It is a perfect wave. But riding a wave isn’t surfing.
Way back in November, a time so long ago I can barely remember it, I got an email from Zach, the captain of this fine ship afloat in the vast sea of the internet. “Got a last-minute opportunity from Dave Prodan to head to Kelly’s wave on Tuesday,” he wrote, “so I’m pretty amped to hopefully get a fake barrel or two.” Well fuck me sideways, Zach was going to the future. “Send me a sneaky picture of you getting super tubed in the future of surfing!” I wrote back, choking back a mouthful of hot jealousy. But now, with the thick window of time giving me a bit of perspective, it turns out that I am glad I wasn’t able to go. This is not to say that I do not want to go—I most assuredly do and you’re a dirty liar if you say you’re not interested—but that surfing is far more than the act of riding a wave. “Oh,” you say. “That tired old adage? How trite!” And you may be right, but I’m going to hammer it home once more.
By now, of course, you know that a bunch of the media circus got to spend the day smiling at each other and getting fake barrels together. There was an NDA for a few months, which is why you’re only just hearing about it now. And oh, how I waited! Of course, I spoke with Zach and Dylan (the plus one on Zach’s invite) and have heard about their experience in great detail, but watching their videos and reading their words made me think even more about it. There were great reasons for me to not go: Both Zach and Dylan are much better surfers than I. A few days prior, I had torn my MCL and was barely able to walk, let alone surf. And I was in Mexico, sitting in a sweltering van in the middle of nowhere nothing but cactus and sand at my back and one of the finest left-hand point breaks I have seen in all of my life in front. It was, as I wrote at the time, a special kind of hell. “I’m currently sitting in a van in the Middle of Nowhere, Baja California Sur,” I whined. “Just out the back doors is a near perfect left-hand point break, a little busted up by the wind, but solidly overhead. Sets darken the horizon, lines stacked, and only four surfers scratch for the outside. The wave breaks endlessly; from the point, it’s entirely possible to surf for a minute. Unless you’re me, that is, because I am in a van. My knee is fucked, and now I’m stuck watching this perfect madness in a picturesque sort of purgatory.”
Now I’m back at that same spot (don’t ask where it is, because I’m not telling). My knee is 90 percent, and I’ve just spent three days scoring some of the most perfect waves I’ve ever seen. A redemption trip for the ages! The van I leave in Mexico is now full of mice, sand, and melted wax. I suspect the torque converter is going because it now gets stuck in a spoonful of sand. I’m sunburned, my shoulders and back are ruined, and my eyeballs feel like giant, acid-covered grapes from the salt and sun. I have something happening to my stomach that probably stems from eating ten old eggs that had been sitting in the baking sun for a week straight. My feet are full of urchins, there is virtually no skin left on the top of one of my toes, my armpits are chaffed to bleeding… and god damn it, I could not be happier.
Kelly Slater’s wave is incredible. It is a wonder of modern engineering. It is the future of competitive surfing. It looks like the most fun one can possibly have in a pool. Fuck waterparks and fuck pool parties. Kelly’s wave is where it’s at. But in terms of surfing, it is not surfing. It is riding a wave. A perfect, amazing, wave.
A few weeks back, Zach and I headed north from the glittering, filthy mess that is Los Angeles toward Rincon. There were waves somewhere, and we were going to find them. We stopped at one place, looked, and moved on. Stopped at another, looked, and moved on. Stopped at one more, looked, and moved on. Stopped at McDonald’s, ate Egg McMuffins in a dirty parking lot that smelled of urine, and headed back south to look at the same spots we’d already looked at. If memory serves correctly, we ended up surfing at the first place we looked at. That stupid thing that surfers do, that grass-might-be-greener-constant-hunger-for-something-around-the-bend got us good. At some point, one of us brought up the fact that we had just wasted three hours driving around in circles before actually getting in the water. It sucked and the waves were very average. Without that, though, those amazing days where the waves look like the ones produced every four minutes at the Surf Ranch, would become average. Show up, flash a bit of cash, and commence getting barreled. It is all we’ve ever wanted, packed up in a pretty little box with a big red bow on top. It is having our cake and eating it too. It is flying too close to the sun and leaving with our waxen wings still intact. And you know what else it is? It is the end of the search… unless you realize that the search is what you’ve wanted all along. Without it, surfing is just riding a wave. And that’s not really surfing now, is it?
