No bad days, especially on the North Shore. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
There’s a saying in surfing: No Bad Days. You’ve seen the shirts/bumper stickers, right? It’s not just surfing, of course, but in surfing, no bad days is the goal. Sure, it means that you’re supposed to make the most of whatever the days brings you — positivity, etc. — but if you were to take it literally, you’d need to basically spend your life staring at forecasts and traveling to where the waves are… well, not bad. Impossible for the layperson. Not impossible for someone like Koa Rothman.
In his most recent vlog, Koa has just returned from a Fiji strike mission. Back on Oahu, the waves were… well, not bad. They were very good, in fact. “Very good,” depending on what kind of surfer you are, often means more dangerous. Good barrels? They’re breaking over shallow bottoms. Koa’s seen his fair share of good/dangerous days throughout the course of his years of chasing them, and the day in the video you see here was, in Koa’s own words, “an extremely dangerous day” at Pipe and Backdoor.
“The water looks like Mexico or California,” he said. “But there’s no one out.”
Koa’s trip to Fiji was so recent that the board he took out at Pipe was still covered in Fijian sand. It’s late in the season for Pipeline, so Koa wanted to get a solid last drink of the good stuff before the North Shore’s summer doldrums kick in and he’s forced to (oh, NO) look elsewhere for firing waves. But there’s nothing quite like scoring at home, is there?
Unfortunately, Koa wasn’t happy with his performance on the first day of the swell, but he came back for a redemption session. And, in the famous words of Lloyd Christmas, he totally redeemed himself.
“I can’t believe we’re still surfing Pipe at this time of year,” Koa laughed. Because after all, there really are no bad days when your days consist of chasing waves.
