Pick a teepee and just…poke it, says Mason of the Pipeline takeoff that stopped the world.
Every evening, one imagines Mason Ho rubbing lineament on his aching knees before he puts on his favourite lounge ensemble of lavender pyjamas, robe and bedroom slippers.
He puts a chair near the front window so he can look out for pretty girls with the dusky sloe-eyed loveliness so common in Hawaii.
Mason is thirty-one years old, is the son of Mike, sixty-two, nephew of Derek, fifty-five, and brother to Coco, twenty-eight.
Like Daddy, like Unc, Mason sits enshrined at the top of the Pipeline pecking order.
Mason says his Pipe and Backdoor strategy is simple.
Pick a teepee and just…poke it.
“When it gets really steep, I just poke it down, poke the nose down, just like you’re going to poke…something else. You just aim it, and get as deep as you can.”
Here, from three day ago, an animated portrait of laid-back élan.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson busts comic Chuck Nice's head open with tide talk.
Essential: Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson contradicts everything you ever thought you knew about tides!
There ain't no movement of water, in and out, for one…
I know three things about tides. Most joints they swing in twice a day, every six and a bit hours, bigger on a full moon and, uh, you get rip bowls on an outgoing tide.
What have you got?
Anything?
In this instructional video, pop astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson turns the whole tide game on its head.
For one, tides don’t move in and out. You know that?
And that tides raised on earth by the moon alone are the same size no matter if it’s a full moon or no?
Heady stuff.
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Mason on his eighty-one inch Lost Whiplash. "A work of mastercraft, with perfectly beveled rim…"
Watch: Mason Ho in “Eighty inches long and three inches thick; A royal column, ineffably solemn and wise!”
But, "the surf doesn’t offer the perfection of Lemoore or the pop of Waco. And they’re only running at twenty-percent capacity for the general public, nowhere near the two-meter plus surf that was advertised in advance…"
You start the walk to The Wave from a kilometer away. There’s a shuttle bus that will take you, but it’s cold, you can see your breath, and you’d rather walk because it will warm you up.
The main building of The Wave is in front of you, but you see no signs of what you came here for until you check in. You show a pair of young people at the door the barcode of your ticket and they direct you a row of hard and soft surfboards inside, and a rack filled with thick wetsuits and booties on the deck.
That’s when you finally see it.
You can barely hear the hum of the engine that pumps out the surf via a network of small paddles. The machine lies at the end of a pier-like walkway. It creates a left on the left of it and a right on the right.
You choose which one you want to ride when you book online.
I’ve surfed at Waco and Lemoore and Bristol honestly feels the most like the ocean. You paddle next to the wall like you do at any pier or jetty wave and angle away from it down the line. It breaks in the same spot every single time.
The take off is easy. It’s not as buttery as the one at the Surf Ranch, but it gives you plenty of time to stumble to your feet. The first section is soft and slow, but it steepens, quickens and grows as it goes. It reminded of a gentle two-foot day at Snapper or New Pier in Durban.
After you kick out or fall, you paddle back to the end of the line.
Right now, they’re putting fifteen people per hour each “advanced” wave and they run twenty waves in the set. If you miss a wave, they’ll give you another one. They do a ninety-second break in between sets.
If you sprint paddle back to the line after a wave, you can sometimes get two in a set. I think I caught ten waves in my hour-long session which cost me $52.50 USD and included the use of a wetsuit and a new six-two thruster.
If I paddled faster between waves I probably could have caught five more. I started to see waves going unridden towards the end of the session.
It’s early days for The Wave, but a few issues have popped up.
The surf clearly doesn’t offer the perfection of Lemoore or the pop of Waco. The “Coach” for my session admitted that they’re only running at twenty-percent capacity at the moment for the general public, nowhere near the two-meter plus surf that was advertised in advance.
The Wave’s power got turned up a notch for a Red Bull crew a couple weeks ago but even those peelers looked head-high at best. The problem, according to The Wave’s Founder Nick Hounsfield, isn’t the technology, it’s the surfing level of some its customers.
“What were finding is quite of few people are struggling to be honest what their ability might be,” he said.
My session was marred by a handful of beginners who struggled to make the drop every time and didn’t get out of way of the surfer behind them quickly enough. It seems like a pretty easy solution to this would be to require surfers to prove they can handle a mellow setting before graduating to one that’s more advanced.
Hounsfield said they’re considering this approach, but are looking at a few other options as well.
He’s an interesting guy. He’s a youngish osteopath who had a dream five years ago to build a wave pool in his hometown. His initial investment was only £500. He somehow raised enough money to make it happen and has a vision of making the place a center for health, fitness and wellness.
With beginners on the inside included, he can get scores of people in the water every hour and the place was booked solid the day I was there despite and water and air temps that were only 11 degrees °C (52 °F).
If he can get the power of The Wave cranked up to around fifty-percent a few sessions a day for skilled surfers, and let everyone else have at it for the rest of the time, I think he’s got a business that could be profitable.
Even in its current state The Wave is still more fun and less crowded that eighty-percent of my surfs within an hour of my house in LA.
I’d probably go a couple times a month at if I lived near enough to one.
Speaking of which, when do those Palm Springs pools open again?
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Gather round, children, unbutton your raincoats, and listen to the greatest shark story ever told. @Jaws3
Witness: The Great White “was going like a rocket straight at us. I can see it so clearly, its mouth was open. I lifted my feet, grabbed the board…”
The greatest shark story ever told, starring surfing's original wonder boy…
Once upon a time, before the ubiquitous robot we cradle in our hands and stare at, head down, lips pursed as if studying the Dead Sea Scrolls while we cross roads and walk into doors, there was such a thing as The Story.
A shark, says Wayne, that first appeared like a submarine, silently coming out of the water head first and staring at him with its big black eyes.
Wayne said nothing to the guy, who had lost his own gun in a wipeout and who was clinging to the back of his board.
Two men on a red seven-six swallow-tail, and only one of ’em knows a Great White is slowly circling ’em.
“Every now and again, I can see the shark eight or nine feet away, swimming super slow, barely moving faster than us but in a circle. I’m looking down thinking, this is not good, this is really interesting.”
Wayne laughs.
“I figured it was more interested in John (the surfer he was rescuing) because he was tired. That’s why I put him at the back of the board. I figure, well, I’ll save you but I won’t die for you.”
