His voice message has me pulled over on the side of the road, and it’s almost as if I am being responsible. Too often I am on my phone while driving, hardly noticing that I am engaging in sociopathic irresponsibility. They must see me like I see them, my fellow sociopaths in cars, their eyeballs down to their lap, scrolling through surf reports and social media stories and Google clickbait. Doom scrolling, looking up only now and then as if the windshield were a periscope, an instrument that performed the mere function of making sure the world is still there and still looks like we think it should.
It’s a message from Gearoid Mcdaid, Ireland’s best performance surfer.
“Yo Dylan, what’s happening? Thought I’d just give ye a shout. I think me and Conor are going to the tow secret spot. Looking pretty crazy ones — couple wash throughs ‘n stuff — but definitely some fucken’ pretty good ones, the waves I’ve seen. Dunno if you and Barry are interested in goin’ out or anything on another ski or whatever but…”
I take a deep breath that’s like a sigh. It's below freezing and I’ve used both of the wetsuits I own already today. They are basting in their own cold juices in a big blue Ikea bag in the back of my pickup. Two sets of booties sit on top of that mass of rubber. A street gritter (aka ‘plow’) passes and coats my truck, the boards, and the slimy, used wetsuits with a loud spray of industrial sand and salt.
I listen to the message again. Joy washes through me like a flood, then I have another ping. This one is from Conor Maguire who in a written message says, “Gonna whip secret spot if you are keen.“
I am honored. I am chuffed. I am flooded. I am a flooded river and my banks cannot contain the honor and joy I feel at the attention I’m getting from these two young men. The two best surfers in Ireland just communicated with me! I’m as happy as a man can get, sitting in my pickup with the heat on high and wondering what I should do.
I put the truck into gear and make a U-turn back toward the secret spot. Of course I’m keen. It’s one of the best waves in the world and it's right down the road and I very rarely surf it because the drop is prohibitively difficult. In ten years of trying, I have made one good wave out there paddling. It was definitely the best wave of my life. I am flooded again with the memory of that well-earned paddle wave. The feeling sits on the summit and looks down at all those other tow-in wave feelings. I wonder if I’ve ridden all my best waves.
The tide though… I pull over to the side of the road again facing in the other direction to check the tide in an un-sociopathic way.
I check the tide on the surf forecasting site the very same way that I look up from my phone while driving. I hardly know I’m even looking. The tide is the same as the road usually, just like I remember it to be, but today there is not enough tide for the reef at our secret spot, and the likelihood of an accident is high.
I sit there in my truck, idling, and I remember when I was a young English teacher and Gearóid Mcdaid was in my class. I was relieved to see him again because for once I could, as an American, pronounce his difficult Irish name because I knew him already. I sit in the truck and remember him in my class but I forget how I learned to pronounce his name. It must have been through conversations with Gearoid’s dad, Ray. Ray has been Gearóid’s chauffeur, coach, and videographer since Gearóid was a tiny grom, and he is still Gearóid’s biggest fan. At one point back then, I thought that maybe Ray pushed his son too hard into surfing. Now I have a son whom I take surfing, and I don’t think that way any more.
Didn’t I just bribe my own seven-year old boy with a bag of Skittles to paddle out at that reef break spot? And isn’t that just like the time Ray talked Gearóid into the back of my ski to see Mullaghmore from the channel?
There is no difference. I wonder if Ray bribed him with Skittles too.
I say Gearóid (gar-roid) out loud carefully, thinking in equal measures of how cool his name is and how old I’ve gotten since the time I plunked a jumpy Gearóid on the back of my ski to have a look at Mullaghmore, our local giant monster of a scary slab. “We’ll just go out and watch G-man, it'll be fine,” I said. He cried in the channel, behind me on the ski for an hour and forty-five minutes, begging to God and Vishnu (and me) to please let us go in soon.
“Gearóid” means a person courageous in using the spear and I sit there in my truck, idling the engine while I try to make up my mind whether or not to surf the really good and very dangerous waves with a man who has come a long way from the boy who sat sobbing in the channel on the back of my ski.
I’m in the belly of indecision.
Gearóid has been studying himself on a surfboard the way an old Celtic warrior would study himself with a spear. His body in relation to it and the environment and the universe that surrounds it all. Gearóid has been studying himself on a surfboard since he was a tiny tot and he’s been able to do all that studying because of his dad, Ray.
Ray has been driving around with his son, then driving around after his son, for more than twenty years. Dad-cam Gearóid calls it. Dad-cam allowed Gearóid to develop surf techniques that you see only on the pro tour. He has a low and springy center of gravity. He’s stable as a tank yet moves like a lynx on a surfboard. On big or slabby waves, his success rate is higher than anybody else’s in the water. On smaller waves, he is demonstrably faster. Gearóid will come off the top twice for every one turn by the next best shredder out there.
He did that yesterday. He’s doing it right now. He’ll do it again tomorrow.
I was not raised by a camcorder-wielding helicopter surf dad. I never studied myself like that. I never took the progression of my surfing seriously. I am not an athlete. When I surf, it’s because my heart and my gut want to. When I surf well, it’s a miracle of the universe. I have never refined my technique; I’ve never worked on where my hands go during top turns or where I look during bottom turns. I’ve never studied my stance or adjusted my center of gravity. I’ve never refined my equipment based on anything more than my desires or some current trend.
As a result, I surf like a praying mantis on speed. That’s on a good day. On a bad one, I surf like a praying mantis on a diethyl ether binge. I’ll get the best wave of my life then completely bungle the next one.
Gearóid will get the best wave of his life and then get a better one in the same session. No one will compare his surfing to an insect on psychoactive substances. The metaphors that come to mind about Gearóid’s surfing tend to all include a machine of some kind: reliable and well-oiled.
There are places to surf in Ireland, and more and more outside of Ireland that absolutely pump. Places that, when they pump, if you are a surf machine, you would not want to be anywhere else. And Gearóid, machine-like, is always there. It doesn’t matter if it’s before the sun rises and the roads are smeared in ice. It doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas or New Year’s day. It doesn’t matter if he’s had a couple pints the day before. Gearóid is no born-again, nor is he a tee-totaler, nor will he let booze or any other fun impinge upon the running of his surf machine.
I sit there in my truck and think about all this. I think about how I am not a surf machine. I am a cold and old insect, hungover after eating the head of my lover. I’m torn between continuing on to join Gearóid the machine in a cold and dangerous session and the warmth of a shower and the comfort of my family.
The street gritter is coming back down the street and I make a decision and drive away before I get a second smearing of salt and grit.
