In keeping with my tendency to learn things the hard way, I had an incident in Peru where I was out of breath and still under water. I had just paddled out after not surfing for over a week and constant hiking in high-altitudes. I had visited Macchu Picchu and we were moving into the surfing portion of the trip. I picked a spot in San Bartolo, a little surfing hub near Lima. Little did I know that it was off season and the entire area was completely deserted.
I was genuinely surprised by the lack of people because the swell was pumping and lighting up nooks and crannies all down the coast. On the way out to San Bartolo,...
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When you progress as a surfer, every once in a while you learn a lesson the hard way. The power of the ocean and the unpredictable nature of the sea floor amplify mistakes. These errors often lead to injury, sometimes minor, sometimes severe.
One of my worst rookie injuries started on a sunny 4th of July weekend. I took off on a clean head-high right, riding over cobblestone point nearly all the way to the beach. Kicking out before the shore dump, I smiled and paddled back up the point. I looked back quickly to see if my wife, sitting on the beach, caught the wave. These were early days and every...
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Surfing after you’ve been seriously injured is always a tentative venture. You’ve been out of the water long enough to miss some good swells. You’re caught up on global surf news, incessantly clicking on the same websites over and over hoping for new content or comments. At the same time, you’re still in pain from the injury.
How do you know when it’s time to get back in the water? The two main issues you’re going to need to worry about are duck diving and bailing. Duck dives are always turbulent and will exert pressure on your body in abnormal ways, not to mention the arcing motion....
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I cracked my pelvis snowboarding in Mammoth this year. We were hiking the side of the road looking for obstacles and jumps to ride when I found a big hill with a little down slope that led back into the main road. With a few spotters watching the road, I drifted down the hill through the powder, seconds away from disaster.
All the signs were there, I just wasn’t listening. They used to call that slipping. The mountain caught me slipping all right. I read an article the night before my injury about Terjé dropping cliffs. In the article he said, “Just don’t lean back.” That morning, we checked...
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