Shredification

Mick Fanning blew through another contest down in France and thus asserted himself as the new man to beat with Parko's dominance waning and C.J., Slater and Bede battling for scraps. But that's pro blubber. The real deal is going down at your home break. The stoke building for an upcoming swell. Some dad pushing his kid into his first wave. A group of old friends floating in the lineup at sunset unsure of the future. Hours pass. A surfer sips hot coffee and glides into a sweet dawn patrol. The smell of freshly applied wax. The red burn of belly rash. The scorch of the sand on your soles. Wafting aromas of old wesuits. Deep duck-dives. Deep barrels. And deep satisfaction.

That is surfing.

There's surfing and then there's mind surfing. Ya know, when you're sitting on the beach watching a wave break innocently and you are imagine all horrifically wonderful things you'd like to do to it. Flying over sections and threading tubes on a metaphysical level. I remember sitting on the beach early in the morning before school with my good friend Josh, watching perfect knee high zippers and picturing ourselves as little G.I. Joneser-sized surfers sitting in the lineup. Each of us offered a narrative play-by-play of every wave that dribbled in. "I got this one. I'm paddling, hopping to my feet...off the bottom and WHACK off the lip fins out. Jump on to the roof and float the boat over the next section and free fall into the pit SHWACK under the lip snap." That's how it went. If there was some swell, we probably wouldn't make it to school that day, but some mind surfing would suffice.