Anytime, Anyplace

This article was published in Surfer Magazine a few years back and it is one of my favorites. It's becoming increasingly difficult to read any of the mainstream surfing magazines anymore as they begin to be one big attempt to sell sunglasses or boardshorts to the PacSun generation. Occasionally you'll run across something worth reading or a cool photo that doesn't have someone riding a board covered in sponsorship stickers, so it's for that reason that I keep reading, I guess.

Anyway, the article focusses on Miki Dora and a particular day in his late sixties at Jeffrey's Bay, South Africa. The whole story itself is interesting, but finishes with Dora at the ripe age of 68 claiming that the wave he road that afternoon was the best wave of his life. The article closes with the line, "Realize, with joy, it can happen at any time." which I find to be the best line. For Dora, who was able to surf Malibu (a break that many describe as perfect in the right conditions) in the Golden Era to be able to claim his best wave in his "golden" years sums up what it is all about.

Watching the weather reports, checking the wind direction, getting up at dawn, blowing off responsibility is all in the name of searching for that next great wave. In the age of swell websites, cameras that show you the surf and text messaging, it has gotten a lot easier to be on the conditions when the time is right. Even with all of these modern day surf-predictors, you just can never be sure when the combination of swell, wind, tide and weather will come together to give you the wave of a lifetime. So you keep on it, knowing that those magic sessions can come at any time. Enough rambling. It's a great article and one that should be read if you get in the water.