Last night was the Surfer Poll Awards. It’s a fun night, filled with beautiful people, perfectly white teeth, tiny little dresses, and a lot of wide-brimmed felt hats, which was crazy considering how hot it was inside Turtle Bay. Sweaty heads are the price of fashion, I suppose. It was also filled–in my case, at least–with hours of horrible, soul-crushing awkwardness masked behind numerous gin and tonics. I am not a good crowd person. At one point in the night, Greg Long appeared and saved me from about 10 minutes of it, which was nice of him. I get the feeling he’s in the same boat as I am, only he’s better at pretending that he’s not. I could be wrong, though.
Anyway, later on that night, Greg went on to win the Surfer Poll Heavy Water Award–no small feat, considering what he went through the season. “I’ll be honest, I limped and struggled my way through last season,” he said on stage before turning the spotlight on a few others. “For any readers who were paying attention, there was a world record set by Aaron Gold. Individuals who rode the greatest waves ever, potentially in the history of our sport, Shane Dorian. Another one of my best friends, Ian Walsh, who made probably the most incredible big wave surf documentary that’s going the change the future of our sport. So to whoever is reading and voted… I don’t know, but I guess I do have a lot of friends out there.”
