Billabong Pro Teahupoo The Outsider: Epilogue

In: Billabong Pro Teahupoo by 34 Comments Wed 7th Sep '11

Tags: billabong pro teahupoo , tahiti , The Outsider

"My mind rejects the whole social order. I cannot enter the social order except as a vagabond."- James Joyce.

Journalists, writers, critics and other forms of bottom feeder aren't by nature disposed to public displays of gratitude. Dissecting, anaylsing, criticising and holding those in power to account are the more normal tools of the trade. Or, at least they should be, lest what is marginally useful to the human race descends into that vile trade known as public relations and marketing. But there are times when the mind itself is stilled and in the hushed peacefulness that descends the only appropriate response is a profound and heartfelt gratitude. I offer the following words in thanks to the island nation of Tahiti.

I was walking to the End Of The Road following the end of the contest, won, as we know by now, by that spiritual disciple of Teahupoo, Robert Slater. Something he said kept coming back to me: "it comes down to the feeling you have from something and that comes down to where your mind is at".

My mind at that moment was twisted with fear and hesitation. Keala had just been scalped and I had a strong feeling I was tempting fate surfing Teahupoo again. It was bloodthirsty for more victims, I was absolutely certain of that.

I walked past the church with the mountains in the background scything through the tradewind clouds like a sword thrust from the bowels of the earth. The shadows in the high peaks, where only the eagles had flown, drifted into the lowlands, mysteriously darkening the ground. A small rat scurried into the open drain and the scene became ominous and terrifying. I walked with slow steady footsteps, like a man walking from death row to the gallows, drawn inexorably forwards by a thin thread of fate which could not be severed or resisted.

I reached the End Of The Road and prepared to cross the small river which created the Havae Pass and Teahupoo itself. Across this fundamental source of the waves existence I could see the two Monster girls beginning the passage over the river. Our paths crossed halfway, I offered a shy greeting in French. Bonjour they replied in unison and flashed smiles. Smiles that came from the fecund beating heart of the Pacific, beyond the technology, the software, the strip malls and fast food joints which are enslaving humanity. Smiles which could cause a mutiny. Smiles which dissolved fear like an aspirin in a glass of water.

In the line-up the ocean was glassy, with double-overhead sets draining and throwing and roping down the reef. The lusty expulsions of wave spit went high in the air, drawing rainbows into their dissipating mist and hoots from the small cadre of surfers. Many waves went unridden. Surfing Teahupoo is a phenomena that extends into different dimensions. You surf not only on the wave but within it, the blue vortex is so round, so alive with the colour and reality of reef below it seems to draw you backwards so that you are surfing within the ocean itself, not moving forwards into space and time but suspended in a different reality that ends with the explosion of spit, the feeling of surfing into the sky, the mountain peaks and back into time itself. It ends with soaring, symphonic explosions of joy that can cause tears to rain down from grown men.

I got one like that. A swinging west bowl that grew and enveloped me and expelled me into the channel a shaking mess. Thoughts and epiphanies were cascading through me like firecrackers: I'm forty fucking-years old, why had no-one prepared me for this? How did I get here? It made me think of this time a year ago and how by the machinations of Nick Carroll I'd come to finish cleaning toilets one day to make rent and the next get on a flight to Tahiti. Without his intervention I wouldn't be here. Strange times. And now here I was again, having been spat out of a deep tube at Teahupoo, rendered as helpless as a mewling baby seal.

Paddling back out I saw the familiar bald dome of Jimmy Slade, star of Baywatch and winner of the 2011 Tahiti Pro, rapidly approaching forty himself.

"That looked like a fun one," he said.

"It coulda been the best wave of my life," I replied. Life's full of strange little ironies but when the best surfer of all time bears witness to the toilet cleaners' ride of his life it doesn't get much weirder. But what the hell was Old Baldy doing out here? Shouldn't he be celebrating with celebs and super models?

"Couldn't pass this up" he shrugged. He was out there with his brother.

There was a strange kind of feeling in the air. It took a little while to detect it's peculiar emotional odour. It was melancholy, mixed with a delicate strand of loneliness.

Slater could have these waves anytime he wanted and yet there seemed a void that could not, would not, be filled by the company of men. Hence this ceaseless restlessness; this constant desire to surf, filling the spiritual void. Victory and defeat are meaningless in the light of this wheel which relentlessly revolves around a core of nothingness. Maybe in his quest we reached somehow the same conclusion: The mastery of any form of expression should lead inevitably to the final expression - mastery of life. Slater surfed until dark.

It was young aussie charger Dean Bowen who became the blood victim of Teahupoo that afternoon. 

It was on the walk home in a rapidly deepening twilight in a drunken stupefaction of joy, past snarling dogs and a lagoon that glowed with a holy light that the meaning of the rat became apparent to me.

A rat up a drainpipe.

Pull in and ride the tube.

Maybe it was that simple after all

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