Hope springs!
You and I might have once harbored dreams of becoming professional surfers. Oh we were much younger then, of course, maybe twelve or thirteen when anything seemed possible including, but not limited to, space travel, financial literacy, being chaired up the beach after posting three perfect tens.
Alas, real life crept in and we realized our boggy bottom turns and mistimed lip hits would never get us to the top.
But might hope spring?
Yesterday’s running of the Lexus Pipe Pro, wherein the women were trotted out to face “aggressively mediocre” waves, was mostly a shameful indictment of the World Surf League. Except, heat 6 of the opening round delivered a gem that will buoy even the grumpiest of locals. For, there, Sawyer Linblad defeated Johanne Defay and Lakey Peterson in part thanks to her first ever completed backside barrel.
(3:27:30 if not already teed up.)
Amazing!
The Championship Tour, you well know, is as high as a professional surfer can climb and imagine being able to reach the peak without the ability to weave a back footed tube. Might you, too, be able to make it without a wrap-around snap in the trick bag? Might I be able to without a fully developed cutback?
Our aspirations alive once again.
David Lee Scales and I did not, anyhow, discuss the power of dreams but we did rake Filipe Toledo over more room temperature coals.
Never enough.
Enjoy.