You may indeed have stumbled across the existential crisis which faces all dedicated surfers at some point in their lives: “How does a dedicated surfer balance love, responsibility, and relationships with a surf lifestyle?” It’s the great risk which comes with any great passion: that one day, your passion will ask too much of you, [...]
How often do you let other people’s nonsense change your mood? Do you let a bad driver, rude waiter, curt boss, or an insensitive employee ruin your day? Unless you’re the Terminator, you’re probably set back on your heels. However, the mark of your success is how quickly you can refocus on what’s important in [...]
A few years ago I spent a year living in Hawaii on Oahu. I was going through a rough patch…the adage “release that which no longer serves you” was an elusive intangible notion that I wasn’t ready to apply to my life. I took up surfing, longboarding to be exact. I was more into the [...]
Somewhere in California, Florida or Hawaii … someone is painstakingly sculpting a block of polyurethane foam into one of the most unique products the United States has ever produced: a surfboard. Using knowledge handed down from “shapers” and surfers over hundreds of years, the craftsman sands here and there along the blank until, eventually, it [...]
It’s 4:30 a.m. in Santa Cruz. While most exhausted parents are fast asleep, big-wave surfing couple Sarah and Mike Gerhardt are tiptoeing past their children’s room and starting their day together with wetsuits, surfboards and prayer. “We get up early, and that’s our time to connect,” Mike says. “We read the Bible together, we pray [...]
As tourists and residents fled the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a step ahead of the potentially ruinous effect of Hurricane Earl on their Labor Day weekend, hundreds of beachgoers of a certain type were making a beeline in the opposite direction. Storms following a path like Earl’s, running roughly parallel to the coast, can [...]
The Drifter is Rob Machado’s follow-up movie to his biopic film Drifting. In it, a troupe of 4 filmers and photographers attempt to capture the 36 year old’s isolationist drive as he rides a smallbore Honda motorcycle through Indonesia. … Machado decided it was time to leave his comfort zone and find out what he [...]
What would you think if someone told you: Do the right thing because your life may depend on it. Or more accurately, that you better start making better decisions because it is a matter of life and death. This may sound like something an over protective parent would tell their child) but in reality it’s [...]
Surfing is as much about passion as it is about any one emotion. Certainly, there is the love of the sport which begins as respect for the mere physical act. There is the adulation experienced when catching a nice wave and riding it successfully. Often times there is the excited burst of energy that comes [...]
Surfing may look easy but the reality of it is it is actually one of the toughest sports to conquer. Since this sport obviously requires a lot of patience it is important that your child be at least the age of nine or ten before beginning to surf. Children at this age will have the [...]
Are surfing exercises really necessary? Most surfers are in pretty good shape, and surfing itself is a good workout. But did you know that there are five dimensions to surfing fitness? That’s five different types of exercises to help you get the most out of your precious time in the water. If you’re not addressing [...]
I’ve been renting a beach house in Montauk, Long Island for ten years now. After a few years of watching the surfers there with envy, I decided I’d become one myself. So I grabbed the vintage 60s Bing surfboard from our rusty shed, thinking if I was going to learn to surf, I wanted to [...]
I have encountered three metaphors for what most people call the ‘work-life balance’ issue. These are: juggling, keeping multiple plates spinning on sticks, and surfing. Each has its strengths and flaws. All share in common the problems that arise from calling the whole thing a ‘balance’ problem in the first place, but the ‘balance’ point of view has some merits.
A surfboard atop a vehicle, 700 miles from the nearest ocean, is your first clue that the surf’s up in Wyoming. Along the Snake River, just south of Jackson, Mother Nature provides a unique venue for the surf-obsessed in a region better known for wolves, grizzly bears, bison and the rugged Grand Teton and Yellowstone [...]
Imagine a retirement where you could have an extra $1million to $3 million in the bank with basically no effort. Now imagine telling your kids that you aren’t going to send them to college. And, you go on, you want them to immediately start a business or get to work as soon as they finish [...]
