The waves were definitely building, and pretty soon I was out too far to hear his barking, but still he stood watch over me from the headwall until his owner pulled him away and left me alone with Poseidon.

The Greatest

Greg Noll is the most significant athlete of our, or any generation.

Wait…the guy with the stripped trunks and flabby gut?

Yep.  That guy.  Da’ Bull.  The greatest.

Now, I realize that many of you just launched a booming litany of invective at your screen loud enough to wake the neighbors, and I am sorry to upset you, truly I am, however:

I am right.

And what’s worse:  you know it.

(Oh, sorry: invective… verbiage of the 4 letter variety that I both know how to use and spell…just not here in this particular blog.)

Now, please understand, I am not saying Da’ Bull is the most significant extreme athlete…I am saying athlete.  Of any kind.  Ever.

He may just be one of the most influential humans to ever live.

Let us reason together, shall we?

In this generation that seems to quantify athletic greatness with product endorsements entourage size, simple things like influence over humanity gets lost. 

Besides practicing extreme sports, I am also a writer.  In writing, we all know that we are only at this level of competency because of all the great writers who came before us: T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allen Poe, William Shakespeare, a shepherd sitting out in the dark of ancient deserts who decided that it was fun to make little word puzzles, and the most primitive of our kind who sat around their evening fires and passed down their history from generation to generation by means of Oral History.

All forms of human endeavor are cumulative.

And that is the key to what I am saying.

But what makes a truly great athlete?  Talent?  Statistics?  Championships?

No.

What makes an athlete great…or any human great…is their ability to change the world around them.

3/05: 4-6’ SW with outside sets to 10 feet.  At Garbage Beach under perfect sun and slight

offshore breezes.  On the 11’ Mickey Munoz Glide with Bill and Dusty. 

I’ve spoken a lot about perfection in this series, but I keep having to raise the bar on perfection:

a redefinition of life as is should be.

March 5th was just such a redefinition. 

Days like today are why people drive their gremmie laden trucks and vans down PCH from the hell

holes of Los Angeles and Orange County to the Sunset Cliffs

paddle out

and then never leave.

Garbage Beach is not what you would think.  Its name keeps people from ever visiting, and I guess

that is why the locals never want to find a better name for it, but Garbage Beach is one of the last

unspoiled beaches that I know of in Southern California, and one of the major reasons why the Sunset

Cliffs are part of surf lore. 

It defines us.

You get to Garbage Beach one of two ways: down the surf stairs and then across a fairly, shall we say,

exciting section of slimy boulders and incoming waves to get to the beach;

or;

you take a knotted rope, Batman style, over the Sunset Cliffs right onto the sand.

I’ve never tried the second one with a surfboard. 

I’m insane.  Not stupid.