Anybody else praying for waves ?
Did you get barreled this week? I didn’t either. I tried, but the Pacific Ocean didn’t exactly offer up anything of the spitting, cylindrical, head high breed this past week. That left me with a lot of time to read about the impending El Nino mixed in with bouts of searching travel sites and online airfare discounts. There was this one session at one of LA’s most crowded/not fun beaches where I found myself scraping for knee high wind swell waves, only to end up dodging a minefield of soft tops and brown and yellow fun boards. That only confirmed my belief that a surf trip is much needed this time every year.
In summary, I hope you’re out there currently enjoying, planning, or looking forward to an escape of your own soon. Because we all deserve the chance to escape those packed summer lineups. In the meantime, let’s hit rewind for a second on another week of catching (sorta) and making waves:
Video of the Week:
This is the wildest thing any of us have seen in a while. The massive explosion in the port city of Tianjin, China looks like something out of a Michael Bay movie, sadly taking the lives of more than 80 and injuring hundreds. It’s both fascinating and scary to watch, knowing there’s a person holding this phone, having no clue how devastating what they’re watching is about to get.
Since it’s been announced this was a massive “chemical explosion” environmentalists from here to China (literally) are asking what the heck is now lingering over the Bohai Gulf. Throw in the immediate threat of expected rainfall and we have a classic worst case scenario for environmental catastrophes. But the biggest obstacle seems to be the absence of answers early on. When oil spills happen off our coasts, the effects spread far and last long after the disaster itself leaves the news cycle. For now, the millions of people directly impacted living in Tianjin are the focus of the story. So is the environmental concern taking up headline space now? No. But it should, and it will. We just have to stay tuned.
From the Tour:
So Mick is back in the water. I think getting through the early rounds of the Billabong Pro Tahiti have become a moment for a collective sigh from the WSL and the rest of the surf world. Everything between The JBay Pro Final and Mick’s opening heat in Tahiti against Adam Melling and Taumata Puhetini has revolved around the “attack” watched ’round the world. It’s almost as if we’ve been in a time warp since that day, with the world coming to a screeching halt until we see the world number two put a contest jersey back on. And now that the moment is here, we can move forward. That’s a great thing. The World Surf League may not be on level playing field with the NFL, but for the last month it’s certainly been closer than ever. With more eyes now on the sport of professional surfing, I’m excited to see how the WSL keeps growing, hopefully without becoming a novelty in the eyes of the non-surfing world.
