Bodysurfing and the Presidency

This picture really hit home. A surfing potential Commander in Chief. How cool is that? When Obama was here last month, he went out to Sandy's to log a little tube time on a small day. I know this spot intimately. I should remember it, I nearly lost my life there one night. It is a place on Oahu called Sandy Beach. It is a beautiful beach on the Halona Blow Hole coast out near Hawaii Kai. From this beach on a clear day, you can catch a glimpse of Molokai on the horizon some 40 miles away. I was there at night on one adventure, to bodysurf to a full moon rising with other die hard surfers. The East shore of Oahu has no mercy for the inexperienced. It is enter at your own risk any day of the week and the skull shattering shorebreak claims a life or two every year despite the warning signs erected there. Most people who foolishly wade out into the shallows usually get sucked out and swept under in a horrible neck twisting torrent. The lucky ones don't get the full body slam right away. They have a little delay before they get pummeled by the next wave, violently throwing them to a sucked dry floor only to then go through "the cycle". If your collarbone hasn't popped out yet, don't worry, the cycle will finish you off. This is when you get lifted back up, now as a part of the atomic structure of the wave, and thrust back to the gates of hell again. It's called the cycle because it goes around a few times before it lets you out, shorts around your ankles and clumps of hair in your fists from when you grabbed your head, free-fell 10 feet and said "HOLY SHIT!". But I'll let you in on a little secret...absolutely every great waterman who has ever surfed the place will admit that at one time or another they caught the cycle. You have to "pay the price of admission" to surf such a fine and noble wave like this and every once in a while, when you least expect it, even if you have the spot dialed in, you slip up and eat it. It is one of the most humbling moments in any surfers life. It is very real and it is very sobering when you go over the falls at Sandy's. Even though the whole experience lasts only a brief few seconds, it is an absolute eternity to endure mentally. There is a sort of leap of faith that you take when you make the decision to drop in. The anxiety of "Did I pick the right one" is generally rewarded with a moment of total horror when you realize that there is nothing between you and a dry ocean floor 10 or so feet below. It doesn't help any that you have been there before because you know exactly how it is going to end and it isn't pretty. You do learn a few tuck and roll type maneuvers after a while that do help a bit, but they do nothing to soothe the mind. It's kind of weird to find yourself in that predicament, especially when you put yourself there knowing fool well that it could happen. It's like touching the hot iron twice, why would you do that? You do it because when you pull it off, it is pure adrenalin pumping piping hot ecstasy and there is no other way in the world I know to get all of that in one concentrated dose. And it is a rite of passage here in the islands of Hawaii to show your mettle at Sandy's. Every island has a similar beach with a neck breaker and a stack of young men addressing their fears. I wasn't one of those as I moved here as a 22 year old, but after that first cycle blunder, I just had to come back and figure out how to survive the onslaught of the beast. It took a couple of years to sort of figure it out to where I could do that. You just can't imagine what it is like to make the drop, pull into a house sized barrel and knowingly take gas, just for a glimpse into the unknown. The sounds that gurgle out of the throat of one of these is absolutely horrendous and deafening. But you do it anyway because somehow it is fun. Can you think of anything that you do on a regular basis that hurts or freaks you out, yet is fun so you keep on doing it? When I think back, going there at night was probably stupid, but when the Hawaiian moon is full, it is like daylight out there. Everything is brightly lined and in blue tones and you can see the bottom of the water while you are surfing. And yes, I went through the cycle that night. And as I slipped ever so slowly over the falls of a set wave, it did occur to me that this was even scarier at night. Going over the falls in the dark only adds to the lunacy to be there in the first place. I probably went through three runs of the cycle and couldn't free myself from it's grasp. And then it was over and I popped up. I came up with sinuses full of sand and ocean water, battered, but unscathed, I pulled up my trunks from my ankles and scratched for the shore. I cozied up to the campfire, popped a green bottled beer and smiled in victory. "How is it out there?" a girl asked. I said it was fun.

You know, in the twenty years since, I have never surfed out there at night again.

But whenever I do go to Oahu, if I have the time, I will pack my fins and try to get a little tube time in at Sandy's. And if a decent South or South East swell is hitting, I pick off a few and go for gusto. But it never lets me out of the water without paying the price of admission. I expect that and I gladly fork out for it.