I rappelled to a ledge, where Clarke was soaked and waiting. We were still high up in the Sierra Nevada, our thin shells snapping in the wind. We didn’t know where we were, or how many rappels waited below. I ate from a tiny packet of trail mix before passing it to Clarke, who shivered so badly he spilled it all. I picked grains of granola out of the wet gravel at our feet.
"Our push to go to the moon wasn't motivated by finding clean energy, bringing global peace, or curing cancer. We went there because it inspired people. Not just Americans -- it was an accomplishment for humanity. Aquarius motivates us to look inward instead of skyward, to find an even greater sense of pride than landing on the foreign soil of the moon: understanding our home."
"In a world where characters like Aamion are disappearing, is his life destined to fade into myth? Is it myth already?"
The future of our coast is going to be a major environmental cause, the way stopping whale hunts, banning DDT, and fixing the ozone layer were. We won those, and we can win this one too. But it will take massive participation by surfers. This is about literally every surf spot, on every coastline, you’ve ever known. Sea levels are rising. So must we.
I've spent my whole life in the ocean but I've never seen so much water coming at me so fast. I stood at the jump-off rock, near some local surfers.
"This is crazy. I've never surfed in a river."
"Really? We've never surfed in the ocean," one responded.
Emergency physician Eric Siedenburg had done medical aid missions in Papua New Guinea, Africa, Nepal and after Hurricane Katrina, but nothing came close to what he saw in Haiti.
Everything is bigger in Alaska. You don't take bug spray when you go camping, you take a gun. You don't hike to your line, you take a helicopter. The sloughs here would be called avalanches back home, and the avalanches, natural disasters.
"I think people are waking up to the fact that you can get what you want and not fuck everything up."
Gary Cogorno, who's been the event's master of ceremonies for as long as anyone can remember, addresses the crowd: "To be clear, there is no event today. Or any day. It's a figment of your imagination. Go home."
Gary Cogorno, who's been the event's master of ceremonies for as long as anyone can remember, addresses the crowd: “To be clear: There’s no event today. Or any day. It’s a figment of your imagination. Go home.”
Side waves bounce off the rocks like an electrified butcher knife, chopping up the surf and making it jump in amplitude. One or two waves of every set go ballistic in just the right way. Terrible surf, great skim.
DJ Roller was out shooting with a Navy Space and Naval Warfare Dive Team. The instructors thought he was CIA since he was the only attendee not in uniform.
“I’m a filmmaker,” he said.
“Sure you are,” came the response.
"We were at a wedding and they served Chilean Sea Bass and we went, 'Oh fuck.' And yeah, we ate it. But how do you get people to change even after you've communicated that they're catching the very last fish?"
"At a high mountain border crossing in a snowstorm we were detained. Unable to cross to Argentina or return to Chile, we had tea with the police in their deserted station. We later got to Argentina on the same flight as the Uruguayan rugby team that, after crashing, resorted to eating their dead."
I could see the scene on the tarmac: "On your toes everybody! we have a surfer from California who wants us to be extra careful with his board!" they would laugh as they crushed my board under the wheels of their luggage cart.
It's the imperfections in a coastline, the cobblestone points, the river mouths, the breaks in symmetry that make great waves. So here's to living in a universe ruled by simple, elegant symmetrical laws...and the asymmetrical anomalies that break them.
Step on board the urethane train with the fastest skaters in the world.
