I spent most of my teens and twenties chasing waves up and down the West Coast. Surfing was an obsession, augmented by an untold number of days spent around the campfire when the wind wasn’t working in my favor. When everything lined up – the wind blowing out of the east, standing the swell upright, a chromatic mist peeling off the top of the waves. I’d paddled out, dropped into a crispy lefthander, set trim, and watched the entire world tighten around me.
The focus it takes to ride a wave, especially the big ones, is unlike anything else I’d experienced—a narrow portal where your mind and body can do nothing but interact and react with the natural chaos surrounding you. I chased that feeling for years and had told myself there wasn’t anything else that could compare.
Then I threw a leg over my first proper dirt bike.
