New feature for We Are Water are the writings of B.K. William. This may turn into a regular column titled Weird Water by B.K.William. For now it is in the Guest Writer section until We Are Water finds a surf spot on the webpage.
B.K.William looks to feed us writings from the far side of the surfing galaxy.
Every good surf film needs a wipe-out section... -Ed.
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TOADS By: B.K. William
Do T.O.A.D.S. cause warts?
I have always liked a good acronym. Hideously descriptive, one of my personal favorites is TOADS.
In surfing terms it means Take Off And Die Situation...
You don’t actually have to wipeout or bounce off the bottom for it to be used in describing a wave you’ve just caught. It just has to have had the potential to be a life changing threat on takeoff. If you’re an average surfer this situation can come into play on even those chest high days that are fun to some and life or death to the uninitiated. In the ocean power scale, we are insignificant and small. From local pros to casual beginners; some chunks of fluid energy come to the shore just to beat surfers up.
Fall is looming ominously ahead and its toad mating season for the marginal masses that litter every lineup. There’s a myriad of reasons we will attempt the impossible. Nothing can be more important than the adrenaline rush and the chance of mental glory. If you don’t make it you get to visit the salt water washing machine. If you do pull off the impossible TOAD it can be the highlight of the session. The thrill seeker who cheated deaths grip seems to smile a little wider than the one who played it safe.
The wave is not an innocent bystander, suddenly grasping the human toy on the edge. The offshore winds blind you with a poisonous spray to rob you of precious sight. Tricked into trying to catch the beast, only when you’re sure to become a sideshow do you find out its too late. Swell direction or location of the break can be factors just as important as low tides. As a visual point take a look at a favorite wave of T.O.A.D.S.; Teahupoo, that place even on a small day provides a mental image of big heaving waves, ugly, painful, and potential amphibious beatings that lie ahead. Make no mistake, any wave or home break can be a TOAD session waiting to happen.
<--------Click on Pic for CJ Hobgood sequence @ Teahupoo
At least admit we all don’t have the skills of those that adorn every magazine or surf related movie out there. A juiced up voyeur of DVDs, and the web pages of H2O, will inadvertently help you make bad decisions, and the desire to make the insane drop gives way to intelligent wave selection. Knowing you shouldn’t try it does not mean you won’t. It’s just like asking that girl you know is way out of your league for a date; you paddle into the wall knowing it will be worth a shot.
Let’s not even count the different kinds of shapes or sticks that could be ridden. The average wave can reach speeds 15 M.P.H. or higher. Most of us are under gunned from the get go. Hundreds of new surfers join the fray every summer. So that’s a ton of 6’1”, two inch thick surfboards writing checks that beer bellies and out of shape paddlers can’t cash. If we could steal just one skill of the best surfers in the world, it shouldn’t be that full rail gouge that throws spray off the back like a Jet Ski’s being ridden. Damn it man, we should want too take 2 strokes and be on our feet!
The message should be simple to those that will hoot, whistle, and support your mission to Take Off And Die when that truly big set looms on the horizon. It could be you or some poor bloke who will try that impossible take off knowing full well that there’s little chance of making it. Watching someone going for it, then over the falls possibly free falling into the abyss isn’t a wasted wave. Because just as we remember that sick carve or that three foot boost we made, staring down those two story ledges with a lump in your throat, you knew it all along………… This drop is a full on TOAD.
~~~ Weird Water by B.K.William
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