A fine afternoon at the end of the road.
Well, friends, adjacent surfers, WSL fuck boyz, how was your break?
I’ve been very busy, winding down at work, obsessing over foiling, being on the cusp of a book deal, getting fit again, prepping to cycle to Germany to watch Scotland get humped at the Euros.
And all the while doing my level best to self-sabotage and ego trip my way to an inevitable implosion followed by the smoking embers of regret.
But all that’s a story for another day. Perhaps.
I’m feeling especially unhinged right now. I’m considering therapy. Who’d have thought.
I even went to a writer’s group. Don’t judge me. It was my first time, and I’m broadly cynical about these things. I only went because my friend is organising it, and he’s asked me to deliver one in a couple of weeks.
(Tickets available! Come learn how to be a shoe-gazing narcissist who can cry over light and trees but treats people like nuisance distractions in a swelling sea of self-important mussitation.)
But, dear reader, I confess to having enjoyed it.
For the first exercise we were asked to select an object from a box. I had arrived late, as I do, since it’s the first rule of pretending to be a writer. Everyone there was already scribbling furiously, etching their finest verbiage into the void. (Oh, to be a writer!)
The box was filled with natural objects: pale bones of driftwood; hollowed shells; pine cones, barren and seedless; green sprigs of ash, oak and willow.
And a rock.
I chose the rock.
And I wrote thus:
Pressure pocked. Shrouded with lines of time. A compression of history. This unearthed, stranded time. Brown grey glinting from somewhere before. Hints of sparkle (doesn’t everything?). Enviously unchanged. Solid. Without remorse or guilt; never late, jealous or unfulfilled. Chunked earth, dragged out of darkness and gasping for interred silence.
But still. Just rock.
And I share it with you because I think it gives some context to my frame of mind right now. And I think you deserve that.
Fucking writers groups.
I’ve got Beachgrit.
Amidst all this tumult it was nice to arrive in Tahiti, figuratively, obviously. I’m not Chris Cote. In fact I might be his antithesis.
Just an aside on Cote before I go any further (and to you, Chris, since I’m sure you’ll be reading from your tropical throne on WSL dime), how about asking some decent questions?
Like, I get John Florence is John Florence. We all love and respect him. But to ask “What does it mean to you to be here…etc” is demeaning to you and him. The What Does It Mean To You question should be eviscerated from a pundit’s pallet. It’s just a shit question, where the only possible answers are shit.
How about, why have you never won here, John?
Do you think you have what it takes to beat Kelly, Jack or Gabby here, John? Because your results suggest otherwise.
Who becomes favourite when the waves get to paddleable limit?
I hear you’re retiring, John. Is two world titles a fair indication of you as a competitive surfer?
Why do you persist with that junkie beard, John?
Anyway, that aside, Teahupo’o does make things a lot simpler, as I was saying.
Get your head down, take off late, get as deep as possible, get out unscathed.
Not a bad metaphor for how to live your life, really. Except few people have the god-given ability, Herculean work ethic or sheer luck to actually make it out, and that’s why we watch.
We watch for Kelly Slater, fifty-two years old, fresh out of retirement, treading the boards again and still searching for the encore. Yet here, at this wave, he still looks like he could match anyone.
He proved it today, out-jousting tube and spirit wrangler extraordinaire, Jack Robinson, and smoldering Moroccan, Ramzi Boukhiam, despite the latter having the best score of the heat.
But if Slater’s heat performance was adept, his post heat interview was equally so, with added incision. He was asked what he thought about the (much lauded) approaching swell event?
“A surf forecaster trying to sell ads”, he daggered.
In response and off camera, Cote was reported to be frantically washing his hands over the side of the boat, muttering “Out damn spot! Out!”
In heat one Ethan Ewing was run close by Seth Moniz, then John Florence won the second at half-cock.
The pace of these early heats made for fine entertainment and judges had their work cut out to keep up, especially in the early stages of Slater’s heat.
Kaipo and Jesse Mendes presided in the booth, uppers vs downers. An approach that can be highly effective in some scenarios but not suitable for everyone’s disposition.
Kaipo said that Tahiti “filled up his love cup”. A truly disgusting image, I thought.
Italo Ferreira stayed typically busy in heat four, notching eight scores and sending yellow jersey wearer Griffin Colapinto (just three waves attempted) to elimination.
The consistency of the swell ebbed as the day progressed, a fact best evidenced by Gabriel Medina notching only three wave attempts, his first coming with just eight minutes on the clock.
Of course this meant nearly twenty-five minutes of saccharine punditry vaunting Medina’s skill and achievements at Teahupo’o, whilst he bobbed, actionless.
But he finally put a mid-range score on the board for a mid-range wave, then another immediately after. It was enough to win, but post-heat he suggested they might have missed some early opportunities for more. One thing is for sure: Medina knows what he’s looking for here.
Despite the fading swell, Ryan Callinan found the best wave of the day with a 9.33 and heat victory over Liam O’Brien and Barron Mamiya. A deep take-off saw him backdoor the section before being spat out cleanly with hands back and low and a cleaner grin on his face. High nine all the way.
What might we see in the coming days?
Was this the lemon next to the pie, or simply hype to sell ads for surf forecasters?
We’ll know soon enough.
I’m off to run up a hill and look down from the summit at my life splayed out before me, just waiting to be fucked.
