple of kg. Dich a board. Comes down to the stickers or the spare selfie-stick. Ditch stickers.

5th July
Some great sessions in Aus but even on a trip with my buddies the work never ends! Climate change doesn’t take a vacation! Hook up with my sunglass sponsor and some local marine conservation group and give an interview for some doc about the Great Barrier reef. Get a great view of it flying up to Indo for a couple of bonus waves. Feel proud to be protecting such a beautiful wonder of the world. #blessed #theresnoplanB

7th July
Agent phones in a meltdown re: vegan protein bars. Turns out the mango farm in Indo uses slave labour and the Mexican chili company killed a couple of union members. Don’t know who Union are, a soccer team or something? Suggest calling Indo workers “environmental volunteers”. Says that could fly for a bit.

Speaking of flying; Portugal’s pumping! Airport. Lisbon. Supertubos!

15th July
Fly down to Brazil with shaper for a meeting with the surfboard wood guy. Seems legit. Big house. Big staff. Barbed wire. Private security. Showed me his fleet of bulldozers. Gives me a tour of the lab where they hope to make this new bamboo stuff. Smelt weird. Felt woozy so didn’t catch all the details, had to go outside and take off my gas mask. Shaper said something about rights of Amazon tribes. Last I saw of him he was getting a private tour of the gym with one of the security guys.

20th July
All day meeting with WLS reps re: making the tour more green. Only hybrid or electric model’s car sponsor logos on rash vests; all flags made from hemp; WSL logo green coloured on all products and promotion materials.

Good to know they’re on-board and I can compete with a clear conscience.

#shredwavesnottheplanet

"Pretty horrific."

A bodyboarder in his fifties was hit and killed by a twelve-foot shark at Cable Beach, a pretty and mostly waveless beach two thousand clicks north of Perth, on Sunday.  

Charles Cernobori was a hundred feet offshore when the animal, likely a tiger or bull shark ‘cause Whites tend to do a u-turn when they hit Exmouth a thousand kilometres south, attacked.

A couple went to help Cernobori after they saw “trashing” in the water, pulling him to shore and calling an ambulance.

“Obviously that would have been pretty horrific for those people. It was very brave to enter the water and do what they did,” Inspector Gene Pears said.

Cops arrived, fired a volley at the animal, which missed, and the shark hung around for another half an hour.

It’s the first fatal shark in almost thirty years, since a pearl diver was killed at Roebuck Bay. 

WA Police deputy commissioner Col Blanch said the attack was “very unusual” for the area although Cable Beach is occasionally closed when crocodiles waltz through the area.

The man’s death marks the third fatal shark attack in Western Australia in 2020, following January’s Great White hit on diver Gary Johnson in January, and the disappearing of a local surfer by a Great White in October.