Your favourite vagabonds, in the one spot, at the one time!

Looking out, open-mouthed, at very square tubes at Pipeline and Mason and Coco and Uncle Dez and Daddy Mike trading sets, well, it reminds me I’ll never be anything more than a vibration rather than a solid.

In this five-minute edit by (the fabulous) Rory Pringle, Lachlan Peanut Mckinnon, Chaddy Witz, Andrew Schoener and Justin Rutherford and scored to a Hendrix soundtrack from Mason’s mammy, Brian (yeah, yeah, it ain’t a traditional name for a woman), we see the fam treading a familiar pasture.

A little history of the Ho’s, if it’s necessary. Mike Ho, with his Chinese-Hawaiian-American heritage, was 30 years old and on his last tour circuit when his girl, Brian, a Caucasian American, became pregnant.

Mike’s dad was pure Chinese. His grandmother pure Hawaiian. Mike’s mom, Mason’s paternal grandma, was from Oregon. The brother of one of Mike’s good friends was named Mason. Mike dug it. He threw a little Hawaiian in there, Kaohelaulii, a middle name that’s been carried by the Hos since Mason’s paternal grandfather. It means: “New little bamboo shoot coming out from the old. It bends and it’s hard to break,” says Mike.

Mike had bought land up there at Backyards, Sunset, and a small house was constructed. The marriage broke up after the birth of Mason’s sister Coco, two years later. And soon, the jokester and former-pro surfer was in the serious biz of being a single parent to two kids.

“I was ‘fun dad,’” Mike says. “I’m like, ‘Surf is good, let’s go surfing. Okay, no school today.’ Yeah, I was bad. I was a bad, fun dad.”

Unless it was Pipe. “‘Go to school. Dad’s going to surf Pipe today.’”

Mike plays it down though.

It ain’t easy when the spigot of cash from pro surfing is off and you’re thirty-something-years-old and your marriage is done. But, says, Dino Andino, “No matter how hard it got, no matter what he was going through, or doing, he always had ’em to school on time, dressed and fed. He never faltered. Ever. Mike Ho is an awesome, awesome dad.”

And, look at ’em now, all meticulously walking the Pipe tightrope.

A new angle on the British Wavegarden tank. Better, worse, than you might imagine.

After eight months of cold labour in the English city of Bristol, one of the better cities in a country populated by people with fish smell on their breath, hideous raven hair and guinea pig faces, we have The Wave.

You read about last week’s opening day, here.

Recently, the Red Bull surf team, which includes Japan’s Kanoa Igarashi, had a day negotiating the artificial seaside and The Wave’s glistening trajectories.

A cameo from Travis Rice, the champion snowboarder, is welcome for it gives the everyman a feel for what he’ll be able to manage on the two-foot waves.

The backwash and onshore winds are perhaps not quite so appreciated.

Suggestion: If you’re booking a session at a pool, get the first wave. Always the best.

If you’re swinging to England soon, book here. Forty quid an hour.