surfing elitism and what often goes wrong. meet no-nails knut wrangle.
From a distance the surfer looks noble. This is undisputed. Here is a man who challenges the raging ocean a dozen times every day yet is able to maintain a mystic stoicism that even the most beautiful women are unable to penetrate.
He coldly turns away from their attentions. The surfer has the calm of a Buddhist and the serenity of a desert monk. These women and their broken aspirations litter the ground sand where he has walked. He has attained the transcendental level that denies sex it’s unrightful dominance over the male psyche.
From the moment he arrives at the oceanside we sense his absolute mastery of the environment, we see his quick and all-encompassing glance at the sea and sky. He breathes in the sea-mist and reads the ocean’s massive rumble with an instinct that has been defined and sharpened over many decades.
Hillary stood in the cold depths of the Western Cwm and planned his outrageous assault on Everest. The surfer, in his turn, stands in the municipal carpark and theorises his path to Malibu’s deep water.
The southern ocean had Sir Ernest Shackleton. The pacific shore had Miklos Dora. We see parallels in character attainment here that are beyond argument.
This is Knut Wrangle from Florida stepping up. He has demanded inclusion into this elite group and first glance shows that he has all the uncommon attributes of a man beyond mere mortality. A surfer in plainer words. Though we shall see, because perfection cannot be garnered – it is there at birth or not at all.
Check stubble, check tossed hair, check his deep self-appraisement as he sucks back a last Caffe Americano. This is his time. He is prepared. Malibu waits for no man.
Surfing requires skills that only experience can teach, consummate skills, and in Knut’s case we are a little worried by the visible lack of fingernail length. A minor imperfection possibly, a sign of uncool nervousness?
Perhaps.
‘ Give me a surfboard, give me wax – and the world is mine for the taking.’ This is our mantra, because we too suppose all things. But we need to look at Knut.
Picture yourself in the surf, alone, far from the shore and out of contact with any other soul. You, the waves and your board. The trinity of pleasure, all risked here for the sake of a few bitten fingernails.
How else can you scratch up a slippery deck?
Step away Knut, there is nothing for you here.
.. next.
petebowes.com 
Vallious Kookious. You gotta love the LA life.
I’m sorry but I only know of one man who “has attained the transcendental level that denies sex it’s unrightful dominance over the male psyche”…and he ain’t a surfer !!!!!!!!!!!!
Pete, for many of us there’s a very prosaic reason for the mystical stoicism. Surfer’s ear. We just can’t hear the damsels’ siren songs. Or even the rozzers’ sirens for that matter.
Surfers ear and and the inability to pass a body of water without going into the zone i.e. complete inattention to anything in existence other than wave riding potential.
Back a life time ago while surfin up north where the only thing that was ever dry blown was the odd dead sheep or Roo, I rolled the last bit of gorilla grip I had into a cylinder and shoved it up me backside with a splash of hot swan draft to ease the passage , I had come up with this plan so that I could sprint barefooted across the red “ hot enough to weld off “ sand dunes with me stick under me arm and wearing only my salt encrusted stiff as sail cloth Aleeda boardies as boardies back then boardies mostly did not come with pockets because they were for surfin not boody shopin . me plan was swig a huge mouthful of water out of the Gerry can , then haul arse across the fucken oven they call a sand dune grovel over the reef and then wax me stick up in the relative cool waters of the Indian Ocean , I did not want to stuff this up as this was all the wax I had left, and i was lacking any finger nails to scratch it up as I had chewed them off the night before in boredom after finishing off the last half a dozen Kimberly cool king brown swanies .
The last desperate surf of a drunken filthy survivalist surfrat.
The last?? Really? How could a plan that good go hideously wrong?
And, fuck, how does that sand get that hot not turn to molten glass???!!!!