King Kelly in sight. Some might say that’s a rarity. Some might. Photo: Branden Aroyan
When Kelly Slater is in town, his royal subjects know it. The rumors grow and contort regarding his possible locations. Some say they saw him surfing the North Side of the Cocoa Beach Pier, others say visuals were made at typical waist-high Sebastian Inlet, and then there were scattered reports that he was at a secret reef NASA built for him somewhere in the Canaveral Shoals. That reef is said to be patrolled by two-ton grouper that shoot darts of venom at outsiders from their neon purple eyeballs.
If it’s flat (and it usually is), sightings of the King’s movements go into the realm of the more landlubbery locales. He can shop at Publix at the same time he gets 18 in at any of Brevard County’s 2,478 golf courses. He begins dropping the natives hints on the running narrative of his Instagram account (I was under that same thunderstorm!), and gives veiled Twitter references to obscure coastal haunts known only to retired pirates and ancient lagoon descendants. Eyewitnesses swear to seeing him at local taco stands and bowling alleys, but pictures rarely back this up.
He is the legend of the 321 area code: a bald knight who moves through his constituency with a mixture of invisibility and absolutism.
And so it was with great concern among his local peasantry when we noticed he was still in town while his razorblade aquatic services were going to be immediately needed in Fiji.
As surfers know all too well, ones with decades of isolated reef-trips under their belts and impending contests in paradise, as well as those without; the ocean rarely syncs up with the demands of terrestrial life. It’s a game played very specifically on a set of terms so outside our control that we always have to choose between life and the ocean. Even the King.
We’ve all skipped out on meetings, weddings, birthdays, dates, work, school, Bat Mitzvahs, flights, loved ones, bar tabs, work, parties, receptions, Thanksgivings, graduations (any and all of the u-ations, really), work, family vacations, and, uh, work, to surf. It’s a constant drama and juggle in our lives. For most of us, on nearly every level, it ends up shaping our lives too. And just for the record, this goes double for Floridians (a rare 6-foot day with offshore winds around here…let’s just say there are a lot of things I’ll put on hold to get to the end of the block).
Paradoxically, late in his career, the life-scheduling Slater has to currently put into his WCT surfing are just a hyper-macro version of the micro choices we all have to make when our little pieces of the world turn on for those brief moments. Be it something grand like the birth of a child, or even Captain Parko on his late-night Ahab-esque South Sea adventure. The ways of getting caught in the current of guessing on swell and life vary in complexity but boil down to simply being in or out of the water.
And by the time this is read, the actual professional ramifications probably won’t matter in missing that buttery, and somewhat surprising, start of Round One. Both could easily end up riding high above the Fijian reef, trophy in hand, or (not quite as likely) be bounced in Round Two with World Title hopes in jeopardy. Either way, the work that goes into just being there will come up again and again for Kings, Parkos, and peasants alike.
