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Everything changed one April morning when our students suddenly started boycotting their classes, protesting apartheid in education.
“This is not a holiday from school.” He emphasized every word. “This is a holiday from brainwashing.”
my resolve to stay on this lonely expat track and complete my chosen projects: teaching, the novel.
watching Xhosa fishermen pull in galjoen with bamboo poles,
Sharon had taken a job in Zimbabwe, running a school for disabled ex-guerrillas. Zimbabwe’s long war of national liberation had recently ended, and “building socialism” had begun.
I worked better after surfing,
able to sit without fidgeting at my desk. I slept better too.
And he goes, ‘It’s interesting.’ So I go over there and we go out and it’s just totally terrible. So Doc says, ‘What did you expect?’ Turns out that when Doc says it’s interesting, that means it’s worse than terrible.”
Was the surf at Ocean Beach worth the travail of the paddle-out? On some days, certainly. But only for some people. It depended on your tolerance for punishment, the state of your nerves, your ability to read the bars, your ability to surf large waves, your paddling strength, your luck on the day.
waves with deceptive optics, which is to say most waves, it often makes more sense to describe them in feet.
I don’t remember ever debating, or even discussing, the size of a wave with Bryan, for instance. A wave was small or big, weak or powerful, mediocre or magnífica, scary or otherwise,
Trent, an old-time big-wave rider, allegedly said, “Big waves are not measured in feet, but in increments of fear.”
Warshaw, the leading scholar of surfing—he’s the author of The Encyclopedia of Surfing and The History of Surfing,
I had surfed alongside a few big-wave specialists on the North Shore, but I thought of them as mutants, mystics, pilgrims traveling another road from the rest of us, possibly made from a different raw material. They seemed bionic, suspiciously immune to normal reactions (panic, fight or flight) in the face of life-threatening peril.
everyone who surfs has a limit to the size of the waves he will venture among,
Mark trained for big waves with a joyful masochism.
The noise as the wave broke was preternaturally low, a basso profundo of utter violence, and the force pulling me backward and upward felt like some nightmare inversion of gravity.
Ten seconds while getting rag-dolled by a big wave is an eternity.
I tried to concentrate on relaxing, on taking the beating, not fighting it, not burning oxygen, trying to conserve energy for the swim to the surface once the flogging ended.
I sometimes had to climb my own leash to the surface, my board being more buoyant than I was.
heard a surfer mutter as he and his friends studied a 10′0′ gun on display, “This one comes with a free pine box.” The market for boards that serious was minuscule.
THE SURFING SOCIAL CONTRACT is a delicate document. It gets redrafted every time you paddle out.
He would head down the beach to some unlikely-looking spot and stubbornly stay there, riding marginal, inconsistent waves, rather than grub it out with the masses.
Mark complained that his asthma was bothering him, making it difficult to breathe, Beeper Dave had muttered, “Now you know how us mortals feel.”
“Each new wipeout makes you realize, though, that you’re actually safer than you thought. It’s just water. It’s just holding your breath. The wave will pass.” Did he never panic? “Sure. But all you have to do, really, is relax.
There were guys who didn’t grimace while riding waves, of course, whose style seemed to extend to a serene countenance, even a slight inward smile. But in my experience those individuals were rare.
I was letting Mark’s exuberance carry me along, letting him become the engine that powered my surfing life. In some ways, I realized, I had let Mark thrust himself between me and surfing,
fast paddling is not simply a matter of strength. Making a board glide on the surface is partly a matter of artful leverage, and pushing through waves is largely a matter of presenting the least possible resistance to them. Big waves demand a paradoxical combination—ferocity and passivity
Peter had started sporting a beret—another bad sign.
The island was famous for its wine, but its main export was not wine; it was people.
first rule of chasing waves is never to drive away from surf,
forecast the surf in Madeira, gathering what I could from marine weather reports, keeping obsessive records of North Atlantic storms—their tracks past Iceland and Ireland and into the Bay of Biscay,
At low tide the villagers picked lapas (limpets) off the exposed rocks.
after we disappeared, he had started planning what he would say to Peter’s mother. The other guy, an old art school classmate, seemed thunderstruck. He had been doing the same thing, he said. They had each felt horribly guilty for assuming the worst, and they each still seemed quite upset.
grilled parrot fish that justified any expedition.
Surfing was an antidote, however mild, for the horror.
He actually expects his own surfing to improve. And it does, perceptibly, each year. I’ve never seen that before in anybody beyond their teens. Selya was in his midthirties when we met, and already an excellent surfer, with a style that manages to be both muscular and delicate, but when I compliment him on a wave well ridden he says things like, “Thanks. It was sweet. But I need more verticality.”
The resort’s owners had discovered a second wave, also a long left, out on an open-ocean reef about a mile south of Tavarua. They called the spot Cloudbreak,
