That was a nice trip down memory lane. I remember when his photos started showing up in Surfer Magazine and some of those pictures, the bus at Greg Noll's shop and the picture of Miklos Dora III aka Mickey "da cat" Dora at Malibu pushing the guy off the board. IIRC I've seen film of that shot where he catches the guys board under his arm and keeps going. Dora was one of the "bad boys" in surfing back then and a real life character in the real Gidget story. I vaguely remember the Takayama pic above. Hoppy Swarts mentioned in the intro pretty much ran the United States Surfing Association (USSA) before it morphed into the World Surfing Association (WSA). I still have a couple of membership and competition cards signed by him. He lived in San Clemente. He helped me organize the surfing club at my high school and provided gear for club run contests. My Mom would drive me down to his house to pick up and return stuff. He was old back then, but one hell of a nice guy.
My wife's 6'0". It's interesting to me how much more common these TOWERING women are since I first met her..ye gods, almost 30 years ago. Used to be that she'd actually get uncomfortable if there was a woman taller than her around. She's since had to adjust.
Homeboy there is only about 5'2" it appears though. Just chesked...He was 5' 3" tall.
My wife's 6'0". It's interesting to me how much more common these TOWERING women are since I first met her..ye gods, almost 30 years ago. Used to be that she'd actually get uncomfortable if there was a woman taller than her around. She's since had to adjust.
Yeah, "towering" - I guess by comparison as well. It seems like back in the 1960s taller women (at least in show business) weren't as common as nowadays. There are just a few I can think of from the back then: Julie Newmar, Juliet Prowse, Suzy Parker, Paula Prentiss... 6'1" is pretty tall though, like Michelle Wie - I think Maria Sharapova is 6'2".
My wife's 6'0". It's interesting to me how much more common these TOWERING women are since I first met her..ye gods, almost 30 years ago. Used to be that she'd actually get uncomfortable if there was a woman taller than her around. She's since had to adjust.
The buddy system ... at the very least someone on the beach ready to go just in case ...
Never did understand the thrill of riding inside of a runaway cement mixer. I mean that wipeouts are part and parcel with riding waves in any way, shape or means, but to ride waves that almost 100% end in an immediate wipeout always seemed to be rather stupid. Having grown up with one of the most notorious of all such waves in the world, The Wedge and arguably the second most famous wave other than Pipeline, in my own back yard, I never went out and gave it a go. The risk vs reward was a non starter for me. A buddy who sat behind me in home room for 3 years was a Wedge animal and was always telling me of his days at The Wedge and the wipeouts. Sorry, better him than me. I wanted a tube ride just like anyone else, but I wanted to get out and kick out rather than go head over tea kettle and get turned every which way but loose.
The break for this story has many of the same attributes as The Wedge with sideways moving waves off the bluff on the left side of the cove as well as a major backwash. It just has deeper water and does not break literally on the beach. I'll defer anymore about The Wedge to the other Kurt who still gets there on a somewhat regular basis.
Many Darwin Award nominees have come from their experiences at The Wedge. This is probably the most famous of all.
Clickhole is created by the Onion but when I followed it a few years ago/when it started, it was the worst of the worst as far as tracking, popups, clickbait (which of course they acknowledge tongue-in-cheek) but was very pernicious so I had to block it and stopped following the Onion because they'd share the clickhole stuff and yeah it was just awful.
Donald Trump is destroying America with every passing second, and you have the gall to check out these awesome surfing GIFs? How dare you?
How about fuck you ? This offends me as a surfer.
One of the joys of surfing is paddling out into the lineup and all that matters is the next wave. Leaving all the problems of the world behind you on the beach. There is no politics in the lineup.
Have you ever stood up on a board ? Do you know the difference between Clark foam and Walker foam ?
If you really want to help surfing go get the homeless off the streets whose shit on the sidewalks and in the gutters washes into the storm sewers fouling the waters and closing the beaches so no one can go out into the water.
Holy Surf, Sir! - It only was meant as a joke. - Trust me, can't stand seein' yer Potus everywhere I go and online, neither. Some folks here did recognize my post as satire, from The Onion (so beloved).
Peace man.
I saw no reference to The Onion or it being a parody site at the time. Not familiar with the site at all. Looking back at it since it is still there, I see it's a satirical site, but only when I scrolled endlessly to the bottom. Had I known, I wouldn't have reacted like I did. Wasn't in the mood nor thinking very well back then looking at the date stamp of the post. My 92 yo Mom was in the hospital seriously ill, so ill that I was hoping that she would make it at least past Christmas so the holiday would not become one of those bad holiday experiences down the road. I lost my Dad on an Easter Sunday.
That said, I have always gone out of the way to keep the political stuff in the political threads anyway and not pollute any other threads out of respect for the community and that alone was enough to frost my pumpkin, satire or not.
Glad that you cleared up your intent. I had already forgotten about it until now.
kurtster, I am glad that surfing has treated you so well. Sorry about the 'attachment' to the Cleveland clinic. Despite your stoicism, that has to be tough.
Surfing is not a blood sport but it does remind me of fishing and hunting. The looking, the sitting, the patient watching, the immersion as well as the very real natural dangers that present themselves.
Once upon a time, you could have labelled me a 'trout bum'. That is not a label I sought. But it would have been fairly accurate. Truth be told, I am managed to piss away a good chunk of my life fly fishing. Yet, here I am living in a province that many would describe as 'trout bum heaven'. We actually live on a world famous, utterly iconic river that I do not fish very much these days.
I tend to pursue low expected catch rate opportunities these days. Translation: I spend a lot of time fly fishing without catching anything. On purpose. The hunt, the journey, crashing through dense bush in stunning semi-wilderness settings, being on the flow, that is what attracts me.
But kurtster, I have to ask: How can you be a surfer and live in Ohio?
It's still a state of mind. It's a lifestyle / mentality that I never abandoned. It's a mentality that comes from living just to surf everyday and doing it for a period of time. It's hard not to get this mindset if you have gone through this process. It's how you learn to view the physical world. It was my world from the age of 12. I woke up with an unobstructed view of the ocean every morning for the next 4 years and a lazy 10 minute walk to the beach.
I'm not the only surfer here, so this is only one take, but maybe it expresses some of the same thoughts as the others.
In order to be successful your primary goal is to become one with the ocean. You can only do this by observing and being in it at the same time. Your whole world focuses on sunrise, sunset, high tide and low tide; the clock is something that gets in the way of all of this. It's a rhythmic life that revolves around the 6 hour interval of the tide changes. It's an hour later everyday and the height of the tide changes every time as well. This knowledge becomes innate. It's also a part of anyone who lives along a coast and has daily activities in the ocean.
Then you get into the weather and not just local. You learn about storms and wind because they generate the things that give you the most possible joy in your life, waves. We didn't have all the technical toys, camera's, buoy's and computer simulations to help you predict the time and place to be within an hour's window to get a certain wave at a certain place. We did it by patiently observing the world around us. You heard of storms on the 6 o'clock weather and that was about it. You had to do the rest yourself. There were some tools like the local lifeguards surf reports. Like this one. The Huntington Beach, California surf report. 714 536 9303. This phone number is unchanged since the early 60's that I know of and I have remembered it all of this time. The number still works, just dialed it. There were many surfaris that came up empty. Drive all day stopping every couple of miles at the next beach and looking at the ocean for a half an hour, hoping that something was going on and end up saying nope, let's keep looking. But you would be always looking hoping to see some nuance that would give you hope for waves. And sometimes that was all you did, look and observe, never get wet. You learn to deal with time in a whole 'nother way of thinking.
How do you forget all that you learned based upon a total commitment ? I've just built on it, but this is my roots. My goal until recently was to get back to the beach, permanently. That ship has since sailed. I'm forever tethered to the Cleveland Clinic. It helped me deal with my chemo. My chemo sessions were a bit different than most. Mine lasted 6 days. Check in Monday morning and get out Saturday afternoon being pumped full of poison every moment. There were times that I had 5 pumps working 5 bags at the same time. There were always at least 3 of 4 pumps going. You can only pass so much time sitting in a bed staring at a clock for 6 days. I called it incarceration. But I guess that with the choice of sit there or die, being able to reach deep into something helped. I had another way to deal with time that came from surfing. I did time shifting. How to sit and do absolutely nothing turning your brain off via focusing on one thing. In this case, nothing other than just being. I learned how to do that by sitting on a beach or cliff just starring at the ocean for hours on end and doing nothing but that and being completely happy and at peace with myself. There weren't waves everyday, but just being there was enough to keep grounded and in tuned in to something bigger than you. I guess that it might be considered a homegrown form of meditation. All things will pass. During my transplant, one of the DVD's I brought with me was Step Into Liquid.
So yeah, I'm still a surfer, at least in my mind. It gave me an awareness of life and later helped save my life. A few years ago I had a summer where I got to go boogie boarding and catch waves in both oceans. That was a first for me. Being in two oceans in one summer let alone catching waves. I would like to do it again somehow, someway. Still have my last board and a couple of boogie boards and my Duck Feet. I used to compete and have done many other things in the surfing world including working in a board factory one summer when I was 15.
Does this qualify ?
Edit: Another life lesson you learn from surfing is that as soon as you step off of dry sand, you become part of the food chain and you are no longer the top predator. Here's a clip from a place I used to surf when I was a kid and went out at in one of my recent trips back home.
Just chesked...He was 5' 3" tall. 
Just make sure we keep political stuff out of the curling threads.