We're back!

I apologize for the slack in getting our Open Thread up and running this morning. Hawaii time etc. But here we are and with all the boys (Chris Cote etc.) and all the girls (surfers, Rosie etc.) and it feels like everything is right, again, in the world.

The waves look glassy and classy.

Who you got?

Tyler Wright apparently shone already but Steph coming up and will likely shine more brightly.

Watch here!

Comment below.

Everything right including Tyler’s fabulous new singlet.

Shakespearean.

The Indian subcontinent has so many joys, almost too many joys, and is well worth a visit. The various regional cuisines entice, architecture inspires, trains, hill stations, hotels, drinking tea and shattering the cups on the tracks so as not to inadvertently touch lips with an untouchable all set the heart racing but one of the greatest pleasures is the Indian use of English

The language is as much theirs as it is ours, as the English first spread the tongue across the land in 1608, but they have done better things with it.

Can we, as an example, read a passage from the New Indian Express that details a tragic event of father drowning while trying to save his surfer-daughter?

Chennai: Man meets watery grave while trying to rescue drowning surfer daughter.

CHENNAI: A 51-year-old software engineer drowned in the sea off Thiruvanmiyur while he was rescuing his daughter who was pulled by a giant wave while practising surfing on Monday morning.

The deceased was identified as Balaji, an employee of a private software firm in Tidel Park and a resident of Vannandurai in Besant Nagar.

According to police, the incident happened around 7 am at Thiruvanmiyur beach.

Police said that Balaji accompanied his daughter Revathi, 11, a Class 6 student, to surf in the sea.

Quoting on the onlookers, police said that Revathi, who was training with the surfboard, was suddenly sucked in by a giant wave. A shocked Balaji entered into the sea to save his daughter. He drowned as he was unable to swim in the rough sea.

Police said surfers usually do not practise in a rough sea, but the duo reached Thiruvanmiyur claiming that the sea was relatively calm there compared to Besant Nagar.

Extremely tragic but written better than anything in Austro-American surf, save Longtom, in years and years. We other continentals have dispensed with “watery graves” and “Davy Jones’s Locker” and other pirate-adjacent words and have stumbled into pure bore. Drowning, asphyxiated, etc. But we should reclaim the swagger as we are closer to pirate heritage than any, save right-of-center politicians.

Poetic.

Kafkaesque.

As you well know, I grew up surfing central-southern Oregon’s icy cold water. The Pacific there teems with life from crab to seal to the mighty Great White Shark herself. Shark sightings were common in and around my hometown and I swear I saw a massive silhouette, once, when I as out for a paddle near the long rock jetty jutting out from Bastendorff Beach.

Scary, though I always thought about my own spindly arms and legs then looked at the many seals swimming by, luscious and fat, and thought the shark would know better.

Well, apparently the beasts have developed a taste for spindle for last evening a surfer was tasted in Seaside, there in the very north.

The man, who was riding a fine Super Brand board, sustained non-life threatening injuries to his leg and was helped by fellow surfers and an off-duty lifeguard who fashioned a field tourniquet to stop the bleeding. The man was then transported to a local hospital for further evaluation.

The fire department said, “The incident serves as a valuable reminder to never recreate alone, in or out of the water. The fast response of fellow surfers was instrumental in providing aid to the victim.”

Very confusing advice in our Covid days when, I thought, we were supposed to recreate alone. Kafkaesque, I suppose.

In any case, I wonder if this expanded palate, amongst sharks, will hold or if human leg will simply be a trend. Like cronuts.

Did you ever have a cronut? I did and an original one too from the bakery that invented in New York City.

I was underwhelmed.

Updated: Super Brand has offered to give the Oregon hero a free board. If one of you know him, please pass along this turn of good luck.