A fine afternoon at the end of the road.
Well, friends, adjacent surfers, WSL fuck boyz, how was
your break?
I’ve been very busy, winding down at work, obsessing over
foiling, being on the cusp of a book deal, getting fit again,
prepping to cycle to Germany to watch Scotland get humped at the
Euros.
And all the while doing my level best to self-sabotage and ego
trip my way to an inevitable implosion followed by the smoking
embers of regret.
But all that’s a story for another day. Perhaps.
I’m feeling especially unhinged right now. I’m considering
therapy. Who’d have thought.
I even went to a writer’s group. Don’t judge me. It was my first
time, and I’m broadly cynical about these things. I only went
because my friend is organising it, and he’s asked me to deliver
one in a couple of weeks.
(Tickets available! Come learn how to be a shoe-gazing
narcissist who can cry over light and trees but treats people like
nuisance distractions in a swelling sea of self-important
mussitation.)
But, dear reader, I confess to having enjoyed it.
For the first exercise we were asked to select an object from a
box. I had arrived late, as I do, since it’s the first rule of
pretending to be a writer. Everyone there was already scribbling
furiously, etching their finest verbiage into the void. (Oh, to be
a writer!)
The box was filled with natural objects: pale bones of
driftwood; hollowed shells; pine cones, barren and seedless; green
sprigs of ash, oak and willow.
And a rock.
I chose the rock.
And I wrote thus:
Pressure pocked. Shrouded with lines of time. A compression of
history. This unearthed, stranded time. Brown grey glinting from
somewhere before. Hints of sparkle (doesn’t everything?). Enviously
unchanged. Solid. Without remorse or guilt; never late, jealous or
unfulfilled. Chunked earth, dragged out of darkness and gasping for
interred silence.
But still. Just rock.
And I share it with you because I think it gives some context to
my frame of mind right now. And I think you deserve that.
Fucking writers groups.
I’ve got Beachgrit.
Amidst all this tumult it was nice to arrive in Tahiti,
figuratively, obviously. I’m not Chris Cote. In fact I might be his
antithesis.
Just an aside on Cote before I go any further (and to you,
Chris, since I’m sure you’ll be reading from your tropical throne
on WSL dime), how about asking some decent questions?
Like, I get John Florence is John Florence. We all love and
respect him. But to ask “What does it mean to you to be here…etc”
is demeaning to you and him. The What Does It Mean To You question
should be eviscerated from a pundit’s pallet. It’s just a shit
question, where the only possible answers are shit.
How about, why have you never won here, John?
Do you think you have what it takes to beat Kelly, Jack or Gabby
here, John? Because your results suggest otherwise.
Who becomes favourite when the waves get to paddleable
limit?
I hear you’re retiring, John. Is two world titles a fair
indication of you as a competitive surfer?
Why do you persist with that junkie beard, John?
Anyway, that aside, Teahupo’o does make things a lot simpler, as
I was saying.
Get your head down, take off late, get as deep as possible, get
out unscathed.
Not a bad metaphor for how to live your life, really. Except few
people have the god-given ability, Herculean work ethic or sheer
luck to actually make it out, and that’s why we watch.
We watch for Kelly Slater, fifty-two years old, fresh out of
retirement, treading the boards again and still searching for the
encore. Yet here, at this wave, he still looks like he could match
anyone.
He proved it today, out-jousting tube and spirit wrangler
extraordinaire, Jack Robinson, and smoldering Moroccan, Ramzi
Boukhiam, despite the latter having the best score of the heat.
But if Slater’s heat performance was adept, his post heat
interview was equally so, with added incision. He was asked what he
thought about the (much lauded) approaching swell event?
“A surf forecaster trying to sell ads”, he daggered.
In response and off camera, Cote was reported to be frantically
washing his hands over the side of the boat, muttering “Out damn
spot! Out!”
In heat one Ethan Ewing was run close by Seth Moniz, then John
Florence won the second at half-cock.
The pace of these early heats made for fine entertainment and
judges had their work cut out to keep up, especially in the early
stages of Slater’s heat.
Kaipo and Jesse Mendes presided in the booth, uppers vs downers.
An approach that can be highly effective in some scenarios but not
suitable for everyone’s disposition.
Kaipo said that Tahiti “filled up his love cup”. A truly
disgusting image, I thought.
Italo Ferreira stayed typically busy in heat four, notching
eight scores and sending yellow jersey wearer Griffin Colapinto
(just three waves attempted) to elimination.
The consistency of the swell ebbed as the day progressed, a fact
best evidenced by Gabriel Medina notching only three wave attempts,
his first coming with just eight minutes on the clock.
Of course this meant nearly twenty-five minutes of saccharine
punditry vaunting Medina’s skill and achievements at Teahupo’o,
whilst he bobbed, actionless.
But he finally put a mid-range score on the board for a
mid-range wave, then another immediately after. It was enough to
win, but post-heat he suggested they might have missed some early
opportunities for more. One thing is for sure: Medina knows what
he’s looking for here.
Despite the fading swell, Ryan Callinan found the best wave of
the day with a 9.33 and heat victory over Liam O’Brien and Barron
Mamiya. A deep take-off saw him backdoor the section before being
spat out cleanly with hands back and low and a cleaner grin on his
face. High nine all the way.
What might we see in the coming days?
Was this the lemon next to the pie, or simply hype to sell ads
for surf forecasters?
We’ll know soon enough.
I’m off to run up a hill and look down from the summit at my
life splayed out before me, just waiting to be fucked.
