Trigger warning.

It is not secret that our favorite pastime, this grand Sport of Kings, becomes regularly co-opted and used to describe something not even remotely related to wave sliding. “Surfing the web,” for example, which involves sitting indoors and typing URLs into a computer browser or “crowd surfing” which involves people being passed around a room via other people’s hands.

There is couch surfing, channel surfing, particle surfing and stand-up paddleboard surfing, just to name but a very few, though the most disturbing appropriation has just dropped.

Surfing the wave of heat pumps.

Heat pump water heater aficionado Joe Wachunas writing for CleanTechnica, the “the world’s #1 source for cleantech news and analysis” dropped the pastiche as part of his heat pump water heater tour across America. Currently visiting US Water Heating Solutions in Arlington, Illinois, the pixie-like thirty-something declared:

US Water Heating Solutions sees the opportunity inherent in the heat pump market disruption that is upon us. Heat pumps are growing rapidly for both space heating (substantially out pacing gas furnaces over the last five years) and water heating (increasing sales by 35% in 2023 alone). When I visited their headquarters, CEO Jim Eggert told me how his company views heat pump water heaters as an “innovative, technologically advanced product line” and wants to “grab a surfboard, jump in and catch this (heat pump) wave.” They see heat pumps as the way of the future and are excited by the business opportunity of specializing in this equipment early.

Oh.

I suppose the coinage is Jim Eggert’s fault not Joe Wachunas’.

Sorry, Joe, for calling you pixie-like.

The ghost of Zoltan Torkos is haunting.

The surf world has entered a new phase of unrest after many years of relative calm. Two days ago, Shane’s boy Noah Beschen, I think Mason Ho and likely others traveled deep to the heart of Texas in order to participate in what I hear was a Swatch Nines event. All seemed fine and well until, that is, a large piece of plywood with coping was lowered just above the surface of the waters allowing the aforementioned to slide it as if they were at a skate park.

 

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Wild polarization immediately taking hold and nearing dreaded Zoltan Torkos levels.

But you certainly recall almost fifteen years ago when the Santa Cruz magician decided to answer Volcom’s siren call and kickflip a surfboard?

Yikes.

There were those who claimed it the very peak of progression and then those who claimed it was a heretical. Surf and skate so close yet so far. Those, like Chris Cote who loves the marriage, and those, like probably Maurice Cole, who don’t.

Major infighting.

David Lee Scales and I discussed today, anyhow, but found enough time to consider the musical importance of Die Antwoord and how ice in urinals might just be peak fancy. You would be doing yourself a disservice in not listening.

Don’t be a little whiny baby.

"He chose to become a major drug trafficker, and he chose to become a killer."

There was once a time when surfing, and its surfers, were outlaws. Living on the fringes of society, man. Rejecting buttoned-up culture and “jobs” and “making a decent living” or an “honest one.” Surfers did whatever they could to keep living the derelict dream which often included trafficking cocaine and sometimes abusing it or haven’t you seen the surf masterpiece Sea of Darkness?

In any case, time moved on, surfing itself became “monetized” and Erik Logan. Still, sometimes after the sun sets, surfers gather in dusky beach-adjacent parking lots, drink beer straight out of the can and reminisce about the naughty noughties and being bad boys.

Well, all that is officially lost with the revelation that a Canadian Olympic snowboarder has been running a murderous cocaine trafficking ring that stretched all through the Americas. The FBI declared it is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of one Ryan James Wedding who, they say, is living in Mexico.

Wedding, 43, popped on the extreme scene by competing for the maple leaf at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympiad where he finished 24th in parallel giant slalom. From there, it was straight on to the delinquent life. Authorities say he organized long-haul semi-trucks to ferry the product from Colombia up to the Great White North. As things happen with cartels and whatnots, Wedding is also being charged with murder.

In speaking about the case, Martin Estrada, U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, stated, “He chose to become a major drug trafficker, and he chose to become a killer.”

Erik Logan, in the meantime, chose to become a #Lifeforcepartner.

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