"So good to be back surfing..."

Our favorite pastime spreading far and wide is nothing new. For decades now, outliers see a surf film, or surfers themselves playing the sport of kings off some beach, and think “I want to try.” A glorious cycle though maybe somewhat dulled by today’s ease of entry. Abundant surf schools, squishy soft tops, evaporated rules have, each, left a sort of vacuum where “cool” once hovered, vaguely defined.

All that aside, wonder and amazement spread overnight when images of Formula 1 driver Charles Leclerc began spreading online depicting the 26-year-old Monegasque dropping into a terrifying triple up. A wave that would send shivers into the spines of all but the hardest Shipsterns’ natives. A wave that would current World Surf League champion Filipe Toledo into emotional hospice care.

You, of course, remember when the timid Brazilian failed to paddle at lightly plus-sized Pipeline earlier this year, tantrum’d that he owned nobody nothing then went on a mental health break.

“So good to be back surfing. No photoshop at all in the 2nd picture of course, all talent,” the Team Ferrari driver, anyhow, penned to X.

Wow.

Now, surfing and Formula 1 are not strange bedfellows. Lewis Hamilton, who now also happens to drive for Ferrari after leaving longtime Mercedes, is a known aficionado even counting father-to-be-again Kelly Slater amongst his best of friends.

As talented as Hamilton may be, his barrel nowhere close to Leclerc’s devil send.

Back to Toledo, though. Do you think he would be equally scared behind the open wheel, zooming this way and that, or do you think he should take his talents elsewhere?

Also, we never got to discuss Hamilton to Ferrari. Are you a yay or nay there? I wish I could spoil his gender reveal but there’s only so much time in the day.

Until next time.