Senior Editor
Staff

The Inertia

I get stuck in the sand a lot. Like, a lot. I’ve got an old shitty camper van that I leave in Mexico and I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with the torque converter. It doesn’t have 4wd and, because of the suspected torque converter issue, there’s not a lot of power to the back wheels and the god damn thing gets stuck in an inch of sand.

Mexico, of course, has lots of sand. Needless to say, I dig a lot, rock the van back and forth a lot, and swear a lot at Ryland, the guy who always wants us to camp five feet back. God damn it, Ryland, five feet makes no difference on a beach that’s 10 miles long. Now we’re stuck. AGAIN. But because I’m not all THAT dumb, I have shovels and sand ramps in the van, so it’s never all that bad. I generally hesitate to lower the air pressure in the tires because I don’t carry a compressor, but that’s probably next on the list.

John John Florence probably drives around in the sand quite a bit, so he probably does all those things, too. Maybe less, though, because he probably doesn’t have an old shitty camper van. Instead, he probably drives around in vehicles that could pull a tank out of the lightning sand like Wesley pulls Buttercup out. What a hero!

Anyway, here are John John’s tips to get yourself out when the inevitable happens. It’s from a book with his name on it called A Field Guide To Waterman Things. If you don’t know this shit already, though… well, get out of your house and go do something.

 
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