Things got me down lately. Just how life is I guess. Surfing frees me from that, you know, that whole life thing. I don't know why people don't treat people well. I don't know why people think they can "get away with one". I don't know why the inequality of luck exists... But, what I do know is when I get caught up in questions like that, I'm much less happy than go lucky.
I'm reading the book "Blink" right now by Malcolm Gladwell, it is good. I read "The Tipping Point" prior and that is an amazing one. He's a very good writer. Anyway, in Blink, he talks about how athletes don't even know what they do most of the time. It is split second, so they make assumptions about what they do, but it is not what they actually do. He gave the example of Vic Braden analyzing tennis players and how they say that they "roll" their wrists just as they hit the ball. This is not true, they roll there wrists after they hit the ball on the follow through. It is a good point, but what is funny is how tennis coaches teach (or at least used to), rolling the wrist as some sort of functional mechanism. Just think about it for a second. They could not roll their wrists or the ball would end up in the net! It would imply that you'd have to open your wrist first. It makes no sense, the racket has to be flat or you would have to play on a ladder...
Surfing is exactly the same way. One time Damo told Tom how to crank a turn. I might have this wrong, but I think he said something like, "Go faster". Yeah, no shit. The dude probably has no clue. I've figured out all of the mechanics to surfing. I've made strides because of it. But, I'm no pro. I would put money that I could talk circles around the top 44. But there is no "dream tour" for surf mechanics debates. Why do I say this? Because this book "Blink" introduces the term "Thin Slices", making decisions at an instant, reading the court in basket ball, reading a wave in surfing. There is nothing here, I just thought it was interesting. When it comes to thin slices, as a surfer, I'm deli meat. You see, it has to do with instantaneous judgements about people as well, more conventionally called prejudices, but they don't have to be conscious thoughts, we do most of it subconsciously. Try one out, you'll see... Harvard IAT Tests Oh, yeah and if you ever want to know how Slater does it... Well I can talk you through it, but walking you through it, well that's another story or three.
Oh yeah, Tom Servais called me today. He said that he might have a few pics of me at cloudbreak. He down played them as marginal, I cannot tell what that means, since he's a hall-of-fame surf photog... I'll be stoke to see them in any event.
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