Merry everything!
California will be shut down, entirely, by midnight tonight. No more pumping iron in the gym. No more getting super fit in the gym. But do you remember a simpler time, when the only terror that haunted our dreams was radical Islamic terrorism? A utopian bliss, in comparison and, as it happens, I wrote a book about that joy which you should gift friends and family.
Of course, when a book is being written much ends up on the floor. Like this passage right here.
On the way home from Somalia, a handful of years ago, I rode a weird transport airplane with four with 7-foot-tall Taliban. I can’t imagine they were up to any good in Somalia and their faces were etched into furious scowls beneath their black turbans, in the middle of their wildly bushy beards. I decided to sit next to them so at least I’d be the first to know when the hijacking was occurring. I mumbled something in the little Pashtu I knew and the 7-footer sitting next to me broke into a smile. We chatted in Arabic for the duration of the flight to Dubai. He leaned in heavily on me, insisting God was one and that I must recognize. I told him I agreed, and that Jesus was God was the Holy Spirit. Three in one. Weird but true. Absolute blasphemy to any Muslim and his frown returned. We went back and forth, he tried to trick me into saying the Hadith and converting to Islam, I told him I couldn’t. I was a believer too. At the end he capitulated and patted me on the shoulder with a giant, muscled paw and said, “You and I, we are people of the book.”
But you are a person of the book too, even if that book is the World Surf League Rule Book.
Pipeline is tomorrow-adjacent. Join the Surfvival League here before it’s too late. You can win $1000 and a Panda surfboard.
Happy Hanukkah (in four days)!