The other day, a group of us were driving home after an unusually small but fun surf day. The post surf conversation turned to surf cameras and water proof video cameras, and expectedly towards finding one of said devices and taking videos of our upcoming surf sessions. Sounds good right? So after someone in the car openly suggested that next time we go out we should take one of the underwater video cameras so we can tape ourselves surfing, and later view the results, there was an uncomfortable silence.

Do we really want to see ourselves surfing?

After the momentarily silence, someone in the car exclaimed rather loudly “No way Dude! I don’t want video of me surfing … in my head I’m awesome!I don’t want to see what I really look like and have my vision shattered.”

Although much laughter ensued after this rather funny statement, he does have a point.

Our eventual goal in this endless pursuit for waves and surfing is not to get our surfboard sliding images, or our mugs on posters and magazines, it is to experience the stoke. Based on how we feel when paddling, popping up and riding the wave we have a picture in our head of what we look like. And it does look awesome in our heads.

Why would we want reality to steal that away?

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