"He’s reflecting on the mistakes he made in life and wondering if there’s any chance for redemption."

Five months ago, a Santa Barbara surf school owner was arrested in Mexico after his two children, aged 3 and 11 months, were found stabbed to death with a spearfishing gun.

Matthew Taylor Coleman, who owns Santa Barbara’s Lovewater Surf School with his wife Abby took the couple’s children, Kaleo and Roxy, to Mexico without telling friends or family.

Video footage from Rosarito, just south of the United States/Mexico border, showed Coleman checking into a hotel with the two children and leaving very early Monday morning before returning later, alone, to check out.

A farm worker saw blood on the ground and his dogs discovered the bodies of the two toddlers nearby, stabbed multiple times with a spearfishing gun.

Coleman, who was detained by waiting U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents when he tried to re-enter the US, told the FBI, “that he was enlightened by the QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories and was receiving visions and signs revealing that his wife…possessed serpent DNA and had passed it onto his children… Coleman said that he was saving the world from monsters.”

Coleman said he was motivated by the QAnon conspiracy theory that holds that Donald Trump had been secretly battling a wildly high-profile cabal of Satanist pedophiles.

Now, a long-time family friend who received a hand-written letter from the alleged kid-killer has told People magazine Coleman is feeling “despondent and hopeless” in prison and “He’s alone with his thoughts 24/7. He’s reflecting on the mistakes he made in life and wondering if there’s any chance for redemption… He poured out his heart… He begged for forgiveness, but says that he’s now where he deserves to be.”

The friend added, “He said he’s sorry, that he never wanted to cause pain, and that he’s working through why he made the choices he made. It was a very sad note.”

If found guilty, Coleman, who is currently in protective custody, faces the death penalty. 

Pop the Prosecco!

One of the most well-loved surfers in the entire world, and 2001’s champion, CJ Hobgood has led a storied life. Born a twin, becoming the model for the NSSA logo, Rookie of the Year on the 1999 Association of Surfing Professional’s main tour then winning it all in 2001, Clifton James has lived, lived and lived again.

And now, in mere days, he is set to join brother Damien in the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame. A party will fete his induction January 5th at 5:00pm at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando as part of the famed Surf Expo (tickets here).

In case you are a younger girl an ill-informed, you can learn all about his accomplishments and travails in the award-winning documentary And Two if by Sea.

Or you can listen to CJ shine on Dirty Water.

Florida Today describes CJ’s journey thusly:

Swaying palm trees in Bali, thunderous waves in Oahu and Champagne toasts off the coast of France. It was all part of the jet-setting lifestyle for professional surfers CJ Hobgood and Danny Melhado.

Of course, along with the glamor, there were bumps, bruises and broken bones, not to mention the thousands of miles and hundreds of days spent away from home, hauling a quiver of surfboards through airports, and eating exotic, yet strange-looking, foods.

Now, oceans apart, their legacy connects again Wednesday evening when both South Brevard legends are inducted into the 25th edition of the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame.

CJ adds, “I don’t know if this ever pops up on your radar when you’re growing up. I think surfing was still kind of counter-culture back then; maybe you’d get like one mention on ‘SportsCenter,’ but I couldn’t imagine (what it became).”

The greatest show ever.

Over-served.

New Year’s Eve is a time for many activities that would, on any other day, be frowned upon. There is the wearing of strange cardboard glasses and/or hats, the lighting of explosives, the public singing and, of course, the consumption of alcohol.

Now, any other New Year’s Eve I would have enjoyed a glass, or two, of champagne without thought. This New Year’s Eve, though, I was in Italy with my personal digital fitness and health coach, my WHOOP strap, and drinking one, or two glasses of Prosecco without thought.

That night, after wandering past many Italians lighting explosives, publicly singing with the number 2022 covering their eyes, I made it to bed and proceeded to have a fitful night’s sleep.

Consulting my WHOOP, the following morning, I realized that my measurables were all over the place. Wacky heart rate variability and resting heart rate numbers. Lousy recovery.

Intrigued, I immediately dove into the research. According to WHOOP’s many scientists:

Heart rate variability (HRV) and resting heart rate are two of the most useful metrics for quantifying your fitness on a daily basis. Consuming alcohol causes your HRV to drop (bad) and your resting heart to rise (also bad).

With the WHOOP Journal feature, our members are given the option of noting whether or not they have any alcoholic drinks each day. From a Performance Assessment analysis representing everyone on WHOOP, when they report consuming alcohol (even just a single drink) their HRV drops by an average of 7 milliseconds, and their resting heart rate increases by an average of 3 beats per minute.

It should come as no surprise that of all the behaviors available to record in the WHOOP Journal, drinking alcohol is the one with the single greatest negative impact on next-day recovery. On average, WHOOP members’ recovery is 8% lower when they log consuming alcohol the day before (again, this includes everything ranging from one drink to several).

Well who would have ever guessed? Speaking of, did you read about CNN’s New Year’s Eve program co-host Andy Cohen continually say he was “over-served” after delivering many snarky remarks on air?

“I was a bit over-served…”

What a dumb turn to phrase.

2022, anyhow, already seeing a better me.

Buy a better you here.

Exciting days.

Surf teams used to mean so very much. In my youthful mind’s eye, those professional surfers who shared a sticker were the very best of friends, hanging out after surfs, drinking hot cocoa, calling each other late at night to gossip about who likes who etc.

The surf industry apocalypse, and Hurley turning into a men’s grooming product company, have damaged that ideal of the team but that all might be changing with America’s sweetheart set to join South Africa’s Jordy Smith and Australia’s Soli Bailey under the O’Neill banner.

On the surface, it is a wonderful fit with O’Neill as a very American company, though with pure Santa Cruz roots. Andino, of course, is the breathing face of San Clemente but might he consider a move north? Westside or Eastside?

Hmmmm.

I think, with things the way they are, that surf teams should force all their surfers to live together in a compound year ’round, much like they do on the North Shore, except film them non-stop, much like they did in The Ultimate Surfer.

A sort of renaissance.