The Adventure of Tubesurfing

Surfing great waves is the very best thing I can think about. Nonetheless, there's an element that's not simply about entertainment (which is much like having sex, or like being born again). When I say this, I'm speaking about getting barrelled. If you question any surfer who possesses lots of experience, they will always render the very same answer: getting into a long, deep tube, entirely vanishing from the beachgoer's view, and then to emerge from the barrell at an incredibly high speed, into daylight again with an incredible sensation (like they've just entered a wormhole into another universe and returned) is all the description of the most excellent experience there is for them, for which they would not trade anything.

The most excellent experts, local tube-masters and even average Joes who get a decent, long tube will agree - time expands inside the tube. It may perhaps be an actual scientific oversight, and one day a smart physicist may very well find tube-time-expansion to be true, even if it is just for a split second.

At any rate, remaining in an overhead tube, with the glass curtain of the wave hitting the water out in front of the tip of your surfboard, and paying attention so intently that it's just about unmanageable to explain is genuinely being in the zone - "tunnel vision" doesn't really do it justice. When you emerge cleanly it is possible that you'll get off a few choice turns, or maybe just make a turn, and head up and over the back of the wave with a glued-on smile. Either way, when you are over with the wave, you've paddled back out to the lineup, and have a chance to get settled, you will recall every single bit of the barrell, each and every falling drop, as if it were a crystal-clear memory being played in slow motion on a plasma screen. You will discover that 10 or twenty years afterwards, you can recall even the littlest aspects of a great barrell. The most excellent tubes are located on the highest quality waves, which, as much as for barrells, are usually reefbreaks and poinbreaks. Reefbreaks can supply sizeable, wide open barrells you could fit a Volkswagen vehicle in, and gives you that extra kick of dangerous joy to your adrenaline soup. You can look around a bit and take pleasure in the sight in a large tube - some decent surfers actually look back into the abyss! Pointbreak tubes can be long, long ones, tubes that you can truly put aside that hard attention, just a little, and play around in the tube, running your fingertips along the rising wall of water on one side, and feeling the breaking lip falling with your other hand.

Coming out of a barrell is like rebirth, in that you emerge from the ocean's womb and into the daylight - except that rather then weeping about it, you yell out with happiness! And nobody slaps your backside... emerging from a tube is also very much like having sex, and without being overly illustrative, I will just state this: you see a wave you like, take off and ride in expectation of pulling into a great barrell, then getting as deep as you can, with a hundred percent attention of body and mind, riding the tube and ignoring time, and then when you are pulling out of the barrell, you may well get spit out of the tube in a spray of whitewater...

Now let me mop my brow just a moment..

My objective with this description is not to offend you. A Surfer Magazine poll proved that over half the surfers feel that the only thing there is in the world that is better than sex is riding the tube. I now conclude this article, hoping that I've left you with the idea of understanding the wonderful thrill of getting tubed. This activity is very much like riding a bicycle. You'll never forget your first time, and you'll get better the more you practice.