I’ve never been much of a team player, and competition is something I care very little about. Never that quick on my feet (often quick to get off them), athletics was a no go and they didn’t know where to put me on the rugby field. But I could shoot the odd hoop, swing a club, and take some wickets. And only later in life, when I played with cross-eyed hangovers, did I figure out how to bat. I even tried my hand at Ultimate Frisbee, but it soon rubbed away at the raw love I feel for those flying discs. I work much better one on one, or better still, on my own.

So the last seven days have been quite unsettling to say the least. First the newsletter came out, 10-30am on a Monday morning, with a link to a page promising to reveal the Top 10 – a page that would either end these carnivorous, bulging butterflies gorging on my insides, or ply them with Gummiberry Juice. I took a long, slow, deep breath as I clicked…but the page hadn’t been updated yet, which simply pissed them off.

It was only at 10-30pm on that Monday night, about 12 merciless hours later, when I clicked on the page and the Top 10 were indeed revealed, row by row, three faces at a time. Mine wasn’t on the first row, and beads of sweat burst immediately from my forehead. Mine wasn’t on the second row, and they ran down my face onto the keyboard. Until the third row, when I saw what was definitely my own head and face coming into view. I knew I’d make it through. There was no doubt in my mind…but even in a sure-fire world, fear has a front row seat.

Nine men now stand between me, in my way, and I know their faces. I see them every single day. Some even show their eyes. It’s a very, very peculiar feeling and it messed with my head something silly.

I went for a quickie during a recent lunch hour, with a wave I know, and drove past someone pulling his board from the car. Normally I’d steal glances at the board itself, but I looked instead at his face, wondering if he was one of them – one of the nine. It was the first time I’d felt it…this rivalry, almost some kind of paranoia. I didn’t feel it when there were 34 of us.

As I’m paddling out, I watch someone rip the shit out of a slow, knee-high wave, which demands a rather intimidating level of skill. He hops off the back, looks at me, I look at him, he looks at me, he looks away, glaring.

“I’ll be damned…it’s him.”

Immediately I think I’ve clocked an adversary, which did to my vibe what a father does when he walks in on you and his beloved, innocent daughter. At the dining room table.

I push too hard on my first two waves, because I feel this sudden and wayward need to impress. It doesn’t work (never does), which tempts a regression in the mood. And then I have the epiphany – the tipping point – after days, if not weeks of sleepless nights. Each pulse of paradise-coloured water passes through me, snatching the worries from my head, dragging them by their ankles to the shore (where they sadly so often sit, waiting for your return).

I contemplated this feeling until I realised I can’t actually rip the shit out of knee-high slop. And then I remembered that this isn’t a surfing competition; the gig I’m after is a writing one … and I relaxed.

A little.

Reflection

The beauty of travel and surfing – if not life itself – rests in these rare and precious moments, with legs swaying gently from the high water mark of human experience. Both such simple acts, whose most unending treasures can only be unlocked when we drop the bags of past and future. See where your feet are? That’s where you are my friend, nowhere else.

Take me to the edge of the shore, where the cold wind whips through me to a building swell; take me to the roads, rails, and runways, where the tracks of travel are forever raw and evolving; take me to the stolen footpaths up in the hills, the grassy banks beside the rocks, and behind the curtains of falling water, where after bounding and leaping, time pauses for breath.

Take me to the toothless alcoholics and park bench pilgrims, for I want to know where they lost their minds; take me to the drifters, the philosophers, the fathers and their sons, for I want to know what lessons they have learned; take me to the blind and the deaf, for I want them to teach me how to see and hear and feel. Take me to my new friends, for I just can’t get enough of people.

Take me to the darkest forests, the whitest mountains and the wide-open plains; the deserts and the cold, cracked ice and the hot, wet jungles; take me underwater, for all I want is some of that infinite stillness.

To The World – take me whole, take me in pieces…take me any f*ckin way you want me.

Their eyes were all over us, those sideway-stares reserved only for the unfamiliar out-of-towners. These folk don’t look you up and down. They don’t look at your jeans or your sneakers; they don’t give a shit what you smell like. They look at your face and into your eyes as you walk in. There is no pretence or vanity, no city light style. There are no two ways about it; this is where the locals come to get table-eating gutter f*cked, most nights of the week. This is their hole, and only fools enter here with brass and attitude.

We ambled in, very steady, very slow, clearly thirsty. Liam went for the bar, I for the table, easy as you like. Aware of being watched, I measured the surroundings, as they measured the look on my face, which was most satisfied. The bar had that rich, thick air of storytelling – perlemoen poachers and police reservists; fast money, no money, trophies, romance and all superbly rough; a shark-diver who wears shoes only to court and his own weddings, both of which happen about three times a year; salon owners sporting mullets and a geriatric who but crawls to his front door and back again, leaving a well worn path along the way. Dirt beneath their fingernails and ripe for a heavy night in the old smoke.

Any boozy small town affair starts with Jagermeister, so standing casually beside the scrum, waiting for the little guys, I noticed the curious, flitting glances from a pair of rather hefty woman in denim shirts. One giggled and blushed with a coyness that belied her size, the other tried to explain, incoherently, the actions of her friend. I failed to believe her loins gurgled in my direction, for such a mismatch was surely not possible. I returned the smiles and with my eyes, tried to light fires beneath the bar lady’s bottom of the inning.

Time passed with the draining of double brandy’s, yet I couldn’t help but notice the lingering stares of the bearded tugboats about the room. Liam, on the other hand, chest out and freely on the front foot, teased the ladies and slapped the rotund shoulders of the men beside them. The windows began to steam up and the alpha’s shuffled uneasily from foot to foot. The heat was rising, when suddenly, with a doyen’s touch, the bespectacled Liam swings his finger in the air and demands ‘a round for the room mi’lady! You know what they want.’ I could do nothing but sit back and smile the smile of a man in bloody good company – that, my friend, is how you defuse a bomb.

Not five minutes later, our table was the fireplace. Surrounded by the roughest puppies in the room, double-parked and slurring through wet, swollen lips, we dived into a drunken mess with some of the most original characters around. Arm wrestling ensued, finger pulling contests, and lengthy discussions about the merits of small town folk. Waxing lyrical about the fisherman’s plight, we heard unfathomable stories from the man who built the bar 40 years prior, and observed the peculiar ways in which men attempt seduction without being able to stand.

At one point, and what must be considered a major highlight, the said police reservist – a 6’4 blonde with hands the size of spades and breasts like Weber braais – whispered to me, “As ek jonger was, sal ek jou doodnaai!”

And after careful reflection said, “Oh my, verstaan jy Afrikaans?”

On the back foot, “Ja, I think I know what doodnaai means, and I’ll take that as a huge compliment. Thank you.”

“Goodness, ekskuus! I’m so embarrassed…but maybe you like older woman?”

As Liam pointed out to his Mum the following morning, there were some very large ladies…saying some very unladylike things.

The first challenge for the competition was to hand in a photo-essay. Here’s part one, with two and three to follow. As far as I know – if it’s a favourite – a public vote decides who goes through to the next round.

I thought I knew what stress felt like, until 5am on Wednesday morning, when walking down the hill, onto the rocks, into the sea and sinking, sinking, sinking to the ocean floor seemed the only choice left to make. This whole exercise, including the blog, has been one of the most terrifying and stressful experiences of my life – yet rewarding in ways I never imagined. And I guess that’s the point.

The Swell Movement

In low-level flight over the vast open hills, we ripped through twisting corners, lost in laughter and the promise of a stinking hot weekend in small town paradise. The guttural hum of our tyres on the road served only to agitate the butterflies in our bellies, and the charts may have looked dire, but no self-respecting surfer ever leaves the board at home.

Tearing toward the simple rewards of a Friday afternoon exit – ice cold beers and a setting sun – I was oblivious to what lay beyond the next rise. Sideways in my seat and deeply involved in Liam’s story, the ocean suddenly swept into view as we rounded the bend.

“Whooooahh dude…what the f*ck is THAT?”

I grew frantic and regressed somewhat to an incoherent animal. Still kilometres from the beach, all I could see were lines upon ruler-edged lines of swell, stacked to the horizon and God knows how far beyond. It made no sense given the reports, but there it was – the purest, most beautiful example of why we do what we do.

I don’t recall saying much after that, as all I could do was watch the ocean, squirming in my seat to get a better view. Driving straight past our house and down to the sweeping amphitheatre of jagged rocks, I gazed upon them, absolutely stupefied. There was no sign of life, save for the whales rolling and twisting in the heat of spring, jacked up on the fumes of fornication. The wind leaned and pushed at my back. I opened my palms and let the breeze slip between my fingers. The waves sang for me, called my name with such elegant seduction the blood drained from my head to another part of me altogether.

But fear is a right ol’ bitch. Good sense, if not healthy self-preservation was in all-out war with the raw calls of instinct inside me, for we were deep in shark country – the feeding grounds for those apex predators so fond of their murderous flying dance. Looking down on that water, you can feel them in there, watching you, smelling you. Yet somehow these enchanting walls of steel blue water, collapsing stars in the surfer’s universe, they have an obsessive allure. If they keep breaking, you will keep watching. But if you turn your back on them, they will not let you forget. They will haunt your dreams for the rest of days. It’s a feeling far worse than any physical pain or broken board I’ve ever received by going for it.

I knew it wasn’t my time, and for that reason I pulled my wetsuit on. The aforementioned swarm of butterflies were now eating me alive, from the inside out.

I scrambled down the side of the cliff, but somehow lost the path, which was no way to start the most terrifying session of my life. Leaning into blades of rock with scant regard for my wetsuit, I thought only of preventing cuts. Do not cut yourself, do not cut yourself. There will be no blood.

Thirty metres up with a vertical drop to the rocks below, my hands clutched gingerly at the dry shrubs whose hold on the Earth, much like my own, seemed terribly fragile. The manic voice in my head demanded to know what the f*ck I thought I was doing, but I pressed on regardless.

‘Never turn back’ were the old words I heard so long ago. Gently gently, my toes curled round the cracks and crevices, each step sure and true before I put my weight forward. With great patience and furious fortitude, I found myself leaping down the dunes to the ground floor, where fear stood waiting once again. Oh yes, the sharks, it’s the sharks I’m scared of…the cliff is gone.

In a focussed attempt to slow my alpine pulse rate and create the illusion that I wasn’t actually passing bricks, I spent a slow 15 minutes breathing very deeply indeed. Carefully strapping my leash to my ankle, I whispered sweet nothings to myself about how sublime I was going to feel afterward, how delicate that bubbly beer would feel on my tongue, how perfect the rising sun would be, shining into my room. All alone, this effort would be rewarded. I felt it in every cell, and anyone who explores their deepest passions alongside their deepest fears will know exactly how stratospheric it feels.

Paddling out, feeling the friction of the water over my arms, diving under wave after wave, I listened to every breath. I closed my eyes so that I could hear the plumes of spray from passing waves swirling in the air and raining down around me. My eyes lingered on the water flowing over the blue nose of my board. In deep calm water I sat and waited, very quietly, for the most exhilarating ride of my life.