Surfboard Quotes

Somewhere along the seashore, a strange wind blows over the ocean, and twenty oblivious boys simultaneously look up from their surfboards.

Oh, he was definitely doable. Did Hawaiians have the saying “Save a surfboard, ride a surfer”?

I should perhaps warn you that I am about to faint from anxiety and general depression, though. The film I saw last night was especially grueling, a teen-age beach musical. I almost collapsed during the singing sequence on surfboard.

I didn't know what I wanted to Be...A sense that I had permanently botched things already, embarked on the trip without the map. and it scared me too, that I might end up as a mother of 3 working in a psychiatrist's office, or renting surfboards...I guess I saw their lives as failed somehow, absent of the Big Win...What is fate was an inherited trait? What if luck came through the genetic line, and the ability to "succeed" at your chosen "direction" was handed down, just like the family china? Maybe I was destined to be a weed too.

Progress is a dynamic thing, and you had to ride it leaning forward a little, like a surfboard because if you stood there flat-footed you'd get drowned.

And the dark night of flow is an issue that society has not made particularly easy to handle. How many people have stopped playing guitar, writing poetry, or painting watercolors—activities packed with flow triggers—because these are also activities that do not squarely fit into culturally acceptable responsibility categories like “career” or “children”? How many, now grown up and done with childish things, have put away the surfboard, the skateboard, the whatever? How many have made the mistake of conflating the value of the vehicle that leads us to an experience (the surfboard, etc.) with the value of the experience itself (the flow state)?

Once she was standing by her locker and her puka shells broke and scattered and she made a joke about it but he could tell she was upset. He wanted to buy her some more. He wanted to give her a million strands of little nesting polished shells, and tropical flowers and ice creams and lemonades and a pale blue surfboard to teach her to surf on and anything else she wanted. Instead he let his checkered Vans step on one of the rolling shells and crush it.

I didn’t draft the entry for “surfboard,” but I have reviewed it more times than I’ve actually seen a surfboard in the wild.

Tide and time wait for no man.’ So get on your surfboard and catch that wave, even if you’re shaking like a rattle all the way in, because I’m yet to be reliably informed if there’s decent surf in heaven.

ants, ants crawl my drunken arms as our schoolboys scream for Willie Mays instead of Bach, ants crawl my drunken arms through the drink I reach for surfboards and sinks, for sunflowers and the typewriter falls like a heart-attack from the table or a dead Sunday bull, and the ants crawl into my mouth and down my throat,

If you want to build a truly great company you have got to ride a really big wave. And you’ve got to be able to look at market waves and technology waves in a different way than other folks and see it happening sooner, know how to position yourself out there, prepare yourself, pick the right surfboard—in other words, bring the right management team in, build the right platform underneath you. Only then can you ride a truly great wave. At the end of the day, without that great wave, even if you are a great entrepreneur, you are not going to build a really great business.

Sure, there were a few more duct-taped tears in the vinyl seats, a few new dings in the fiberglass surfboards lining the walls, but the bacon was still crisp and pancakes were available twenty-four hours a day, the way the good Lord intended.

I smack into him as if shoved from behind. He doesn't budge, not an inch. Just holds my shoulders and waits. Maybe he's waiting for me to find my balance. Maybe he's waiting for me to gather my pride. I hope he's got all day. I hear people passing on the boardwalk and imagine them staring. Best-case scenario, they think I know this guy, that we're hugging. Worst-case scenario, they saw me totter like an intoxicated walrus into this complete stranger because I was looking down for a place to park our beach stuff. Either way, he knows what happened. He knows why my cheek is plastered to his bare chest. And there is definite humiliation waiting when I get around to looking up at him. Options skim through my head like a flip book. Option One: Run away as fast as my dollar-store flip flops can take me. Thing is, tripping over them is partly responsible for my current dilemma. In fact, one of them is missing, probably caught in a crack of the boardwalk. I'm getting Cinderella didn't feel this foolish, but then again, Cinderella wasn't as clumsy as an intoxicated walrus. Option two: Pretend I've fainted. Go limp and everything. Drool, even. But I know this won't work because my eyes flutter too much to fake it, and besides, people don't blush while unconscious. Option Three: Pray for a lightning bolt. A deadly one that you feel in advance because the air gets all atingle and your skin crawls-or so the science books say. It might kill us both, but really, he should have been paying more attention to me when he saw that I wasn't paying attention at all. For a shaved second, I think my prayers are answered because I go get tingly all over; goose bumps sprout everywhere, and my pulse feels like electricity. Then I realize, it's coming from my shoulders. From his hands. Option Last: For the love of God, peel my cheek off his chest and apologize for the casual assault. Then hobble away on my one flip-flop before I faint. With my luck, the lightning would only maim me, and he would feel obligated to carry me somewhere anyway. Also, do it now. I ease away from him and peer up. The fire on my cheeks has nothing to do with the fact that it's sweaty-eight degrees in the Florida sun and everything to do with the fact that I just tripped into the most attractive guy on the planet. Fan-flipping-tastic. "Are-are you all right?" he says, incredulous. I think I can see the shape of my cheek indented on his chest. I nod. "I'm fine. I'm used to it. Sorry." I shrug off his hands when he doesn't let go. The tingling stays behind, as if he left some of himself on me. "Jeez, Emma, are you okay?" Chloe calls from behind. The calm fwopping of my best friend's sandals suggests she's not as concerned as she sounds. Track star that she is, she would already be at my side if she thought I was hurt. I groan and face her, not surprised that she's grinning wide as the equator. She holds out my flip-flop, which I try not to snatch from her hand. "I'm fine. Everybody's fine," I say. I turn back to the guy, who seems to get more gorgeous by the second. "You're fine, right? No broken bones or anything?" He blinks, gives a slight nod. Chloe setts her surfboard against the rail of the boardwalk and extends her hand to him. He accepts it without taking his eyes off me. "I'm Chloe and this is Emma," she says. "We usually bring her helmet with us, but we left it back in the hotel room this time.

Flotsam said, “He thinks I shouldn’t do surfboard self-defense on four squids that flip us off and stole my juices when I was rippin’. They thought it was cooleo till one of them caught my log upside his head when I snaked him on the next wave.” “What?” Ronnie said. “All I said was,” Jetsam said to Flotsam, “You should cap the little surf Nazi if you wanna turn him into part of the food chain, not torpedo him till he’s almost dead in the foamy.

Trying to resist my love is like trying to hold back a tsunami with a surfboard. My advice is to take up boogie boarding.

She had ridden that kiss better than she had ever ridden a surfboard. It didn’t matter if Russell was clueless about surfing. He certainly knew a thing or two about kissing.

Ironing boards are just surfboards that gave up on their dreams. Don’t be an ironing board.

Progress is a dynamic thing, and you had to ride it leaning forward a little, like on a surfboard because if you stood there flat-footed you'd get drowned.

I noticed several weird things about the surfboarding cat. Thing number one: He was a surfboarding cat. Thing number two: He was wearing a T-shirt. It said CATS RULE, DOGS DROOL. Thing number three: He was holding a closed umbrella, like he was worried about getting wet. Which, when you think about it, is kind of not the point of surfing. Thing number four: No one else on the beach seemed to see him.

One of my daily memes once said: I think my problem is I have really fantastic bad ideas. That’s definitely me lately. But another said, “Ironing boards are just surfboards that gave up on their dreams. Don’t be an ironing board.

Noise in Zombie town was like throwing a bunch of chum into the water off your surfboard.  You were summoning man eaters to the location you were hanging out in.  Not smart unless you were sitting up in a nice big boat with a spear gun.

As time passed and Harry flew and flew and flew, he forgot all about the fog, the city below him, and just about everything. Nothing in the world seemed to matter but wings, and sky, and motion. The free and endless kind of motion that people are always looking for in a hundred different ways. Flying was the way a swing swoops up; and the glide down a slide. It was the shoot of a sled downhill without the long climb back up. It was the very best throat-tightening thrills of skis, skates, surfboards and trampolines. Diving boards, merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels, .roller coasters, skate boards and soap-box coasters. It was all of them, one after the other, all at once and a thousand times over.

The northeast trade winds that blow at a steady fifteen knots onto the cliffs and reefs of the islands’ lee shores produce endless trains of eminently glidable waves.

Her siblings were out there seeing the world while Kit was still slinging crab cakes. She wanted some of the glory, too. Some of the glamour of Nina’s life, some of the thrill of Jay’s and Hud’s. She had spent so much of her childhood following them all into the water. But she suspected that even if none of them had ever picked up a surfboard, she still would have.

We had a lazy voyage, stopping at Fiji and other islands, and finally arrived at Honolulu. It was far more sophisticated than we had imagined with masses of hotels and roads and motor-cars. We arrived in the early morning, got into our rooms at the hotel, and straight away, seeing out of the window the people surfing on the beach, we rushed down, hired our surf-boards, and plunged into the sea.

According to an equally lovingly preserved English translation of the prospectus, the purpose of Ibuka’s firm was “to establish an ideal factory that stresses a spirit of freedom and open-mindedness, and where engineers with sincere motivation can exercise their technological skills to the highest level.” We shall, he pledged, “eliminate any unfair profit-seeking exercises” and “seek expansion not only for the sake of size.” Further, “we shall carefully select employees . . . we shall avoid to have [sic] formal positions for the mere sake of having them, and shall place emphasis on a person’s ability, performance and character, so that each

If you want to build a truly great company you have got to ride a really big wave. And you’ve got to be able to look at market waves and technology waves in a different way than other folks and see it happening sooner, know how to position yourself out there, prepare yourself, pick the right surfboard—in other words, bring the right management team in, build the right platform underneath you. Only then can you ride a truly great wave.

Now, the linden, it turns out, is a radical tree, as different from an oak as a woman is from a man. It's the bee tree, the tree of peace, whose tonics and teas can cure every kind of tension and anxiety - a tree that cannot mistaken for any other, for alone in all the catalog of a hundred thousand earthly species, its flowers and tiny hard fruit hand down from surfboard bracts whose sole perserve purpose seems to be to state its own singularity. The lindens will come for her, starting with this ambush. But the full adoption will take years.

I come across a photo of a woman holding a surfboard on a beach. ‘Could I curl up in bed with you and watch TV? Could we travel together? Will you make me laugh on my darkest days? Will you be forgiving of my cellulite?’ I ask her photo. Her bio says, ‘I went to Paris for lunch once and I regret nothing.’ I love her instantly. Though I am also intimidated by her. Perhaps she will be my new extrovert guide. The app works like all the others: you swipe right on the people you want to meet (people with pets, people eating tacos) and swipe left on the people you’d rather skip (people at Glastonbury). I start off tentatively, trying to give attention to each woman, but soon become a callous lothario from swiping fatigue. Snapchat filters that transform you into cute animals in every photo? Next! Interests include spirituality and mindfulness? Next! Only kissy selfies? Next!

Hey, that's weird," Chloe says. "You both have the same color eyes as Emma. I've never seen that before. I always thought it was because she's freakishly pasty. Ow! That's gonna leave a mark, Emma," she says, rubbing her freshly pinched biceps. "Good, I hope it does," I snap. I want to ask them about their eyes-the color seems prettier set against the olive tone of Galen's skin-but Chloe has bludgeoned my chances of recovering from embarrassment. I'll have to be satisfied that my dad-and Google-were wrong all this time; my eye color just can't be that rare. Sure, my dad practiced medicine until the day he died two years ago. And sure, Google never let me down before. But who am I to argue with living, breathing proof that this eye color actually does exist? Nobody, that's who. Which is convenient, since I don't want to talk anymore. Don't want to force Galen into any more awkward conversations. Don't want to give Chloe any more opportunities to deepen the heat of my burning cheeks. I just want this moment of my life to be over. I push past Chloe and snatch up the surfboard. To her good credit, she presses herself against the rail as I pass her again. I stop in front of Galen and his sister. "It was nice to meet you both. Sorry I ran into you. Let's go, Chloe." Galen looks like he wants to say something, but I turn away. He's been a good sport, but I'm not interested in discussing swimmer safety-or being introduced to any more of his hostile relatives. Nothing he can say will change the fact that DNA from my cheek is smeared on his chest. Trying not to actually march, I thrust past them and make my way down the stairs leading to the pristine white sand. I hear Chloe closing the distance behind me, giggling. And I decide on sunflowers for her funeral.

individual can fully exercise his or her abilities and skills. “We shall distribute the company’s surplus earnings to all employees in an appropriate manner, and we shall assist them in a practical manner to secure a stable life. In return, all employees shall exert their utmost effort into their job.” Finally, his new company would help his country. Its formally stated national intent was to help “reconstruct Japan, and to elevate the nation’s culture through dynamic cultural and technological activities.” Yet

I splash enough water in Chloe's face to put out a small house fire. I don't want to drown her, just exfoliate her eyeballs with sea salt. When she thinks I'm done, she opens her eyes-and her mouth. Big mistake. The next wave rinses off the hangy ball in the back of her throat and makes it to her lungs before she can swallow. She chokes and coughs and rubs her eyes as if she's been maced. "Great, Emma! You got my new hair wet!" she sputters. "Happy now?" "Nope." "I said I was sorry." She blows her nose in her hand, then sets the snot to sea. "Gross. And sorry's not good enough." "Fine. I'll make it up to you. What do you want?" "Let me hold your head underwater until I feel better," I say. I cross my arms, which is tricky when straddling a surfboard being pitched around in the wake of a passing speedboat. Chloe knows I'm nervous being this far out, but holding on would be a sign of weakness. "I'll let you do that because I love you. But it won't make you feel better." "I won't know for sure until I try it." I keep eye contact, sit a little straighter. "Fine. But you'll still look albino when you let me back up." She rocks the board and makes me grab it for balance. "Get your snotty hands off the surfboard. And I'm not albino. Just white." I want to cross my arms again, but we almost tipped over that time. Swallowing my pride is a lot easier than swallowing the Gulf of Mexico. "White than most," she grins. "People would think you're naked if you wore my swimsuit." I glance down at the white string bikini, offset beautifully against her chocolate-milk skin. She catches me and laughs. "Well, maybe I could get a tan while we're here," I say, blushing. I feel myself cracking and I hate it. Just this once, I want to stay mad at Chloe. "Maybe you could get a burn while we're here, you mean. Matterfact, did you put sunblock on?" I shake my head. She shakes her head too, and makes a tsking sound identical to her mother's. "Didn't think so. If you did, you would've slipped right off that guy's chest instead of sticking to it like that." "I know," I groan. "Got to be the hottest guy I've ever seen," she says, fanning herself for emphasis. "Yeah, I know. Smacked into him, remember? Without my helmet, remember?" She laughs. "Hate to break it to you, but he's still staring at you. Him and his mean-ass sister." "Shut up." She snickers. "But seriously, which one of them do you think would win a staring contest? I was gonna tell him to meet us at Baytowne tonight, but he might be one of those clingy stalker types. That's too bad, too. There's a million dark little corners in Baytowne for you two to snuggle-" "Ohmysweetgoodness, Chloe, stop!

A surfer who “hangs ten” is performing a maneuver on a surfboard, not staging a mass execution.

And in a way, what could be more rock and roll than lying around on deck being served caviar and champagne off a surfboard? If Keith Moon had lived long enough, he’d have loved it. Although come to that, he might have tried to push the mini-golf buggy into the pool.

Bailey. I’m gonna make you live a little.” “Hey! Now wait just a minute, buster! I do live. I recall being the surfer in this relationship. Not you.” “Oh my God ,” Reece replied, his face lighting up. “That’s perfect! Let’s fuck on your surfboard!” I stared at him. “Seriously. Let’s just—” He thrust his hips forward a few times. “— just fucking go at it on your surfboard.” “Oh my God,” I mumbled. “What? It’s totally hot.

GoPro is essentially a lifestyle company more than a camera company. It relies on early adopters to live up to its marketing promises, at least enough to convince the larger market of nonextreme consumers that it’s possible that we too could “be a hero” and “go Pro.” Their exploits make GoPro seem an opportune investment for the once-a-year vacation surfer who wants to ensure that the evidence of their own occasional daring will stand out. It’s a consumer-aggrandizing ad approach perfected by the likes of Mountain Dew and Monster Energy. Only in GoPro’s case, the product actually creates the marketing materials. But for GoPro to sustain its meteoric rise, the company cannot remain relegated to extreme sports for long. To continue to grow the company will have to try to expand the meaning of heroism. The cameras won’t stay on surfboards and mountain bikes for long. The company is already featuring family footage, concerts, and more on YouTube, pushing its lenses into the everyday. The founder has filmed the birth of his baby with a GoPro strapped to his head.

Finally, I must acknowledge the role my lovely wife Annie, to whom I have dedicated the book, played in its production. I had the good luck to have married a woman who is incredibly smart and whose sound intuitions are untainted by philosophy. The price she pays for this is that she is subjected to calls interrupting her own work in which I ask her things like: ‘‘What’s an example of a gesture that gives an instruction?’’ or ‘‘Is the following sentence intuitively true: ‘Jeff owns more surfboards than Napoleon’?’’ She handles this with remarkable grace and humor, while providing excellent answers. In addition, while I was working on the book, she bent over backwards to do things for me that would allow me more time to write at crucial junctures. This even before we were married! And finally, the love and support she gave me while I worked on this book were of incalculable value to me. My friends say she is too good for me. They’re right

Royal Hawaiian on the famed and romantic Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am looking into a garden filled with graceful palm trees, swaying in the balmy breeze. The air is laden with the aroma of exotic flowers. Hibiscus, of which on these islands there are two thousand varieties, fill the garden. Outside my windows are papaya trees laden with ripening fruit. The brilliant color of the royal poinciana, the flame of the forest trees, adds to the glamor of the scene; and the acacia trees are hung heavily with their exquisite white flowers. The incredible blue ocean surrounding these islands stretches away to the horizon. The white waves are surging in, and the Hawaiians and my fellow visitors are riding gracefully on surf-boards and outrigger canoes.

In 2012, the conservancy managed to outrage many of its female staffers by partnering with the online luxury goods retailer Gilt to promote the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition (the magazine explained that “whether you decide to buy a bikini, surfboards or tickets to celebrate at our parties, any money you spend … will help The Nature Conservancy ensure we have beaches to shoot Swimsuit on for another half-century”). * Interestingly, before Nilsson got into the carbon

apostates.

We lost not a single animal that night. Every last duck, koala, and roo turned up fine, healthy, and accounted for. After three months, as Wes’s wounds healed up completely, Steve went to him with a proposition. “What do you reckon, Wes,” he said, “are you up for a board meeting?” They grabbed their surfboards, and we all headed to the Fiji Islands. Tavarua was an exclusive atoll, beautiful, with great surf. Steve and Wes also surfed Namotu and caught some unbelievable waves. One day the face of the waves coming in had to have been sixteen feet plus. Just paddling out to the break was epic. I didn’t realize how much effort it took until we had a guest with us, a young lady from Europe who was a mad keen surfer. Steve paddled out to catch some waves, and she paddled out after him. After several minutes, it became apparent that she was having trouble. We idled the boat closer and pulled her in. She collapsed in complete exhaustion. The current had been so strong that, even paddling as hard as she could, she was able only to hold her own in the water. I tried to photograph Steve from the boat. Peter, the captain, very obligingly ran up the side of the wave exactly at the break. I had a great side angle of Steve as he caught each wave. But the whole process scared me. The boat rose up, up, up on the massive swell. As the green water of the crest started to lip over the boat, we crashed over the top, smashed into the back of the wave, and slid down the other side. “It’s okay,” I yelled to Captain Peter. “What?” he shouted, unable to hear as the boat pounded through the swell. “What’s okay?” I gestured back toward the shore. “I don’t need such…incredibly…good…shots,” I stuttered. I just wasn’t confident enough to take photographs while surfing in a boat. I decided to be more of a beach bunny, filming beach breaks or shooting the surfing action from the safety and stability of the shoreline.

She went water skiing while Prince Charles went windsurfing. Stories that she lightheartedly tipped him off his surfboard do not ring true of Diana who was totally in awe of him. Indeed she felt “fairly intimidated” by the atmosphere on board the royal yacht. Not only were his friends so much older than herself, but they seemed aware of Prince Charles’s strategy towards her. She found them too friendly and too knowing. “They were all over me like a bad rash,” she told her friends. For a girl who likes to be in control it was profoundly disconcerting. There was little time to reflect on the implications as Prince Charles had already asked her to Balmoral for the weekend of the Braemar Games early in September. The Queen’s Highland castle retreat, set in 40,000 acres of heather and grouse moor, is effectively the Windsors’ family seat. Ever since Queen Victoria bought the estate in 1848 it has had a special place in the affections of the royal family. However the very quirks and obscure family traditions which have accrued over the years can intimidate newcomers. “Don’t sit there” they chorus at an unfortunate guest foolish enough to try and sit in a chair in the drawing-room which was last used by Queen Victoria. Those who successfully navigate this social minefield, popularly known as “the Balmoral test,” are accepted by the royal family. The ones who fail vanish from royal favour as quickly as the Highland mists come and go.

For me, the flow of information was an apt metaphor. As surfing became my obsession at a young age, my innovation had been to remap my tactile sense into the water around me. Sitting on my surfboard, bobbing up and down between the swells, I could feel the pressure, shape, and temperature of the water’s surface around me through my skin. The thousands of neurons attached to each hair follicle could sense even tiny subsurface eddies and water currents. After nearly twenty years of dedicated practice, my brain had neuroplastically reformatted to devote a large part of itself to my water-sense, and I now had the most highly attuned tactile array of any pssi-kid, or for that matter anyone else in the world. Sitting with my eyes closed, I could feel the water moving and undulating around me as a perfectly natural and integral part of my body. I was one with the water, and it was one with me.

Brotherhood-inspired surfer scammers were captured for posterity in a pseudo documentary film produced by Warner Brothers called Rainbow Bridge. Shot in Maui and featuring one of Jimi Hendrix’s final concerts, the film is a remarkable snapshot of the counterculture’s elite grappling with the death of the 1960s. In the most relevant scene, surfers Les Potts and Mike Hynson are sitting inside their surfboard-strewn house in Maui when a bearded friend carrying a Pan Am flight bag and an elaborately airbrushed

Jimmy Slade sat on his surfboard, bobbing in the water as he awaited the next wave. He pushed aside his wet, blond hair from in front of his blue eyes and turned toward the shore. He smiled as he looked at the Surf ‘n Snack building, the business that he and his friend, Emma, had built from scratch on the outskirts of their village of Zombie

Not long after, Adam left for vacation in Hanalei Bay, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Hanalei Bay is a surfing mecca that maintains an eclectic vibe. The celebrities and CEOs who visit try to tread lightly. One morning, two start-up employees who worked at tech companies back on the mainland were paddling out to sea when they spotted Adam in the water nearby. He was flat on his board, holding on to a pair of ropes attached to the back of two surfboards, from which two local guides were pulling him out to the waves. It was the surfing equivalent of a cross-country skier holding on to someone else’s pole—or the start-up equivalent, his fellow surfers noted, of propelling yourself with a $100 billion venture capital cannon. Back in the Hamptons, Adam kept a motorized surfboard. A few days later, Adam was

I am on a surfboard riding the wave of life. I do my best to stay on board. And at the same time, I let the wave take me along.

asked, “So … hurrr ... should we head back to Zombie Bane so we can get our surfboards and then return to practice in the Capitol City wave pool?” The Ender King looked at me. “One of my lieutenants

Scattered in the foreground were various signifiers of bohemian tranquility: a guitar, a surfboard, a book with VOLTAIRE on the spine. It's always new and astonishing when it’s yours. A market in the Bay Area needs, at minimum, three things. It needs fancy coffee, weird honey, and sourdough bread.

THE DREAM OF back-to-nature surfing solitude had a predictable by-product: rank nostalgia. A high percentage of the stories I wrote in my journals involved time travel, most often back to an earlier California. Imagine going back to the days of the Chumash Indians, or the Spanish missions, if you could just take a modern surfboard with you. Malibu had been breaking exactly like this, unridden, for centuries, eons. You would probably be worshipped as a god by the locals once they saw you surf, and they would feed you, and you could ride great waves with perfect concentration—uncontested ownership, accumulating mastery—for the rest of your days. There were a couple of photos in Surfing Guide to Southern California that illustrated, to my mind, just how narrow a margin in time we had all missed paradise by. One was of Rincon, taken in 1947 from the mountain behind the point on a sheet-glass, ten-foot day. The caption, unnecessarily, invited the reader to note “a tantalizing absence of people.” The other was of Malibu in 1950. It showed a lone surfer streaking across an eight-foot wall, with members of the public playing obliviously on the sand in the foreground. The surfer was Bob Simmons, a brilliant recluse who essentially invented the modern finned surfboard. He drowned while surfing alone in 1954.

I was on my freshman spring break, and my family was living in Honolulu again, so Domenic and I had reconvened there. Both of us had, like everyone who grew up on surf mags, dreamed since childhood of surfing Honolua Bay. But it was odd, in a way, that we were here, waiting on waves, since we had both quit surfing years before. It happened when I turned sixteen. It wasn’t a clean break, or even a conscious decision. I just let other things get in the way: car, money to keep car running, jobs to make money to keep car running. The same thing happened with Domenic. I got a job pumping gas at a Gulf station on Ventura Boulevard, in Woodland Hills, for an irascible Iranian named Nasir. It was the first job I had that wasn’t devoted exclusively to the purpose of paying for a surfboard. Domenic also worked for Nasir. We both got old Ford Econoline vans, surf vehicles par excellence, but we rarely had time to surf. Then we both fell under the spell of Jack Kerouac and decided we needed to see America coast-to-coast. I got a job working graveyard shifts—more hours, more money—at a grubby little twenty-four-hour station on a rough corner out in the flatlands of the San Fernando Valley. It was a place where Chicano low riders would try to steal gas at 5 a.m.—Hey, let’s rip off the little gringo. I got a second job parking cars at a restaurant, taking “whites” (some kind of speed—ten pills for a dollar) to stay awake. The restaurant’s patrons were suburban mobsters, good tippers, but my boss was a Chinese guy who thought we should stand at attention between customers. He badgered and finally fired me for reading and slouching. Domenic was also stacking up money. When the school year ended, we pooled our savings, quit our gas station jobs, said good-bye (I assume) to our parents, and set off, zigzagging east, in Domenic’s van. We were sixteen, and we didn’t even take our boards.

A skilled kite surfer rides her surfboard across the rolling waves while catching the wind in her kite, and she must continually adjust—bending, dipping, and twisting her body—to maintain that dynamic interplay of the wind and the waves. That is just how GDP should come to move in the twenty-first century,

Some carried clubs or spears. A few confused ogres carried surfboards, like they’d shown up at the wrong party.

Some carried clubs or spears. A few confused ogres carried surfboards, like they’d shown up at the wrong party. All of them were in a festive mood—giving each other high fives, tying plastic bibs around their necks, breaking out the knives and forks. One ogre had fired up a portable barbecue and was dancing in an apron that said KISS THE COOK.

Black Dress” By Charmaine J Forde She likes fine wines and the great outdoors, Surf boarding from dust to dawn, Summertime dining in Lexington and Texas, She prefers first class- no need for the Lexus Some say this beauty never takes a rest, A million dollar smile in a short black dress

NO TWO OCEAN WAVES are ever the same. I’ve sat for years on my surfboard waiting for the next good one, and never have two been the same. Nothing’s ever the same: no two same faces, voices, universes or grains of sand.

Finally, we were all able to select surfboards, pay our rental fee,

There was something about Shane North's voice that made Troy want to tell him to stop being a punk and shut up. The reaction was instantenous from the moment Troy looked up and saw Shane standing in the doorway and it had more to do with why Troy didn't want to think about Shane wet, half-dressed and holding a surfboard that it did with hockey.

Sophia Cecola is a former retail buyer and private label clothing product developer who now works with an emerging surfboard company. Sophia Cecola's business, South Bay Board Company, is an Amazon partner that is currently undergoing global expansion. She supports many community groups including the Shelter Club and the Barrington 220 Educational Foundation.

noticed several weird things about the surfboarding cat. Thing number one: He was a surfboarding cat. Thing number two: He was wearing a T-shirt. It said CATS RULE, DOGS DROOL. Thing number three: He was holding a closed umbrella, like he was worried about getting wet. Which, when you think about it, is kind of not the point of surfing.

One of the other firemen joined us. His damp T-shirt clung to a stomach that had required far too many sit-ups, but I enjoyed the view anyway. He was tall, broad-shouldered, blond, and looked like he should have been carrying a surfboard or visiting Barbie in her Malibu dream house. There was a smear of soot on his smiling face, and his eyes were red-rimmed. He offered his hand without being introduced. “I’m Wren.” No rank, just his name. Confident. He held my hand just a little longer than necessary. It wasn’t obnoxious, just interested. I dropped my eyes. Not out of shyness, but because some men mistake direct eye contact as a come-on. I had about as much beefcake on my plate as I could handle without adding amorous firemen. Captain

I should perhaps warn you that I am about to faint from anxiety and general depression, though. The film I saw last night was especially grueling, a teenage beach musical. I almost collapsed during the singing sequence on surfboard. In addition, I suffered through two nightmares last night, one involving a Scenicruiser bus. The other involved a girl of my acquaintance. It was rather brutal and obscene. If I described it to you, you would no doubt become frightened.

Christian theology, however, never is and never can be anything more than the thoughts that Christians have (alone or with others) after they have said yes to Jesus. Sure, it can be a thrilling subject. Of course, it is something you can do well or badly - or even get right or wrong. And naturally, it is one of the great fun things to do on weekends when your kidney stones aren't acting up. Actually, it is almost exactly like another important human subject that meets all the same criteria: wind-surfing. Everybody admires it, and plenty of people try it. But the number of people who can do it well is even smaller than the number who can do it without making fools of themselves. Trust Jesus, then. After that, theologize all you want. Just don't lose your sense of humor if your theological surfboard deposits you unceremoniously in the drink.

TRAITS THAT DEFINE GREAT WORK Creativity: Ira Glass, for example, is pushing the boundaries of radio, and winning armfuls of awards in the process. Impact: From the Apple II to the iPhone, Steve Jobs has changed the way we live our lives in the digital age. Control: No one tells Al Merrick when to wake up or what to wear. He’s not expected in an office from nine to five. Instead, his Channel Island Surfboards factory is located a block from the Santa Barbara beach, where Merrick still regularly spends time surfing.

the classes themselves, which were prim and undemanding, bored me in a way school never had before. . .So I passed the class hours slouched in the back rows, keeping an eye on the trees outside for signs of wind direction and strength, drawing page after page of surfboards and waves.

He might be my wave, but he wasn’t my surfboard. Knowledge and usefulness were all that stood between me and the riptide.

Picture yourself on a surfboard. Once you find your balance, loosen your grip. Breathe. Accept that no matter how good you think you are, you will fall. Again and again.

- Picture yourself on a surfboard. Once you find your balance, loosen your grip. Breathe. Accept that no matter how good you think you are, you will fall. Again and again. - We take pictures not only to see, but to be seen; not only to remember, but to be remembered. But when you are surfing, it's best to forget about the people on the beach.

Successful founders get on their surfboard and paddle out before there’s a single wave to be seen. Something in their gut tells them that the water is going to have the most beautiful wave coming and nobody else can see it. They work really hard to prepare themselves so when that wave comes, they can stand up and ride it.

As long as you want me around. I’ve got nowhere to go and I really love it here - can’t wait to hit those waves. I lost my surfboard on the beach a few weeks ago

I grabbed my outside rail and got into what surfers from the world of the players call the “pig-dog” stance. My back leg was bent such that my knee touched the deck of my surfboard. My front leg was bent to allow my butt to make contact with the face of the wave in order to be able to control my speed. After dropping into the wave,

They claimed that a mountain bike, surfboard, and fifty-inch TV could lie flat inside—at the same time. Instead of storing the batteries in a giant box in the trunk, as they’d done with the Roadster, Straubel’s team imagined them in a shallow rectangular box beneath the floor. A motor, much smaller than the typical gas-powered engine, would be fitted between the back wheels. With the bulk of the drivetrain beneath the car instead of under the hood, it opened up a ton of interior room.

Why do I so often greet the night out here?' he asked himself. He did not feel Ghanima withdraw her hand. 'You know why you torment yourself this way,' she said. He heard the gentle chiding in her voice. Yes, he knew. The answer lay there in his awareness, obvious: Because that great known-unknown within moves me like a wave. He felt the cresting of his past as though he rode a surfboard.

If only his head shows, then the tide is high. Wearing T-shirts is a common way to declare your identity. Nike sends out T-shirts that say RUNNER. I wear T-shirts that have surfboards or show surf scenes. Because I surf more than one hundred times a year, I don’t feel like a poser; wearing that identity feels natural.

CORNFELD’S EXTRAORDINARY SUCCESS, plus that breathtaking view, made it possible most days to forget that the firm was nothing more than a boiler room. Cornfeld was notorious for asking his employees if they sincerely wanted to be rich, and every day a dozen wolfish young men demonstrated that they did, they sincerely did. With ferocity, with abandon, they crashed the phones, cold-calling prospects, scrambling desperately to arrange face-to-face meetings. I wasn’t a smooth talker. I wasn’t any kind of talker. Still, I knew numbers, and I knew the product: Dreyfus Funds. More, I knew how to speak the truth. People seemed to like that. I was quickly able to schedule a few meetings, and to close a few sales. Inside a week I’d earned enough in commissions to pay my half of the rent for the next six months, with plenty left over for surfboard wax.

The past is prelude and now we are leaving the restaurant and the fog is rolling out toward the Southern Ocean. When he kisses me, it feels natural, inevitable. It doesn’t feel like a stranger has his mouth on mine; he doesn’t taste old or male or alien. I go to see his cottage, and it is just as he described it in his letters: “I keep my horse riding tack and saddles on wooden brackets mounted on one wall, and there is usually a surfboard leaning in a corner and a wetsuit hanging in the shower. When I added the wooden loft as a bedroom, I forgot to leave space for the staircase; it now has what is essentially a ladder going up the one side. Chickens roost in the chimney’s ash trap and they emerge from their egg-laying speckled grey.” It is a home, but a wild home, cheerful, peculiar—like Pippi Longstocking’s Villa Villekulla, with a horse on the porch in an overgrown garden on the edge of town, where it “stood there ready and waiting for her.” And then what? I move to South Africa? He teaches me to ride horses and I have his baby? I become a foreign correspondent! I start a whole new life, a life I never saw coming. Either that, or I am isolated and miserable, I’ve destroyed my career, and I spend my days gathering sooty chicken eggs. A different fantasy: I fly to Cape Town. It is not as I remember it. It’s just a place, not another state of being. I am panicky and agitated. I cry without warning, and once I start, I can’t stop. It is not at all clear that my story will work out. Now I have lost my powers in that department, too. Dr. John and I make a plan to meet. But in this fantasy, I arrive at the restaurant and find it intimidating and confusing: I don’t know if I’m supposed to wait to be seated and I can’t get anyone’s attention. I’m afraid of being rude, wrong, American. When John arrives he is a stranger. I don’t know him and I don’t really like him, or worse, I can tell that he doesn’t like me. Our conversation is stilted. I know (and he suspects) that I have come all this way for an encounter that isn’t worth having, and a story that isn’t worth telling, at least not by me. I have made myself ridiculous. My losing streak continues.

Jesus wants to revive you—revive your heart, your home, and your community. Use Healing Rain book as a spiritual surfboard.

Most plates move relatively slowly—the North American Plate, for example, is shifting westward at about twenty millimeters a year, somewhat less than the rate at which human fingernails grow. The Pacific Plate is, by contrast, something of a speed demon: it moves ten times as rapidly, and in a habitual northwesterly direction, covering something like two centimeters each year.

The ladies, whose curved fingernails had been lavished with the nuanced paintwork normally reserved for museum-quality surfboards, listened with barely repressed hilarity.

Have you seen some people riding on a piece of plastic they call a surfboard, doing incredible things?

Hey! Iola and Callie!” Joe exclaimed. The girls waved gaily and the trio hurried to meet them. Chet was chuckling as he ran. “Well, fellows, it’s like this,” he said. “You’re about to be kidnapped by two dangerous dolls—for a beach party!” Frank and Joe stopped short, their jaws dropping open in surprise. Chet, Iola, and Callie burst into peals of laughter. “Man, did I ever have these guys going!” Chet informed his two conspirators. “They were expecting some big underworld trap!” “Who’s complaining?” Frank retorted with a grin. “Callie can kidnap me any day.” “They even brought our surfboards!” Joe said. “And your trunks and two picnic hampers!” Chet added, peering into the back seat. “Let’s go!

Baddygirl 2 [Intro] Flawless bitches say “Hey, what’s up M.I.A.?” It’s for the women and of course Beyoncé [Hook] Baddygirl baddygirl, bad-a-bad-a-bad-a-baddygirl Goodygirl goodygirl, good-a-good-a-good-a-goodygirl [Verse 1] Baddygirl goody girl, yea more than butts and titties girl Bust out some shots then we clever and we pretty girl Study at uni and we work at every city girl We be the women with the kiddie gettin’ money girl [Hook] [Bridge] Baddygirl baddygirl, baddygirl baddygirl Baddygirl baddygirl, baddygirl baddygirl Baddygirl Baddygirl Baddygirl Baddygirl Baddy baddy baddy baddy Baddygirl baddygirl [Verse 2] I woke up like this, I went to bed like this We do everything just like this Pretty and witty we're more than just a slutty girl On a committee for Haiti or political We do it boss, big and heavy like a fatty girl Necessity, unity in every girl My surfboard bitches ride waves love all day Man I can hear everything you say My surfboard bitches ride waves love all day Men and women are 50/50 [Intro] [Hook] [Beyoncé sample] Na-na-na, diva is a female version of a hustla, of a hustla, of a, of a hustla... Na-na-na, diva is a female version of a hustla, of a hustla, of a, of a hustla... Stop the track, lemme state facts I told you, gimme a minute and I'll be right back Fifty million 'round the world and they say that I couldn't get it I done got so sick and filthy with Benjis, I can't spend it How you gon' be talkin' shit? You act like I just got up in it Been the number one diva in this game for a minute! I know you read the paper - the one that they call the Queen Every radio 'round the world know me cause that's where I be (first!)

..quite limitless: climbing a Swiss Alp, tasting wine at a French chateau, renting a surfboard in Portugal, having tea & scones in England, chilling out in Sweden's Ice Hotel or sipping a local Karlovacko beer while soaking your toes in the Adriatic off the Croatian coast.

When I got closer I heard Brandon’s warm animated voice and slowed, trying to hear whatever he was telling our son. I was already smiling to myself when I peeked around the slightly ajar door, he was talking to him about one of his surfing days. No … he was talking to him about one of Chase’s surfing days. And he had the scrapbook of Chase’s life on the dresser below them, pointing to one of the pictures. A soft gasp escaped my chest and I tried to slow my breathing so I could continue to listen without Brandon knowing I was here. “… he was always doing crazy stuff like that, it’s why everyone loved him, but it got him in trouble more times than not. No one else would have continued to surf after that, and we were all trying to get him to come in. Brad and I rode out to force him to, since he had this huge cut on his eyebrow from where that guy punched him, but by the time we got out there he was already catching another wave and riding it in. I swear he knew how to piss us off too, because those guys weren’t happy we started coming back out. Your dad could out-surf those guys, and I could fight them, but just a warning son, don’t ever try to fight someone while on your surfboard out in the ocean. It doesn’t really work out for anyone, and you look stupid trying to throw punches while treading water. We ended up laughing too hard and inviting them to the party that night, calling a truce.” Brandon flipped to the next page and chuckled lightly, pointing at one of the pictures again, “Like I said, he was crazy and always doing stupid crap,” flipping the page again he pointed to one and said softly, “but your mom changed that.” I froze and tilted my head in even further. “The day I met your mom, I knew she would be in my life forever. There was something about her and I knew I was already falling in love with her that first day. She made you want to be better, to attempt to be worthy of her love. Unfortunately your dad felt the same way; no one understood why he drastically changed, except for me. Even though she was with me, he stopped drinking, stopped sleeping with other girls, it’s like she made him instantly mature into the guy he eventually wanted to be so he could have an opportunity with her. I was always afraid I’d lose her to him someday, it’s like I knew it was a matter of when, not if. But your mom was different, I’d dated plenty of girls, but I hadn’t really cared if they were there or not. It was just someone to try to fill the ache of losing my dad. So when I met her and realized my feelings, I fought to keep her as long as I could. Don’t tell your momma, but Chase and I were constantly fighting over her when she wasn’t around. Hell, we even fought over her when she was around. We knew either of us could have any girl we wanted, but we both only wanted Harper. So of course, being us, words were used and fists flew whenever we were alone. I didn’t tell her this, but I already knew what had happened with your dad before she told me. When I got home from break, and Chase never bothered me again, I knew something had happened. I just didn’t know what yet. But you know what little man? I can’t even be mad about it anymore, because if it hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be here right now.” He gently kissed our three month old son who was completely enthralled in his stories and pointed to the last picture in the book. “And he loved you and your mom, so much. I’ll always remind you of that, but I wish you could have met him.” I

Soap is a waste of time too. What good is soap in a zombie situation? Soap sometimes imagines himself trapped in his mother’s soap boutique. Zombies are coming out of the surf, dripping wet, hellishly hungry, always so fucking slow, shuffling hopelessly up through the sand of Manhattan Beach. Soap has barricaded himself in Float with his mother and some blond Japanese tourists with surfboards. “Do something, sweetheart!” his mother implores. So Sweetheart throws water all over the floor. There’s the surfboards, a baseball bat under the counter, some rolls of quarters, and a swordfish mounted up on the wall, but Sweetheart decides the cash register is best for bashing. He tells the Japanese tourists to get down on their hands and knees and rub soap all over the floor. When the zombies finally find a way into Float, his mother and the tourists can hide behind the counter. The zombies will slip all over the floor and Sweetheart will bash them in the head with the cash register. It will be just like a Busby Berkeley zombie musical.

The ocean is a good metaphor for our interconnected life. With a regular meditation practice, we can learn to surf life’s waves, but chances are good that we will sometimes be overpowered by them for a while. A technique like following your breath is a great surfboard for riding these waves. But when the surf is up and you’re being submerged in wave after wave of fear, anger, and anxiety, you may need a more specialized surfboard, possibly adding counting your breath, repeating a mantra or phrase that is meaningful to you, or doing walking meditation rather than simply sitting still. Sometimes Jerry and I felt as if we were wasting our time trying to surf—we were just getting knocked over by one wave after another. Days and sometimes even weeks went by when we weren’t making any progress at all—very discouraging. Life can be like that, but with a regular meditation practice, you learn to experience each wave not as an obstacle to your real life but as your real life. Eventually you may learn to enjoy the surf directly, with no board at all, experiencing the joy of being fully immersed in the water, regardless of its turbulent energies. Each wave has its own unique nature. It also has the nature of the entire ocean, because a wave is not separate from the ocean. You learn to be patient when you’re riding the energy of the entire ocean. Jerry and I surfed on calm days and on stormy days. Surfing on stormy days isn’t easy, but the storm is never separate from the calmness down below. Even so, for every thrilling swell that lifts you upward toward the sky, there is a trough that can send you reeling into the darkest depths. Troughs are part of the ocean, too. When you’re in a deep trough, you can’t go forward and you can’t retreat. Nor can you predict what will come next, because you can’t see beyond the trough. In the troughs, you learn to trust, to have courage, and to be patient—qualities that come naturally if you’re committed to surfing the entire ocean.

Another quality that comes naturally as you learn to surf is renunciation. Jerry and I had to practice renunciation every day. Because we wanted to surf in the afternoons, we renounced driving our souped-up cars up and down the street in front of Palo Alto High after school where everyone could see us. Jerry renounced smoking so he could keep his lungs in good shape to handle the strong currents and mammoth waves. We even had to renounce hanging out with girls in the afternoons. It wasn’t easy to give up these things that we liked, but we had fallen in love with surfing, so we did it. Renunciation is a matter of putting aside our immediate desires just a little bit so we can stay focused on something bigger. As Jerry and I waited in the water, watching the horizon for a wave big enough to carry us all the way in to shore, we were often tempted to take whatever wave came along. Resisting that temptation was another form of renunciation. Training in renunciation involves seeing our immediate desires as they arise without indulging them. If you indulge a desire, what happens next? Another desire arises. And another and another. The faster you indulge your desires, the faster they come. You’ll never learn to surf if you are distracted by the small waves that constantly lap at your surfboard. After a while, the small steady waves of desire no longer distract you. Eventually, even the surfboard begins to dissolve because you no longer need it. Suddenly, you realize that you are right there in the surf with no gap, no separation between you and the waves, completely immersed in the ocean. Wave by wave is how we stay engaged with life. It is the only way to experience the immediacy and vigor that real life offers. Sure, it’s raw. But we don’t need to protect ourselves from the moods and nuances of life’s great ocean. We can stay right with it, in placid times and in turbulent times. Life is always offering us the energy and vitality we need—just let the salt water seep into your pores.

Dogie’s surfboards were like works of art. Splashed across their rainbow-colored decks were air-brushed paintings of waterfalls and sea dragons and a host of other fantastic creatures. Her favorite painting was a winged horse that looked like part horse and part comet, with its long tail blazing down the length of the board.

A few kids were trying to surf without much luck, but this wasn’t a good surfing spot. Jack watched as the wanna-be surfers struggled to stay on their boards. He guessed they were kids from out of town with rented surfboards staying at a beach house. The water looked cold, and they weren’t even wearing wetsuits. Maybe they were from someplace that had been buried in snow all winter and they thought this was warm.

I’d never touched a surfboard in my life. “C’mon.” She delivered a solid punch to my arm. “Just think of the wave like it’s me.” “You.” “Me,” she said in a jolly voice. “A joy to look at and a thrill to ride.

Four very large, lone black suitcases with bright tags are all that remains on the belt. “You’re kidding me.” Her eyes are glued to the belt. “No, I’m not. And please don’t tell me those are all yours.” I give her one of my you know me smiles. “Yes, they are.” She sees my face and laughs. “Makayla, they are not going to fit in my little car.” “Sure they will—they have to. After all, your surfboard does.” She’s shaking her head. “That gets strapped to the top.” “Then we’ll strap them to the top if we have to,” I tell her. Her snort worries me. “Relax. We’ll figure something out.

Some of it,” she said softly. The terrible images were there, waiting for her: running into the ocean, hoping to disappear, freezing, her teeth chattering … her dad pulling her off the surfboard, carrying her … an ambulance, her screaming, crying, being restrained …

Too much stuff in your life, I’m guessing. You’re weighed down. You need to clear out, give away and travel light. I’m just a guy with a backpack and a surfboard and I’ve never been happier.