29.3

We’re all going to die. Buddhism suggests that our life’s work is to prepare for death, but for most of us it is the homework we put off until the last minute. A cancer diagnosis is a wake-up call to do that homework.

Underwater, her fins flutter against the current. She is dancing. Over the course of the day, her fingers shrivel and cheeks blaze. Hundreds of frames. Hours of work. And hopefully, at the end, something special.

The first inkling I had that there was this surfing thing was looking out my living room window on Law Street in Pacific Beach and seeing a woodie full of surfboards stalled in the intersection. All these scruffy-looking guys jumped out and were running around trying to get it push started, like the Keystone Kops interbred with the Katzenjammer Kids.

I would often see Brink as I migrated between Terry Martin’s shaping bay and Robin Kegel’s Quonset hut salon. Brink showed me strange and experimental designs, speaking of them with a kind of eloquent fury. He spoke of oxygen molecules, compound curves, Martin Luther, and swing weight.

Magic boards can’t be recreated. Every blank hosts a unique matrix of inner cells. Resins cure at the whims of humidity and heat. Glassers get stoned. The ideal of surfboard symmetry is at best a tolerable guesstimation. Failed perfection as functional art.

The wave’s lip cracks down on Dunfee’s head. Everything goes black. He’s pulled to the surface by his safety vest and vomits as he comes to consciousness. His trunks have been ripped off his body and are knotted around his leash. He vomits again. Too dizzy and nauseous to get on his board, Dunfee lies on his back and stares up at the sky.

By dark, crooked characters come out to scare the hell out of newcomers. Some of them are the bare remains of former surfers who once reigned in this outlaw town. Their skinny bodies and decayed faces remind us that the real enemies here are not natural challenges, but cheap drugs.