the little practice of a jumping death
When a man is twenty-six stories up on one of those narrow Goldie balconies, looking down at the poolside arrangements – the waterfalls and shallows, the groves of palms and tended pathways.
Then over to the sea, murky and disordered, darkcoloured by flood water – He sometimes finds again his one glimmer of challenge, that sometimes illuminates a passage to a dark place.
Surfing, alone of all sports, does not tether a man to the ground, or to the sea. Any one of us who has stood at the weightless top of the wave that is his limit, and goes on, has polished this glimmer, minutely. And like a diamond it cannot diminish itself.
That little practice of a jumping death.
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petebowes.com 
As a great man once wrote, surfers are the only ones who turn their back on what could kill them and catch the beast then ride it for pleasure. Knew this wise man but he drifted north a few years ago, we speak of him in warm terms often.
onya phantom