Feb. 4, 2024

#6 Charging In His 70s — Curiosity, Career, and a Life Built Around the Ocean

#6 Charging In His 70s — Curiosity, Career, and a Life Built Around the Ocean
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Season 1

Join in this exceedingly rare conversation with Dr. Mark Renneker, a distinguished figure in the realm of big wave surfing hailing from San Francisco. With a surfing tenure spanning nearly six decades, Dr. Renneker has secured his legacy as both a surfing pioneer and a medical doctor at the University of California, San Francisco.

Renowned for his notable achievements, including being the first to surf the treacherous Potato Patch outside the Golden Gate Bridge, and amongst the first to lead expeditions to surf in remote locations such as the Arctic, Antarctic, Iceland, Norway, Greenland, and Alaska, 'Doc' Renneker joins us to share insights into his extraordinary life.

In this episode, we meticulously explore the facets that have contributed to Dr. Renneker's enduring success, addressing aspects such as life balance, dietary practices, training regimens, and the nuanced risk-taking inherent in tackling some of the world's most formidable waves.

Acknowledgments are extended to Josh Wiese and Kevin Starr for their role in facilitating Dr. Renneker's participation in this episode. To our esteemed audience, if you find enjoyed the show, share with a friend. 

References:

Playing Doc’s Games. The eponymous New Yorker article by William Finnegan that made me a lifelong fan of Mark Renneker

Surf Encyclopedia Bio of Mark Some classic surf videos of Mark 

Direct Lab. Where Mark gets his bloodwork done 



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WEBVTT

00:01:12.989 --> 00:01:21.030
Friends welcome back to the issues athlete podcast, where we tap into secret and stories of each to find high performing athletes.

00:01:21.659 --> 00:01:28.139
Uh, rainy weekend here in San Francisco, and I enjoyed spending the day putting this episode together.

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Broken only by soggy walks outside with my dog.

00:01:32.280 --> 00:01:32.729
Roger.

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Once in a while you get exceedingly lucky and you get to meet your heroes.

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And poke them with defensible questions.

00:01:41.015 --> 00:01:41.435
Dr.

00:01:41.435 --> 00:01:45.816
Mark Raenuka is a legendary big wave surfer icon from San Francisco.

00:01:46.030 --> 00:01:49.691
I learned to surf in the breaks around the city, myself.

00:01:50.110 --> 00:01:54.580
And could barely contain my excitement when mark greet to meet with me.

00:01:55.180 --> 00:01:56.920
Mark is 70 years young.

00:01:57.280 --> 00:02:05.320
Started surfing at 11 and he has been exploring waves up and down the California coast for almost 60.

00:02:05.632 --> 00:02:06.531
Remarkable years.

00:02:07.671 --> 00:02:10.911
As a surf pioneer, mark holds many records to his name.

00:02:11.289 --> 00:02:16.853
But alongside he juggled a career as a medical doctor and advocate He was.

00:02:17.081 --> 00:02:18.281
Forcing foremost.

00:02:18.600 --> 00:02:21.240
Maybe the only person who have served.

00:03:21.355 --> 00:03:22.125
Hi, Mark.

00:03:22.507 --> 00:03:24.067
Good to have you here in person.

00:03:24.567 --> 00:03:25.706
Glad to be with you, Kush.

00:03:26.206 --> 00:03:26.627
Excellent.

00:03:26.627 --> 00:03:31.682
I see that it is nighttime, in San Francisco, uh, with fall approaching.

00:03:31.808 --> 00:03:32.488
you feel ready

00:03:32.846 --> 00:03:49.658
I was ready for this fall season, all through the summer, and just kept hoping to see the first glimpse of fall weather and fall swells, and truth be told, here we are, October 20th, and we've only had a glimmer just in the past two days.

00:03:50.459 --> 00:03:57.728
And otherwise it's, um, chalk it up up to global warming or what, but it's concerning.

00:03:58.019 --> 00:04:01.798
and the worst of it was that the water got so warm,

00:04:02.439 --> 00:04:02.918
Mm hmm.

00:04:03.088 --> 00:04:07.558
over 60 degrees here in San Francisco's beginning back in August.

00:04:08.278 --> 00:04:17.588
Um, and there's this plankton bloom we call the Red Tide and me and a lot of other surfers are intensely.

00:04:18.178 --> 00:04:30.562
Reactive to it, uh, allergic, and boy, you'll see any number of folks out of water with, um, any number of sort of sinus and nose and ear and eye problems.

00:04:30.891 --> 00:04:33.221
I saw a guy out in the water just two days ago.

00:04:33.731 --> 00:04:35.682
He had this goof, goofy apparatus.

00:04:35.692 --> 00:04:43.752
It was like a clip on his nostrils and he had some little thread or something that was going to keep this thing.

00:04:44.231 --> 00:04:45.362
Clipped onto his nose.

00:04:45.471 --> 00:04:47.552
And I said, is that because of the red tide?

00:04:47.552 --> 00:04:48.512
He goes, that's right.

00:04:48.781 --> 00:04:51.442
And I said, does that work?

00:04:51.481 --> 00:04:52.671
That thing you have on?

00:04:52.671 --> 00:04:54.802
And he said, I think it does.

00:04:55.481 --> 00:05:04.552
And I said, well, did you ever try just every time you're going to punch through or you're going to have your head underwater, just breathing out through your nostrils.

00:05:04.601 --> 00:05:05.951
And so the water can't come in.

00:05:05.951 --> 00:05:20.391
He said, Oh, uh, but at any rate, uh, Yeah, it's, it's, it's, uh, this is not beginning, um, in a really strongly positive way.

00:05:20.391 --> 00:05:39.632
Normally, by the end of September, we would have had a couple of days at Mavericks, a couple of solid double overhead days here at Ocean Beach, and instead, you know, yesterday, the day before, you know, maybe there was a handful of waves that were maybe double overhead and, but for the most part, not.

00:05:39.951 --> 00:05:44.076
It's still, you know, Was classically Ocean Beach.

00:05:44.107 --> 00:05:51.026
Like yesterday, four of us, four good friends all started paddling together up by Rivera.

00:05:52.997 --> 00:05:54.406
It was a 40 minute paddle out.

00:05:54.906 --> 00:06:01.927
And, you know, if one were counting how many times you had to throw your board away or dive under or duck dive or whatever.

00:06:02.917 --> 00:06:04.396
You know, it's in the hundreds.

00:06:05.377 --> 00:06:08.477
Uh, and one of the four didn't even make it.

00:06:08.477 --> 00:06:11.162
He finally just said, I'm out of here.

00:06:11.922 --> 00:06:20.081
And, uh, and you know what, of that whole session and the rides I got included, the most memorable part was the paddle out.

00:06:22.081 --> 00:06:32.872
And if you, if there's something sort of the great equalizer here at Ocean Beach, but also the bar that you have to keep yourself healthy and strong enough for.

00:06:33.521 --> 00:06:34.651
It's to paddle out.

00:06:35.612 --> 00:06:47.602
And even in the summer, it can be a rough paddle out, but, you know, famously at Ocean Beach, the fall winter is what brings so many surfers to their knees and they think they're the greatest surfer in the world.

00:06:47.672 --> 00:06:48.961
And they may well be.

00:06:49.412 --> 00:06:50.841
It doesn't mean that you're going to get out.

00:06:51.341 --> 00:06:53.781
And so you have to use a fair bit of cunning.

00:06:54.682 --> 00:07:02.312
One of the guys who I paddled out with, he is currently under treatment for an advanced melanoma

00:07:02.812 --> 00:07:03.322
Wow.

00:07:04.222 --> 00:07:19.487
and he made it out and, um, When we got out there, I sort of sort of jokingly sort of paddled up to him as if I was like a making a film from a drug company or something and wanted to know, you know, do I think that his, the drug that he's on, it's called Keytruda.

00:07:20.117 --> 00:07:23.367
Do I think that that contributed to his being able to get out?

00:07:24.042 --> 00:07:26.382
And he said, well, yes, I do think so.

00:07:26.722 --> 00:07:37.192
And we had sort of a joke about that, but I said, seriously, Tom, um, to get out on a day like today, or even on bigger days, it takes a certain willfulness.

00:07:37.692 --> 00:07:48.031
And do you feel that the will to get out on a day like today is somewhat similar to the will you've had to have?

00:07:48.932 --> 00:07:53.222
To go through the cancer treatments and he said, absolutely, absolutely.

00:07:53.722 --> 00:07:56.802
So it is, there is a parallelism.

00:07:56.972 --> 00:08:03.422
I think, um, he's somewhat unique really to Ocean Beach because most of the surfing world.

00:08:04.206 --> 00:08:14.817
There's nothing like this, you know, for, for me, always, it was easy to go to the North shore and you could, you could paddle out without getting your hair wet It's a whole different deal

00:08:15.076 --> 00:08:26.947
you know what, this is such an interesting, uh, subject that, uh, I've thought about a lot, in the last 10 years or so that I've been learning and surfing at Ocean Beach.

00:08:26.977 --> 00:08:33.776
Um, just so people understand where we are and what we do here, I would love to get a quick bio of yourself.

00:08:33.906 --> 00:08:35.333
Mark, how old are you?

00:08:35.343 --> 00:08:36.353
Where do you live?

00:08:37.033 --> 00:08:38.183
What do you do for work?

00:08:38.553 --> 00:08:38.803
yeah,

00:08:38.843 --> 00:08:39.853
And uh,

00:08:40.144 --> 00:08:40.723
Good enough.

00:08:40.723 --> 00:08:41.394
Good enough.

00:08:41.833 --> 00:08:56.274
So I'm 70 years old and I grew up in West Los Angeles and at age 11 with some friends, we did a junior lifeguard program right by Santa Monica pier.

00:08:56.889 --> 00:09:07.468
And that was when I first began surfing and I ended up, um, going to UC Santa Cruz as an undergrad and, uh, where I did my pre med and

00:09:07.663 --> 00:09:08.223
mhm,

00:09:08.678 --> 00:09:33.078
got into UC San Francisco here for medical school and that was in 1975 and was immediately astonished to see how big the surf was up here compared to Santa Cruz, which I thought was pretty big surf and, Once I'd gotten to Santa Cruz, I was never intending to ever go back to Southern California, which has generally pretty small and very crowded surf.

00:09:33.228 --> 00:09:42.389
And, you know, for me, it was like heaven to find San Francisco and all through medical school, I was never intending to even be a physician, really.

00:09:42.389 --> 00:09:43.749
I just wanted the education.

00:09:43.749 --> 00:09:47.639
I was more interested in actually the field of education.

00:09:48.408 --> 00:09:56.229
And through the passage of, uh, getting into medical school, I'd already been to like eight different colleges.

00:09:56.903 --> 00:10:02.783
Uh, or places of institutes, if you will, and had a number of important role models.

00:10:02.834 --> 00:10:10.724
Um, a guy named Gregory Bateson, who was a legendary cultural anthropologist, a guy named Ivan Illich, who was sort of a defrocked priest.

00:10:11.254 --> 00:10:19.614
Um, and both of them having great, I don't know, great inspiration for me in terms of education and the power of that.

00:10:19.663 --> 00:10:24.844
And I was intending to actually go and work with a guy named Paulo Freire, who

00:10:24.894 --> 00:10:25.433
mhm,

00:10:25.933 --> 00:10:30.063
This whole notion of critical consciousness and ways to sort of educate people.

00:10:30.394 --> 00:10:36.803
And so my dream always was to use medicine as a way to, um, create change

00:10:37.173 --> 00:10:37.704
mhm,

00:10:38.084 --> 00:10:43.173
rather than as it were to sort of dole out medicines or, or do operations or that kind of thing.

00:10:43.653 --> 00:10:55.864
And it just so happened that when I was finishing medical school, I had an experience on in family medicine with a guy named, uh, Ron Goldschmidt and through him began to learn about.

00:10:56.364 --> 00:11:15.584
This sort of the actual application of something I learned from Bateson in terms of, um, the work of Milton Erickson, who was a amazing based on, on change, a change agent, but using hypnosis, really, and, um, and I just loved what I was doing there.

00:11:15.604 --> 00:11:16.894
And that was at SF General.

00:11:16.894 --> 00:11:19.423
And I just, so I applied to residency.

00:11:19.423 --> 00:11:23.653
It's the only place I even applied in family medicine at SF General and did all that.

00:11:23.704 --> 00:11:24.323
And, uh, yeah.

00:11:24.823 --> 00:11:41.964
And when I finished, I was, I did inner city family medicine again, just sort of this whole idea of trying to work with people who, where you can really make profound change and along the way began realizing that it was advocacy that I was most interested in.

00:11:42.874 --> 00:11:47.923
And I started my own advocacy practice based on a television show of the time called the medical.

00:11:48.494 --> 00:11:51.403
I call it the medical equalizer, but there was a show called the equalizer.

00:11:52.344 --> 00:12:06.084
And it was made into movies and that kind of thing, but it was this idea of, you know, um, I'm going to say rescuing people, but pairing up with people to when they're feel like, uh, sort of everything is stacked against them.

00:12:06.954 --> 00:12:18.273
So I began doing that with patients who feel that the medical system had failed them utterly, or had given up on them, or were actually obstructionistic.

00:12:19.163 --> 00:12:34.504
And I devised a way of working with people never by zoom, uh, but by phone, this was way back before people even talked about telephone medicine as something you could do, but I began doing it, you know, in 1989, 90.

00:12:35.264 --> 00:12:46.134
And, um, part of the, the, the sort of benefits of that was that mostly the people I would be speaking with, they were from all around the country around the world.

00:12:46.423 --> 00:12:49.384
They'd find their way to me through an underground of people I'd already helped.

00:12:50.073 --> 00:12:51.144
Um, and.

00:12:51.644 --> 00:13:00.854
But they generally, the time to talk would be in the evening when they were done dealing with doctor appointments and whatever crazy stuff that they had to do with their lives.

00:13:01.144 --> 00:13:05.374
And also when more of their family members could be on the line and we would do like group calls.

00:13:06.124 --> 00:13:17.374
So I always, um, was protecting my time for surf and I never was in the closet about being a hardcore surfer and a big wave rider.

00:13:18.028 --> 00:13:31.702
And the patients loved that and it was fine with them if, if for whatever reason we did have a call set up and I needed to, because there was a big swell or I needed to go to surf a swell somewhere, they were fine with it.

00:13:32.244 --> 00:13:33.293
Okay, yeah, that's great.

00:13:33.293 --> 00:13:35.163
You go surf and, you know, let's reschedule it.

00:13:35.214 --> 00:13:36.193
It was never an issue.

00:13:36.504 --> 00:13:44.874
And, um, so I've been doing that work as the quote medical equalizer or what I call medical advocacy.

00:13:45.423 --> 00:13:55.793
I've been doing that for about 30 years and I have a house right here on the beach and next to the house is another house that I have for just an office to do this

00:13:55.864 --> 00:13:56.214
hmm.

00:13:56.563 --> 00:13:57.183
Sure.

00:13:57.604 --> 00:14:04.004
And I do a lot of teaching of medical advocacy to medical students and other physicians who want to study with me.

00:14:04.504 --> 00:14:05.053
Got it.

00:14:05.144 --> 00:14:05.454
Got it.

00:14:05.454 --> 00:14:05.644
Yeah.

00:14:05.644 --> 00:14:19.462
One of the things I wanted to, uh, explore a bit is how you've managed to, uh, organize your life so you can, uh, give surfing the time that surfing needs.

00:14:20.063 --> 00:14:26.303
As well as give your career the time that, uh, your patients and your profession needs.

00:14:26.354 --> 00:14:38.974
And I think I'm getting one clue right there, which is, which is the work you have done with, uh, patient advocacy and being able to, able to work with your patients to move times around.

00:14:39.818 --> 00:14:53.839
By, by sharing with, uh, your, uh, your clientele, your, uh, your, your, uh, other life, your passion for surfing, it sounds like, uh, sounds like there's been, uh, adequate empathy on, on that front.

00:14:54.469 --> 00:15:04.938
Uh, I'm curious, um, you know, now we have enough media out there and people see, uh, maybe people see surfing of all types.

00:15:05.849 --> 00:15:26.148
But generally when I have talked about surfing, even in the last dozen years that I've been surfing, people's impressions of surf are still kind of locked into what they might have seen from movies, the, image of that surfer and, Waikiki beach in Hawaii, on a perfectly, beautiful day.

00:15:26.264 --> 00:15:27.264
Have you been?

00:15:27.472 --> 00:15:35.445
Able to communicate how, surfing in San Francisco might be a bit different than, uh, the popular stereotype.

00:15:35.733 --> 00:15:36.182
that's one.

00:15:36.399 --> 00:15:41.575
The second how would you describe Mark to the average person, how that is different?

00:15:41.854 --> 00:15:46.298
What makes, uh, surfing in San Francisco, interesting and, and different

00:15:46.298 --> 00:15:57.860
So to the first question, there really isn't, when you're talking about stereotypes, it's usually maybe the stereotype that you hold yourself as virtually a chip on your own shoulder.

00:15:58.134 --> 00:16:10.524
And I've seen far too many professionals, lawyers, physicians, physicists, who, because they were a surfer, they were literally in the closet or slightly ashamed of it, even.

00:16:10.945 --> 00:16:11.325
And.

00:16:11.825 --> 00:16:29.924
So, um, In the same way that people have stereotypes, perhaps about what a physician should be, you know, in a white coat and like something that you saw, you see on television or in a movie, but in truth, the same diversity that you'll see in medicine, you'll see in surfing.

00:16:30.845 --> 00:16:32.495
And yeah, there really are some stereotypes.

00:16:32.715 --> 00:16:36.245
Typical characters who become that way.

00:16:36.435 --> 00:16:53.225
Largely, they're the high visibility ones who are sponsored surfers who, you know, they're just, they've got a gig and they got to perform and go to work and, um, present whatever is the company's, uh, what they're trying to sell.

00:16:53.725 --> 00:16:58.085
And I've, uh, developed literally a.

00:16:58.585 --> 00:17:01.995
Almost an anaphylaxis to those characters.

00:17:02.055 --> 00:17:13.305
I mean, I, you know, through these years of sort of combining medicine and surfing, I've gotten to know kind of most of the, you know, the name people in the surfing world.

00:17:13.575 --> 00:17:15.694
And some of them are fantastic.

00:17:15.694 --> 00:17:18.404
And some of them, they're just doing it for a paycheck.

00:17:18.974 --> 00:17:22.474
And, and some of them hardly seem to enjoy surfing.

00:17:22.704 --> 00:17:28.424
Um, and then they love to be when, uh, they can be a free surfer, they call it.

00:17:28.794 --> 00:17:34.134
And I remember one famous guy who said, he said, Well, now my sponsors are letting me be a free surfer.

00:17:34.144 --> 00:17:36.964
And I said, Do you see the contradiction of what you're saying?

00:17:37.004 --> 00:17:38.865
They're letting you be a free surfer?

00:17:39.384 --> 00:17:40.404
What's that about?

00:17:40.904 --> 00:17:52.335
So, um, the unique thing in San Francisco is that if you love, I don't mean to be pretentious, but if you love culture, that usually means being close to a city.

00:17:52.835 --> 00:17:57.274
And, you know, I have A great affinity for jazz.

00:17:57.274 --> 00:18:08.055
I love seeing live jazz and I must go to two or three shows a month and have for a long time and I, and I thrive on, on movies.

00:18:08.115 --> 00:18:09.634
I see a lot of movies.

00:18:10.484 --> 00:18:26.035
And in terms of keeping the balance, I remember I used to have an index of, I'd go down in the San Francisco Chronicle, they don't even have these lists anymore, but it'd be all the theaters and what they're showing, and I would do a tally of how many of the movies I'd seen.

00:18:26.875 --> 00:19:39.025
And I decided that if I hadn't seen at least 20 of the movies, and the total number would average around, in town there might be a total of about 70, 75 movies, but if I hadn't seen at least 20 of them, it meant that I was working too hard.

00:19:39.525 --> 00:19:45.845
Then the other me, the other measure I, I began to use was, yeah, you know, you can make money in medicine for sure.

00:19:45.845 --> 00:19:51.225
There's, you know, you can take on more gigs and push for, you know, charging more and all that kind of thing.

00:19:51.705 --> 00:19:58.725
But what I came to realize was the real power is you in terms of buying free time.

00:19:59.225 --> 00:20:07.384
In other words that I have, it's, I'm lucky to be a physician and I can make a lot of money if I need to, but it also means I can create.

00:20:08.015 --> 00:20:19.735
A lot of free time and so I've set it up so that I don't generally ever have an appointment before about 5 PM and because the summer surface so crappy here.

00:20:20.519 --> 00:20:39.420
I will, you know, do more work during the day and more appointments during the day and I just work a lot more hours and then I literally downshift in my schedule big time starting right around now and I'll keep that up through the big wave season which for us goes right through February.

00:20:40.255 --> 00:20:46.164
it sounds like you've been able to create that schedule and hone it over the years to where you kind of have.

00:20:46.465 --> 00:20:50.298
Some you have that, balance and the flexibility.

00:20:50.875 --> 00:21:01.625
yeah, curious, um, to the layperson, how would you, uh, how would you describe or compare, CF and disco surf to maybe other kinds of surf?

00:21:01.625 --> 00:21:10.476
And I'm not, I'm not trying to put all other kinds of surf in one bucket, but if you were to, to make that distinction, how would you go about it?

00:21:10.773 --> 00:21:15.833
you know, some people approach surfing from a quantitative perspective, how many waves they can catch.

00:21:16.265 --> 00:21:21.965
for instance, uh, surfing in San Francisco is more of a qualitative experience.

00:21:21.975 --> 00:21:25.245
And big wave surfing in general is more of a qualitative experience.

00:21:26.065 --> 00:21:40.394
So that, you know, on a big day out here in San Francisco, A, you feel Like you've accomplished a lot just having made it outside and be if you end up catching more than two or three waves That's you caught a lot of waves that day.

00:21:40.894 --> 00:22:07.495
And so a lot of people who would stand and watch surfers for instance You know, they're sort of puzzle how little time we actually spend riding waves, but how much time we have to spend Sort of working out all the angles as it were to figure out where to sit and where to take off and how not to wipe out and And the higher you go up the ladder of big wave surfing, always the fewer the waves you'll be catching.

00:22:07.695 --> 00:22:13.585
So on big days at Mavericks, uh, you know, Mavericks doesn't even start breaking until it's at least triple overhead.

00:22:13.585 --> 00:22:20.414
So let's say 15, 18 foot faces, um, you know, very few people catch many waves.

00:22:21.005 --> 00:22:26.625
Even when, even when there's nobody out, I mean, you know, I surf a lot by myself at Mavericks included.

00:22:26.775 --> 00:22:29.549
And, um, yeah, you, you're not.

00:22:29.900 --> 00:22:34.789
You're not doing it for how many you catch and you might even be out there for three or four hours and catch one wave.

00:22:35.289 --> 00:22:41.779
And from a sort of a spiritual tradition, um, it's just about perfect.

00:22:42.779 --> 00:22:44.240
What makes it perfect?

00:22:45.240 --> 00:22:47.380
It's, it's the oneness of it.

00:22:47.440 --> 00:23:02.070
It's the, um, the fact that you have, you have, you, you imagine that you have some measure of control over it all, but for the most part, you don't, other than by your own experience and fitness and cunning.

00:23:02.560 --> 00:23:04.320
And a lot of it is cunning.

00:23:04.820 --> 00:23:12.360
But having to put aside, it's like people who now will say, well, I'm done with this COVID pandemic.

00:23:12.480 --> 00:23:15.539
I'm just going to live my life regularly.

00:23:16.039 --> 00:23:22.980
The foolishness of that, to imagine that you can proclaim that and that there's any reality to that.

00:23:23.440 --> 00:23:29.060
And the same with somebody who's going to like conquer the surf or, you know, take surf lessons.

00:23:29.060 --> 00:23:33.410
And then I got a coach and then I got, and then they, you know, this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:23:33.440 --> 00:23:43.680
And we watch these people come to Mavericks thinking they're these conquering heroes because they've done that elsewhere and maybe in other aspects of their life.

00:23:43.730 --> 00:23:46.250
And they're just reduced to rubble.

00:23:46.806 --> 00:23:52.899
Sure, Mark, how long have you been surfing Ocean Beach and Mavericks?

00:23:52.939 --> 00:24:00.807
And maybe if you can just give a quick idea of how you've seen the surf culture, uh, evolve over that time?

00:24:01.307 --> 00:24:06.413
So I started when I came up here to start medical school, and I was looking around for a place to live.

00:24:06.913 --> 00:24:24.024
And it was, you know, offshore it's this time of year and sunny and they were good surf and there was nobody else even in the water and I was getting some great waves and there was one guy who weighs up the beach and I paddled up to where he was and said, you know, what do you call this spot right here?

00:24:24.024 --> 00:24:27.714
And he said, Oh, this is called pillbox and that's called purple cow.

00:24:27.714 --> 00:24:30.403
And he's all these things he starts saying, he goes, are you new here?

00:24:30.403 --> 00:24:33.344
And I said, yeah, I just moved up here to start medical school.

00:24:33.693 --> 00:24:36.504
And he paddled over right up next to me and he put out his hand.

00:24:36.959 --> 00:24:54.239
And he said, Dan suey third year and so, uh, and I, so it was like, yeah, that was more important than any white coat ceremony sort of for the initiation of becoming sort of in this, uh, this group and right away.

00:24:54.239 --> 00:24:56.729
I all the surfboards I'd had from.

00:24:57.714 --> 00:25:02.014
You know, LA area and Santa Cruz were useless up here.

00:25:02.163 --> 00:25:09.814
And I gradually began to realize I had to get bigger guns, bigger, longer boards, which you couldn't even get here.

00:25:09.933 --> 00:25:10.653
I mean, there weren't.

00:25:11.114 --> 00:25:14.344
Shapers for the most part, and even in Santa Cruz, they didn't have big boards.

00:25:14.734 --> 00:25:26.794
So for whatever reason, I began going to the North Shore when the surf here would get crappy, which is usually in February, and there they'd still have big waves, and most of the pros had left town, and they often would leave behind their big guns.

00:25:27.354 --> 00:25:31.724
So I would just buy a pile of them and fly them back home, five or six boards even.

00:25:32.524 --> 00:25:40.024
And the problem here was, um, we were just breaking boards all the time because of how powerful the surf is.

00:25:40.554 --> 00:25:43.163
And also is when leases were really pretty primitive.

00:25:43.203 --> 00:25:46.501
I mean, the leases would just break willy nilly.

00:25:46.860 --> 00:25:54.060
my goal was really to surf a place that breaks about three to four miles out called the potato patch.

00:25:54.664 --> 00:26:02.125
Which I had seen the first time I, in anatomy lab on the 14th floor of the medical school, you could see the potato patch breaking.

00:26:02.174 --> 00:26:03.424
It would just blow my mind.

00:26:03.515 --> 00:26:07.424
And these were waves that were 50 foot faces, something like that.

00:26:07.515 --> 00:26:12.154
I mean, really, and some of the waves would, would go on for like a minute.

00:26:13.115 --> 00:26:14.695
And, um, so

00:26:14.769 --> 00:26:15.575
And, And, Mark.

00:26:15.575 --> 00:26:21.335
This is just, if you don't mind describing this place, it's, it's a fascinating, uh, natural phenomena, right?

00:26:21.565 --> 00:26:23.605
Believe It's outside the Golden Gate Bridge.

00:26:23.924 --> 00:26:53.535
if you just think of like a river mouth, where the sand is, comes out the river and deposits sandbars, that's really what San Francisco Bay is, it's this one big river mouth and all the sand goes out and in a horseshoe crown that stretches from the north on the rune side all the way down here, comes in kind of closer here, down by Tarabel Street, And, um, and on the outer realm of it is where the shipping channel has to be dredged to for the big ships to come in.

00:26:53.919 --> 00:26:55.288
it's about four fathoms deep.

00:26:55.288 --> 00:26:58.659
So about 24 feet deep and the only way to access it.

00:26:58.788 --> 00:27:08.328
Originally, I tried with my friend who had a power boat and I ended up worrying more about the guy in the boat and then I just, I didn't like doing that.

00:27:08.328 --> 00:27:11.451
And, so then I just began trying to paddle out to it.

00:27:11.769 --> 00:27:19.500
And after a number of experiments figured out that on an outgoing tide, I could just jump in up by the cliff house.

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.840
And literally ride the current all the way out without paddling, even it was hilarious.

00:27:24.840 --> 00:27:28.750
You could just sit on your board and it just takes you two to three knots an hour.

00:27:28.750 --> 00:27:30.320
I mean, it was, it was easy.

00:27:30.320 --> 00:27:35.180
You just had to time it for when the tide stopped outgoing because otherwise you couldn't stay in position out there.

00:27:36.029 --> 00:27:46.279
But on some of those days where I wouldn't even catch a wave, you know, I might have literally paddled or covered maybe 10 or 12 miles.

00:27:46.779 --> 00:27:47.920
And I always liked paddling.

00:27:48.560 --> 00:28:06.120
Paddling seemed to me a delight and sometimes, you know, the current would help too, but, and then finally, um, and I would do this with friends in the, in the beginning, and again, I hate to say this, but they would kind of chicken out or lose heart or, you know, and I would say, no, no, we got to get about another mile or two further out.

00:28:06.210 --> 00:28:07.690
We're just on the inside here.

00:28:08.029 --> 00:28:09.789
And they would go, no, I don't know.

00:28:09.789 --> 00:28:14.174
And then the Coast Guard would send out one of their rescue boats because there was some reports and, I don't know.

00:28:14.695 --> 00:28:21.815
They'd, they'd, those guys, you've seen them on the big days where they bust through the waves and make a quite a, quite a show for people.

00:28:21.825 --> 00:28:24.865
But, and then they would, they would look over and they'd go, Oh, it's you doc.

00:28:24.904 --> 00:28:25.634
Oh, okay.

00:28:25.674 --> 00:28:26.305
No problem.

00:28:26.765 --> 00:28:28.295
And then they would just disappear.

00:28:28.715 --> 00:28:33.275
And finally, I ended up doing it by myself and caught a wave.

00:28:33.475 --> 00:28:34.965
Uh, this was about 2005.

00:28:35.465 --> 00:28:39.345
Um, that, you know, solid 25 foot wave.

00:28:39.394 --> 00:28:41.325
And it wrote it for about a minute.

00:28:41.825 --> 00:28:47.134
And with no photographers, no other people there, and, and that was just the way I like it.

00:28:47.634 --> 00:28:48.535
That's beautiful.

00:28:48.949 --> 00:29:02.727
the few times when I have been fortunate to be out in the water, uh, by myself and catch a wave like that, uh, not a wave like that, but a wave, uh, you know, much more, humble in its, uh, dimensions.

00:29:03.037 --> 00:29:07.140
it's still been, uh, an outstanding, moment for me.

00:29:07.140 --> 00:29:12.080
So I think I can, I can only imagine what it must be like to, uh, to be out there.

00:29:12.110 --> 00:29:21.799
Um, and having not only caught that wave, but put in the effort and time to earn that wave, uh, which I think is a big part of what surfing is.

00:29:22.244 --> 00:29:34.653
Well, for me, though, I must say a lot of it has been, again, really interwoven with the same process that I use in medicine of seemingly something, uh, unsolvable.

00:29:34.774 --> 00:29:37.854
Someone with an advanced, you know, metastatic cancer or something.

00:29:37.854 --> 00:29:39.044
So what's the way out of it?

00:29:39.084 --> 00:29:42.214
What's the way, what can you do differently?

00:29:42.244 --> 00:29:44.114
And, um.

00:29:44.689 --> 00:29:47.369
Or additionally, and so it's a lot of research.

00:29:47.399 --> 00:30:08.528
And so these places that I'll go and surf, it's incremental in the study that I engage in often a lot of cartography and, you know, bathymetrics and, you know, ocean, oceanic kind of inquiries and talking to people who know areas.

00:30:08.994 --> 00:30:15.453
Whether they be fishermen or whether they be researchers, um, to get a better handle on it.

00:30:15.524 --> 00:30:21.274
And so I've taken that level of, of exploration or inquiry

00:30:21.739 --> 00:30:22.235
uh,

00:30:22.354 --> 00:30:34.564
into not just the local area here, but I've been systematically exploring the Arctic and the Antarctic and the sub Arctic, sub Antarctic areas.

00:30:35.409 --> 00:30:48.169
And have organized and led first expeditions to surf Antarctica, Iceland, Northern Norway, Svalbard, Greenland, um.

00:30:49.068 --> 00:30:58.318
All of Alaska and what I'm most excited about now is I'm putting together a trip to explore all the way to the end of the Aleutian Islands.

00:30:58.669 --> 00:31:01.419
That'll, it'll be like a month long trip next August.

00:31:01.822 --> 00:31:02.902
Holy smokes.

00:31:02.991 --> 00:31:04.312
That sounds incredible.

00:31:04.852 --> 00:31:23.235
uh, amongst all those trips and, all the memorable, uh, surf sessions over the decades, uh, including the one where you caught that eponymous wave at, uh, the Potato Patch, any other, like, highlights of proud moments, maybe a couple that stand out that you would like to share?

00:31:23.697 --> 00:31:27.547
I have a way that I surf some hours north from here.

00:31:27.747 --> 00:31:34.437
I have a little 10 by 12 foot cabin, no electricity on a cliff over a surf break.

00:31:34.961 --> 00:31:46.652
And then it looks out over way out in the ocean and the outer reef spot that I first surfed in 85, 86, and it remains my favorite big wave spot in the world.

00:31:46.782 --> 00:31:53.802
And I've managed to keep it a secret for the most part and not let what befell Mavericks happen to it.

00:31:54.302 --> 00:32:01.672
And so I've had experiences out there that, uh, just would blow anyone's mind.

00:32:02.162 --> 00:32:06.522
And usually surfing alone about a mile from shore.

00:32:07.491 --> 00:32:15.812
And the one that most comes to mind actually is, again, the lessons of hubris are critical to me.

00:32:16.451 --> 00:32:18.902
And so I had paddled out alone on a 10.

00:32:19.022 --> 00:32:22.221
9 brand new board that Jeff Clark made me.

00:32:22.721 --> 00:32:25.602
And it was, you know, 20 to 25 foot, something like that.

00:32:26.102 --> 00:32:28.842
So that would be like four to six times overhead.

00:32:29.112 --> 00:32:29.872
And, um,

00:32:30.487 --> 00:32:30.897
Wow.

00:32:30.991 --> 00:32:36.142
when I do this on my own to these outer reef spots, I promise myself I'll only take three waves.

00:32:36.971 --> 00:32:39.302
And the first wave will, I'll just, it'll be an easy one.

00:32:39.802 --> 00:32:42.672
Uh, you know, I'm not gonna say shoulder hop, but sort of.

00:32:43.162 --> 00:32:45.842
And the goal is to try and do it without getting my hair wet.

00:32:46.717 --> 00:32:47.207
Okay.

00:32:47.392 --> 00:32:49.481
it's not like Ocean Beach, where you got to dive through the whitewater.

00:32:49.481 --> 00:32:53.211
These are places you can access through relatively calm water.

00:32:53.292 --> 00:32:56.612
It's just, it can take 45 minutes or an hour to paddle out.

00:32:56.682 --> 00:33:06.991
But, and then the third wave would be the only one that I would really Take a chance and sort of sit deeper, uh, maybe a bigger wave, whatever.

00:33:07.622 --> 00:33:10.241
And so I'd already caught my first two waves

00:33:10.657 --> 00:33:10.856
Mm

00:33:11.582 --> 00:33:16.241
and then this fog bank appeared and it would happen like so fast.

00:33:16.262 --> 00:33:21.342
It was like a bad special effect in a movie or something, but literally.

00:33:22.221 --> 00:33:23.272
No visibility.

00:33:23.772 --> 00:33:27.612
And, um, I don't know, 50 feet, something like that.

00:33:27.612 --> 00:33:37.652
And, and so I have my lineups out there based on way on shore sort of areas that I triangulate and figure out where I am and to where the wave would break.

00:33:37.652 --> 00:33:41.282
But I also know the kelp bed pretty well and the boils pretty well.

00:33:41.682 --> 00:33:43.622
And I said, okay, I know where I'm sitting.

00:33:44.451 --> 00:33:48.711
I'm just gonna, I'll just wait for the fog to lift because I really want to get that third wave.

00:33:48.711 --> 00:33:50.211
I really want to get that third wave.

00:33:50.711 --> 00:33:53.352
And, you know, it was kind of.

00:33:54.037 --> 00:34:02.037
Amazing, because as soon as I sort of had convinced myself that I would get a third wave, this giant wave broke outside of me.

00:34:02.537 --> 00:34:04.346
Just, I didn't even see it coming.

00:34:05.057 --> 00:34:07.047
We're talking huge, huge wave.

00:34:07.497 --> 00:34:11.356
Throw your board away, dive as deep as you can, the leash breaks,

00:34:11.806 --> 00:34:12.846
Oh, goodness.

00:34:13.304 --> 00:34:22.065
It's one of those things where it's, it's so violent that it sort of launches you back up from the depths like a torpedo shooting out of the water or something.

00:34:22.715 --> 00:34:27.134
And I go, Oh man, this is, this will be a challenge.

00:34:27.634 --> 00:34:29.224
And I just looked at my watch.

00:34:29.724 --> 00:34:31.065
It was 347.

00:34:31.485 --> 00:34:39.034
I remember exactly and I thought there's time it was dead of winter, so it was going to turn dark at five

00:34:39.420 --> 00:34:39.659
Mm

00:34:40.144 --> 00:34:42.844
and I wasn't really worried about swimming in.

00:34:42.884 --> 00:34:44.824
I've practiced swimming and out there before.

00:34:44.924 --> 00:34:46.715
It's really tricky to swim in.

00:34:47.074 --> 00:34:51.554
You have to swim in through these rocks and we call it the keyhole and it's it.

00:34:52.215 --> 00:34:53.125
It's formidable.

00:34:54.074 --> 00:34:56.275
But really what I was worried was to find my new board.

00:34:56.574 --> 00:35:03.445
Um, and I have a pretty good idea where the boards go from having this having happened before, but never in the dense fog.

00:35:04.134 --> 00:35:25.190
And part of it was that you had to stay with where the waves were breaking, because that's where the board would go, which meant that you had to let these still giant waves just I want you and I did all of the above, and was swimming around out in the ocean again, about a mile offshore, looking for my board in the fog and never found it.

00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:26.549
Okay.

00:35:26.840 --> 00:35:33.190
And then finally swam in and my car was parked pretty far away.

00:35:33.269 --> 00:35:38.929
And so I'm running along the road with, with my broken leash and now the sun's come out.

00:35:38.929 --> 00:35:42.360
Now I can see everything and all I want to do is get binoculars so I can look for it.

00:35:42.360 --> 00:35:46.380
And some guy driving by who recognizes me, he says, doc, what are you doing?

00:35:46.389 --> 00:35:55.835
And I said, I just lost my port and he goes, you were fucking out there and I said, yeah, I said, could you help me find my board and he said, yeah, yeah, great.

00:35:55.835 --> 00:35:57.224
So he's got binoculars too.

00:35:57.224 --> 00:36:03.445
And so we stood on the cliff and just watched and watched and watched never found the board turned dark.

00:36:03.454 --> 00:36:04.835
And that was the end of the day.

00:36:05.221 --> 00:36:06.121
Godly.

00:36:06.572 --> 00:36:07.951
That's quite a story.

00:36:08.344 --> 00:36:10.235
That was not what I expected.

00:36:10.572 --> 00:36:15.882
Quite the adventure you had out there and did not expect the ending.

00:36:16.751 --> 00:36:21.101
And, uh, it brings together so many elements of surfing.

00:36:22.361 --> 00:36:27.851
That many of us experienced, you just have experienced that on a much.

00:36:28.541 --> 00:36:31.781
More intense and grander scale.

00:36:32.321 --> 00:36:38.201
But it brings together the highs and the lows and the cheeses and the losses.

00:36:38.861 --> 00:36:41.051
And the elements.

00:36:41.411 --> 00:36:42.371
Out in nature.

00:36:42.721 --> 00:36:44.880
Oh, and sorry about that board.

00:36:45.661 --> 00:36:47.820
A brand new board from Jeff Clark.

00:36:47.940 --> 00:36:48.390
Indeed.

00:36:48.540 --> 00:36:50.161
Sounds quite special.

00:36:50.676 --> 00:36:52.636
I had a board, one of my favorite boards.

00:36:52.636 --> 00:36:53.886
It's still one of my favorite words.

00:36:53.886 --> 00:36:54.656
I still write it.

00:36:54.946 --> 00:37:01.236
The day parmenter made me, it was an eight foot fish that he made me for Mavericks worked fantastically well at Mavericks.

00:37:01.543 --> 00:38:18.273
one day, The leash broke and I swam and swam and swam and looked for it and never found it let the, harbor master know if, that if anybody with a fishing boat or whatever found a board, you know, sort of purple, red one, you know, to call me a month goes by, he calls, I think, I think we've got your board.

00:38:19.063 --> 00:38:20.493
And I said, what?

00:38:20.573 --> 00:38:21.803
And he goes, yeah, wonderful.

00:38:22.373 --> 00:38:37.613
The captains, you know, he found this board floating out in the ocean He just wants to, you know, make sure that, it's yours and I said, well, and I described some as it were sort of like in, you know, police procedural, identifying, tattoos or scars.

00:38:37.613 --> 00:38:41.323
I said, yeah, there's a ding here and there's a blah, blah, blah, and this and that.

00:38:41.653 --> 00:38:43.183
He goes, yeah, it sounds like you're bored.

00:38:43.193 --> 00:38:45.043
And I said, well, what do I have to do to get it back?

00:38:45.053 --> 00:38:48.713
He goes, well, you know, the rules about recovery at sea.

00:38:49.528 --> 00:38:51.198
And I said, Oh, that's fine.

00:38:51.198 --> 00:38:53.988
If he wants some money, I'm happy to pay him.

00:38:54.048 --> 00:38:55.518
I really love that board.

00:38:55.518 --> 00:38:57.698
And he, I said, how much does he want?

00:38:57.698 --> 00:38:59.388
He goes, a C note.

00:39:00.259 --> 00:39:01.648
I said, a C note.

00:39:01.658 --> 00:39:03.138
Did he say a C note?

00:39:03.908 --> 00:39:04.868
And he said, yep.

00:39:05.638 --> 00:39:08.468
And I don't know if Kush would even know what a C note is.

00:39:09.298 --> 00:39:11.718
Well, it's gangster slang for a hundred dollar bill.

00:39:12.218 --> 00:39:13.468
Oh, century note.

00:39:13.658 --> 00:39:14.038
Got it.

00:39:14.488 --> 00:39:14.628
yeah.

00:39:14.708 --> 00:39:18.808
And, but, but I said to him, I said, God, this guy is no authentic captain.

00:39:19.418 --> 00:39:22.398
And he, he said, yeah, just bring me a C note.

00:39:23.388 --> 00:39:28.578
So I had to go, like, go to the bank, get a C note, went down there and got my board back.

00:39:29.048 --> 00:39:29.958
That's hilarious.

00:39:30.858 --> 00:39:37.168
That's, uh, I mean, it could have been a C note wrapped around a bottle of rum or something to make it even more,

00:39:37.348 --> 00:39:38.118
could have, yeah, yeah.

00:39:38.848 --> 00:39:40.218
that's, that's, that's crazy.

00:39:40.558 --> 00:39:47.018
Um, Marek, you've been, you know, you've been surfing at, at, uh, you've been surfing for such a long time at, at such a high level.

00:39:47.913 --> 00:39:54.003
Um, how do you keep your body, your, you know, how do you stay in shape?

00:39:54.063 --> 00:39:56.943
Do you have, uh, do you cross train?

00:39:56.943 --> 00:39:58.713
Do you have any other rituals?

00:39:59.206 --> 00:40:03.047
any dietary habits that you have refined over the years?

00:40:03.051 --> 00:40:03.251
Mm-Hmm.

00:40:03.951 --> 00:40:08.741
Yeah, and it's been just like everything else in surfing and medicine.

00:40:08.741 --> 00:40:10.151
It's been incremental.

00:40:11.006 --> 00:40:18.236
So I've been surfing for, what, 60 years, started when I was, you know, 10 or 11, thereabouts.

00:40:18.276 --> 00:40:24.226
And, um, what I didn't want was to do anything that would interfere with surfing.

00:40:24.297 --> 00:40:29.486
So I was a hardcore skateboarder, you know, pretty radical skateboarder.

00:40:29.996 --> 00:40:33.196
But I kept getting injured, and then I couldn't surf, and I hated that.

00:40:33.751 --> 00:40:34.711
So I gave up that.

00:40:34.731 --> 00:40:35.771
I gave up skiing.

00:40:36.576 --> 00:40:36.666
mm

00:40:36.911 --> 00:40:41.591
Um, I used to do rock climbing and surfers generally make good rock climbers.

00:40:41.591 --> 00:40:44.651
The problem is that if you fall surfing, it's no big deal.

00:40:44.651 --> 00:40:50.521
The water is soft, but I had some, I had some good falls and I thought this is stupid.

00:40:50.581 --> 00:40:51.442
I'm not going to do that.

00:40:51.721 --> 00:40:52.541
I won't be able to surf.

00:40:53.241 --> 00:40:56.551
And so that was like one rule of thumb.

00:40:56.591 --> 00:41:14.021
The second was, um, I had learned yoga early on and always kept up some practice of yoga or certain poses that I knew would help me not have sort of stiffness or loss of flexibility.

00:41:14.922 --> 00:41:22.611
Um, and also I began, um, working with different people like a cranial osteopath.

00:41:22.851 --> 00:41:34.946
In other words, a, a treating manual medicine specialist And with my stated goal being, I want you to keep me able to surf as I get older.

00:41:35.446 --> 00:41:39.317
And so just a standing appointment once a month, and it's just proactive.

00:41:39.317 --> 00:41:50.746
It's just looking for restrictions or issues that if left unattended or un, uh, worked on could really add up to a problem.

00:41:50.946 --> 00:41:56.656
And, and then amidst that, then invariably there are injuries that happen.

00:41:57.156 --> 00:42:01.817
And I have about four different people of different specialties.

00:42:02.556 --> 00:42:06.976
One is an Atlas orthogonal chiropractor who only adjusts just the Atlas.

00:42:07.320 --> 00:42:13.500
Another is a brilliant, brilliant, um, you would call it a sort of a muscle.

00:42:13.826 --> 00:42:31.565
Specialist, but he, um, did a lot of dance medicine and took care of Baryshnikov and, had developed a lot of his own style of working with people to, know, look for restrictions, you know, at different segments of the spine and the hip and ankles and all of that.

00:42:32.115 --> 00:42:36.965
Um, and I've worked with him a lot to help sort of.

00:42:37.465 --> 00:42:45.835
Reverse or improves like a scoliosis that I've had, um, and work with things of ergonomics and posture.

00:42:46.576 --> 00:43:07.515
Um, so it's been, I've had acupuncturists, um, uh, and these are people who, um, have helped me, I would say, age well and understand and, and mainly work with people who are motivated like I am, you know, you know, dancers and athletes and, and the like.

00:43:07.905 --> 00:43:08.770
And without that, yeah.

00:43:09.770 --> 00:43:23.680
Um, yeah, I, not to say that it's victim blaming, but I can't tell you how many friends I have who've had hip replacements and knee replacements and how many shoulder surgeries and neck fusions.

00:43:23.690 --> 00:43:31.679
And you just see it gradually take its toll for what, what they can do in surfing as they've gotten older.

00:43:31.680 --> 00:43:35.650
And my role model has always been, uh, Jerry Lopez.

00:43:36.150 --> 00:43:36.370
mm

00:43:36.524 --> 00:43:43.834
And Jerry, I knew from, uh, I was in a movie with him called Rotting Giants in 2004,

00:43:44.235 --> 00:43:44.865
sure.

00:43:45.084 --> 00:43:51.978
and, um, and he wrote a forward for a book I did on surfer's health called, Surf Survival,

00:43:52.563 --> 00:43:52.983
Mm-Hmm?

00:43:53.298 --> 00:43:56.914
now in its second edition, but the essence of him.

00:43:57.314 --> 00:44:03.654
Of Lopez's teachings, if you will, is surf today to surf tomorrow, so it's pretty obvious.

00:44:03.664 --> 00:44:05.074
So you see these guys come out.

00:44:05.664 --> 00:44:09.514
They're just crashing burn artists on big days at Mavericks, and they get hurt.

00:44:09.574 --> 00:44:15.471
They just get hurt and, you know, my goal is to literally never fall, not not wipe out once.

00:44:15.511 --> 00:44:18.561
I remember I went an entire winter without a single wipe out.

00:44:19.271 --> 00:44:21.321
What that means is you don't catch all the waves you want.

00:44:21.321 --> 00:44:27.981
It means that, you know, if you don't think there's at least a 90 percent probability of making the wave.

00:44:28.551 --> 00:44:29.221
Not to go.

00:44:29.721 --> 00:44:32.051
It also means getting really good equipment.

00:44:32.951 --> 00:44:56.011
I know this is a big deal in other sports, maybe more so than in surfing, but, um, I've always had, uh, wonderful shapers to work with and to, uh, make me a lot of experimental boards and interesting designs and, you know, even just two days ago, I got to ride, uh, a board that just blew my mind it's what's called an edge board.

00:44:56.314 --> 00:44:57.774
I never felt such a board.

00:44:58.259 --> 00:44:59.569
under my feet before.

00:44:59.939 --> 00:45:08.043
And it was, it's quite invigorating to, suddenly, you know, think that you've seen it all and seen every idea and here's something completely new.

00:45:08.543 --> 00:45:09.173
That's amazing.

00:45:09.173 --> 00:45:09.653
Wow.

00:45:10.153 --> 00:45:18.333
and and in terms of nutrition, you know, all through medical school and even for a long time thereafter, I used to have a hamburger every day

00:45:18.884 --> 00:45:19.173
Okay.

00:45:19.563 --> 00:45:24.879
and I have found that I could do study, medicine or, you know, for medical school.

00:45:25.609 --> 00:45:27.489
Best sort of sitting at a restaurant.

00:45:27.539 --> 00:45:30.219
I used to go to Bill's place over on Clements street.

00:45:30.369 --> 00:45:36.589
I'd sit in the back there and they just loved taking care of me, the medical student, and they would bring me all kinds of treats and things.

00:45:36.799 --> 00:45:39.849
I was never good at like studying in the library or something like that.

00:45:40.179 --> 00:45:42.879
at some point I did herniate a disc.

00:45:43.079 --> 00:45:50.583
And one of the things that I began to explore was, okay, maybe I'll become, you know, vegetarian or pescarian.

00:45:51.563 --> 00:46:18.453
And that was, um, in about 1990, I've been essentially that since I gave up, chicken and pork and turkey and, you know, all the red meats for sure, and it's interesting that one time I slipped, as it were, was in the Antarctica trip, the captain and, owned an island in the Falklands where he would raise his own lambs and he had all this frozen lamb and, you know, there is something wonderful about lamb.

00:46:18.453 --> 00:46:30.709
There just is, you know, uh, and, um, so I got ill from eating, lamb again after about two days and that was in the year 2000 when we did that trip.

00:46:30.750 --> 00:46:32.109
I haven't had red meat since.

00:46:32.609 --> 00:46:33.089
Sure.

00:46:33.359 --> 00:46:33.839
Got it.

00:46:34.109 --> 00:46:38.500
Pescatarian, uh, almost completely vegetarian.

00:46:39.000 --> 00:46:40.109
Any supplements

00:46:40.409 --> 00:46:42.419
Yeah, yeah, actually, there are.

00:46:42.563 --> 00:46:48.817
I'm a believer in N Acetylcysteine or NAC, which when you swallow it, it's a prodrug for what's called glutathione.

00:46:48.817 --> 00:46:57.473
Glutathione is the chemical that a huge number of cells in your body produce as a way of cleansing the organs.

00:46:57.866 --> 00:47:10.126
to give you an example, NAC, if you you go mushroom collecting with the next rain, up Up the coast, you know, and you, you pick the wrong mushroom and eat it and your liver is being destroyed and you're, you know, orange is a pumpkin.

00:47:11.031 --> 00:47:19.081
And you present to the emergency room, the very first therapy they would give you would be intravenous NAC, in other words, to save, to save your, to save your liver.

00:47:20.051 --> 00:47:28.151
So NAC is something that cleanses the organs, including the kidneys, including lungs, including the heart, including the brain.

00:47:28.664 --> 00:47:35.681
I've always taken additional amounts of vitamin D, you know, on the order of about like 5, 000, 5, 000 units a day.

00:47:36.531 --> 00:47:54.461
Um, I've always liked magnesium, it takes some extra magnesium, and then a friend of mine who's a nutritional oncologist, um, who is in the Chicago area, and he's a surfer also, he actually went on the Antarctica trip, and he and I surf Lake Michigan and places like that together.

00:47:55.111 --> 00:48:07.031
But he has these supplements that he's put together that are sort of a gamish of, you know, 15 or 20 things that would sort of be everything you might find at Whole Foods, and I've always taken some of that.

00:48:07.547 --> 00:48:07.996
Okay.

00:48:08.411 --> 00:48:13.721
Oh, a little bit of curcumin, a little bit of fish oil, but not too much.

00:48:14.101 --> 00:48:35.791
If these things cause you to bleed, I did find for a while I was taking sort of preventative low dose or, you know, uh, baby aspirin, but boy, you know, I just found, I mean, even like punching through a lip, you know, I would get these little, you know, ecchymosis, little, you know, sort of bleeds under the skin on my face.

00:48:36.471 --> 00:48:38.661
It just, so I cut that out.

00:48:39.388 --> 00:48:40.478
I don't take any supplements.

00:48:40.488 --> 00:48:41.408
I'm 44.

00:48:41.908 --> 00:48:45.144
And I sometimes don't, don't even know where to get started.

00:48:45.334 --> 00:48:49.336
It seems there's so much variety and so many types.

00:48:49.336 --> 00:48:57.613
And then there also, you know, the, uh, snake oil, uh, sales people out there peddling their own, motley potions.

00:48:58.196 --> 00:48:59.616
I will have to put in more research

00:49:00.006 --> 00:49:05.753
the research gets very easy there's a branch of integrative medicine called functional medicine.

00:49:06.543 --> 00:49:10.283
the principle of it is that you look for biomarkers.

00:49:10.783 --> 00:49:25.186
And if you want a not shotgun, with supplements so biomarkers would be, yeah, looking at micronutrient levels in the blood, looking at vitamin levels in the blood, looking at inflammatory markers, coagulation markers, immune function.

00:49:25.681 --> 00:49:40.501
All of these things are easily done and what's really interesting now in the field of health is that there's a lot of direct to consumer ability of ordering all the lab tests that you otherwise would have to depend on physicians for.

00:49:41.172 --> 00:49:42.141
So you can go to like directlab.

00:49:42.641 --> 00:49:46.781
com and you can order virtually anything that a physician would order.

00:49:47.281 --> 00:49:53.686
And if you want to, you know, play around and look online under, what I would call terrain panel.

00:49:53.726 --> 00:49:54.626
So you want to look at.

00:49:55.126 --> 00:50:22.339
Uh, not the disease qualities of one's body, but the terrain, meaning the healthy part of your body and you look at the worth of normal levels would be for you, you name it, magnesium or, C reactive protein or, uh, you know, things of that nature and, or, and then, or all the different antioxidants and, and all that, and then you would, um, Say, oh, gosh, I'm like, I'm below normal.

00:50:23.029 --> 00:50:37.859
I don't know why that is, but I'll start taking such and such, you know, more zinc, and then in three months, I'll recheck that on that dose of zinc and see if I'm hitting the level that I want some optimal level, ideally on the upper range of normal.

00:50:38.839 --> 00:50:40.043
And at least then.

00:50:40.543 --> 00:50:46.373
Yeah, you're not shotgunning, you're actually working with your own physiology from a standpoint of knowledge.

00:50:46.884 --> 00:50:48.684
yeah, no, that is very sanguine advice.

00:50:48.734 --> 00:50:57.444
Uh, somebody else recommended, uh, functional medicine to me for just the same, I think the same sort of concerns I had about shooting in the dark.

00:50:57.444 --> 00:50:59.574
And I think, thank you for reinforcing that.

00:50:59.980 --> 00:51:09.032
Well, and the other thing to say in the field of sports medicine, again, they tend to be, evidence based, but they tend to be more data driven.

00:51:09.882 --> 00:51:46.957
And so, yeah, you can get a lot of good data in terms of exercise physiology and sports medicine, or in terms of physiatry or physical therapy, degrees of motion, even just resting tension in the body, these can be measured and that's what the elite athletes are working with, whether they be swimmers or, uh, rock climbers or what have you, they, a lot of them, you know, they get to that level by at some point kind of going into, as it were, the, the biomarkers or the science of that, which they're endeavoring to do all those guys on, on the warriors,

00:51:47.872 --> 00:51:48.712
yes, yes,

00:51:49.097 --> 00:51:50.527
they know their numbers.

00:51:51.072 --> 00:51:51.762
Oh, wow.

00:51:51.772 --> 00:51:52.122
Okay.

00:51:52.607 --> 00:51:53.038
Okay.

00:51:53.538 --> 00:51:54.017
Okay.

00:51:54.107 --> 00:51:54.417
Got

00:51:54.622 --> 00:51:58.242
and all the rest of us are farting around.

00:51:58.242 --> 00:51:59.482
haha got it

00:51:59.902 --> 00:52:16.076
mean, no, there's no doubt that, uh, that, uh, those, those sports that have a lot of money in them, those sports have, certainly embraced a lot of science and I think sports like ours, and also obviously I'm not like.

00:52:16.461 --> 00:52:18.161
An athlete of that caliber.

00:52:18.181 --> 00:52:28.093
I think the rest of us kind of have to just take that lead and learn from people who have, who are doing those things and not, not, you know, not reinvent, the proverbial, so no, I think you're right.

00:52:28.456 --> 00:52:30.367
Now, the goal is to reinvent the wheel.

00:52:30.616 --> 00:52:36.186
In other words, to learn something often is to, for you to learn it The first time.

00:52:36.686 --> 00:52:42.216
else may have learned it, but for whatever reason it never transferred into your realm.

00:52:42.926 --> 00:52:47.471
You can, you can cognitively or intellectually understand it, but, um.

00:52:48.251 --> 00:53:00.932
And I think it does help when you, uh, even maybe this is the ultimate purpose of your series is, trying on these other strategies of other people and see what fits for you.

00:53:00.932 --> 00:53:04.282
And that's, of course, that's how we all go through life.

00:53:04.657 --> 00:53:05.721
I think that's exactly right.

00:53:05.866 --> 00:53:27.036
I think it starts with like, uh, the cognition and then maybe moves on to, uh, you know, the willingness to take a chance and put the, uh, resources towards it and then ultimately figure out through, uh, Experimentation, what is, what isn't that works the best and then kind of customize it few things you excel at.

00:53:27.261 --> 00:53:31.481
What is one thing that you wish you were, uh, you were good at that.

00:53:31.481 --> 00:53:31.991
You're not.

00:53:32.335 --> 00:53:36.785
there was a guy from Australia who would come to Mavericks every year named Tony Ray.

00:53:37.285 --> 00:53:40.435
Tony Ray could paddle faster than anyone I had ever seen.

00:53:40.925 --> 00:53:41.585
And I really.

00:53:42.085 --> 00:53:50.795
But watch him and watch how he would use his arms and the how deep he would put his hands into the water and how thick his board was.

00:53:50.795 --> 00:53:58.818
And, and it isn't that I, obsess about paddling faster, but in answer to your question, I would like to paddle faster.

00:53:59.748 --> 00:54:00.648
And it is.

00:54:00.798 --> 00:54:01.518
And also.

00:54:02.063 --> 00:54:29.363
What I see among my peers, meaning surfers of my age, is that they begin to not be able to paddle as fast, and consequently, they end up taking off later, and they end up falling, or not being able to stand on their board properly, because the principal deficit being paddling speed.

00:54:29.863 --> 00:54:34.023
So a lot of, you can make up for in terms of loss of speed.

00:54:34.648 --> 00:54:44.578
Of going to lower rocker planes, so flatter boards, so like a fish fundamentally is a flatter rocker plane, and they just paddle a hell of a lot better.

00:54:44.628 --> 00:54:45.318
They just do.

00:54:45.753 --> 00:54:50.611
I consciously worked with that as something to improve upon, if you will.

00:54:50.732 --> 00:54:51.182
Got it.

00:54:51.518 --> 00:54:58.645
And I don't think you're any slouch when it comes to battling, but I can see that when you look at all your other gifts.

00:54:58.995 --> 00:55:01.925
With the, with the sport, maybe that's the one that you would like to,

00:55:02.219 --> 00:55:06.764
No, but also I would tell you, honestly, it is the one that I would notice as I've gotten older.

00:55:07.047 --> 00:55:08.907
The paddling speed just drops off a little bit.

00:55:08.907 --> 00:55:10.557
I can sprint paddle the same,

00:55:11.177 --> 00:55:11.527
yeah,

00:55:11.607 --> 00:55:31.578
but in doing my, some of these sort of, uh, heroic paddles, if you will, you know, these hour long paddles or whatever, they take longer, And if I'm paddling with a younger friend or someone who's a great paddler, like Grant Washburn, who I surf with a lot, another big wave rider, Grant, he just paddles faster than all of and how much faster?

00:55:31.698 --> 00:55:36.578
I don't know, 5%, 10 percent maybe, but in big wave surfing, that's everything.

00:55:38.523 --> 00:55:39.163
sure,

00:55:39.668 --> 00:55:41.748
percentage increments make a big difference.

00:55:42.248 --> 00:55:55.077
no, I think it adds up over a long session, a long battle, that little bit of extra speed and, uh, capacity probably has a Huge, huge impact on one's performance.

00:55:55.540 --> 00:56:05.506
maybe In the last, maybe five or 10 years, any new behavior, any new habit you find has most, improved your life?

00:56:06.076 --> 00:56:10.573
I would say I just have an ever improving bullshit detector.

00:56:11.110 --> 00:56:12.820
I don't suffer fools gladly.

00:56:13.210 --> 00:56:14.000
I just don't.

00:56:14.100 --> 00:56:22.430
I don't waste a lot of time with people who, I don't know what they, this can be a glib answer when people would say, what are you afraid of?

00:56:22.930 --> 00:56:24.850
What I'm afraid of is superficiality.

00:56:25.350 --> 00:56:26.210
I like depth.

00:56:26.210 --> 00:56:27.410
I like complexity.

00:56:27.500 --> 00:56:28.610
I like the unknown.

00:56:29.110 --> 00:56:41.943
But if it's just whatever, small talk, you know, in this sense, I, I prefer, prefer my own company actually, or, or friends I have who are really rigorous and engaged.

00:56:42.443 --> 00:56:46.443
how does that translate to, uh, any new maybe behavior?

00:56:46.806 --> 00:56:48.676
You know, yeah, it does, it, um.

00:56:49.676 --> 00:56:51.067
A degree of intolerance.

00:56:52.067 --> 00:57:20.760
You know, uh, I, I've not to say that there's a long line of people wanting to, engage me as a person, it's a month's long wait to work with me, it's like a six month wait at this point, it's, it's embarrassing even, uh, especially for people with life threatening illness, but, but I don't, um, it's hard, you I don't, I didn't make it very hard for you to get in touch with me just because you, you know, we had, I had a friend in common, but, I don't have a website.

00:57:21.160 --> 00:57:23.130
I don't make it easy for people to get to me.

00:57:23.240 --> 00:57:23.860
I just don't.

00:57:24.805 --> 00:57:28.735
The Biden Ballard writers and people want to do articles and stuff.

00:57:29.140 --> 00:57:29.721
Mhm.

00:57:30.326 --> 00:57:31.905
I don't bother with them at all.

00:57:32.405 --> 00:57:33.715
I've learned the hard way that way.

00:57:33.775 --> 00:57:35.655
I mean, I just, it isn't what it is.

00:57:35.705 --> 00:57:36.925
I'm not interested in that.

00:57:37.420 --> 00:57:37.850
Fair.

00:57:38.348 --> 00:57:39.418
your proposal.

00:57:40.038 --> 00:57:42.318
I liked the idea of, as it were.

00:57:42.948 --> 00:57:50.158
What it is to, uh, age gracefully or to, to be healthy as you get older as a surfer.

00:57:50.658 --> 00:57:51.208
Yes.

00:57:51.243 --> 00:57:51.533
Great.

00:57:51.763 --> 00:57:53.593
That's a, that's a wonderful topic.

00:57:54.163 --> 00:57:54.623
think it is.

00:57:54.623 --> 00:58:03.156
And I think, uh, I think this conversation shall hopefully benefit a lot of people in, in a material way.

00:58:03.636 --> 00:58:06.226
here's another, uh, another kind of interesting question.

00:58:06.726 --> 00:58:11.090
do you love your, uh, your future or your past more?

00:58:11.480 --> 00:58:13.030
Well, the future doesn't exist.

00:58:13.150 --> 00:58:23.460
And the past, as we're learning this more or less a matter of interpretation or opinion or sort of the Rashomon effect.

00:58:23.960 --> 00:58:25.471
So all there is, is the present.

00:58:25.971 --> 00:58:26.620
And so.

00:58:27.110 --> 00:58:31.050
Um, you know, I, I don't worry about my past, really.

00:58:31.090 --> 00:58:35.860
I, I, I've kept a log or a journal basically since I was 16.

00:58:36.490 --> 00:58:41.350
And I do, I do have a lot of writings, if you will.

00:58:41.840 --> 00:58:44.706
but, I'm all about what's happening right now.

00:58:45.076 --> 00:58:46.536
That's, uh, that's a great answer.

00:58:47.003 --> 00:58:53.403
now is, the only dimension we have, uh, in front of us that we have the, highest ability to influence.

00:58:53.988 --> 00:59:00.131
Well, that and I mean, really, when you study spiritual traditions, they all arrive at that same viewpoint.

00:59:00.651 --> 00:59:01.791
It's only about the now.

00:59:02.771 --> 00:59:05.692
Yeah, you're supposed to take lessons from the past.

00:59:06.531 --> 00:59:09.351
but it's to the degree to which you can apply them.

00:59:10.091 --> 00:59:13.231
It has to do with, to yourself, not to others.

00:59:13.731 --> 00:59:15.851
Do you have a meditation practice, Mark?

00:59:16.351 --> 00:59:16.781
Surfing.

00:59:17.241 --> 00:59:25.381
there was one great book written by a guy named Kent Pearson, who was an Australian sociologist, and I was interested in his work.

00:59:25.381 --> 00:59:32.981
He had died, and at one point I went specifically to see his widow in Australia because I wanted to see his papers.

00:59:33.581 --> 00:59:40.685
I was really interested in his writings, and what he did was he did studies of trying to understand why people surf.

00:59:41.205 --> 00:59:44.898
These were in depth studies, I mean, PhD level.

00:59:45.503 --> 00:59:47.603
Australians take this stuff seriously.

00:59:47.983 --> 00:59:51.041
And, it wasn't even in as many words as this.

00:59:51.298 --> 00:59:54.318
It was, what's the principal reason why you serve?

00:59:54.948 --> 00:59:58.705
And it was to do with its meditative properties.

00:59:58.960 --> 00:59:59.780
and again, all that.

00:59:59.951 --> 01:00:21.442
time that we spent sitting around out there in the water that strange feeling of things sort of washing away that you had been tussling with in your mind and trying to figure out with the problems with whomever and whatever and the affording this and that and bills and the future, the future, um, you know, the future only becomes this.

01:00:22.021 --> 01:00:29.611
Really, really wonderful childish thing of believing that there's going to be a great way that's going to come to you in the next few moments.

01:00:30.611 --> 01:00:32.331
And that is its own meditation.

01:00:32.831 --> 01:00:33.381
Fair enough

01:00:33.841 --> 01:00:39.106
I would agree that, ultimately for me, and I think for many of us, I think.

01:00:39.427 --> 01:00:51.805
sports assume a meditation quality when we find that flow and allows us to, uh, be that much more present, and that heightened perception and all of those things that, come to that state.

01:00:52.088 --> 01:00:55.082
And I think that's probably what I enjoy the most about them.

01:00:55.367 --> 01:01:03.951
One of the ways I proceed in my medical advocacy practice is I only take on one new case a week these, I don't treat them.

01:01:03.961 --> 01:01:05.621
I don't prescribe things to them.

01:01:05.621 --> 01:01:12.561
I, you know, I help them figure out things that they can do set them up to sort of embark on a different course with their illness.

01:01:12.641 --> 01:01:16.297
And so I often, in my dreams even,

01:01:16.911 --> 01:01:17.511
Mm hmm.

01:01:17.526 --> 01:01:22.463
also when I'm out in the water, the solution to a case will come to me.

01:01:22.996 --> 01:01:25.216
What I'm not specifically looking for it,

01:01:25.716 --> 01:01:26.146
Fair.

01:01:26.306 --> 01:01:26.746
Yeah.

01:01:26.956 --> 01:01:30.176
and that becomes, uh, something that I can't.

01:01:30.731 --> 01:01:44.291
Deliberately create in the water, but it happens when I don't know, there's maybe it's pretty inconsistent and there's just some ray of light over some body of kelp or something.

01:01:44.761 --> 01:01:46.411
And then boom, there it is.

01:01:46.611 --> 01:01:49.281
And I know exactly what I need to do on a given case.

01:01:49.491 --> 01:01:50.981
I don't have to write it down or anything else.

01:01:50.981 --> 01:01:52.051
It's so evident.

01:01:52.192 --> 01:01:53.041
I'll remember it.

01:01:53.686 --> 01:01:55.896
that's happened so many times and what it.

01:01:55.896 --> 01:01:55.966
Yeah.

01:01:56.386 --> 01:02:08.286
When it doesn't happen is when I've taken on too many cases, too much work, these problems of others that I'm trying to help them solve, they become something encumbering to me.

01:02:08.667 --> 01:02:15.489
then sometimes for many people who surf, they're trying to leave the land, you know, on the beach as it were.

01:02:15.795 --> 01:02:21.980
I've actually, in the balance, if you will, tried to make it so that it.

01:02:22.674 --> 01:02:26.984
I don't mind carrying some of the people I'm trying to help with me.

01:02:27.559 --> 01:02:48.994
When I go out, especially on these fairly complex, difficult expeditions to the outer realm or what have you, because so often what I'm going through is what they're going through, trying to make something happen in the most unlikely conditions imaginable.

01:02:49.750 --> 01:02:53.509
In 20 and 30 foot surf, there's nobody else who even wanted to go out.

01:02:53.509 --> 01:02:55.000
They didn't even want to deal with it.

01:02:55.259 --> 01:02:58.649
And it can be, you know, horrific winds or something.

01:02:58.659 --> 01:03:02.652
And I'm just trying to figure out, is it possible to go out and actually get a ride?

01:03:02.697 --> 01:03:14.382
Sure, I'm going to do a crazy segue here, a question I want to ask you that, surfing the waters at Ocean Beach, probably more than most people out there.

01:03:14.840 --> 01:03:21.879
even myself in my, whatever, decade long span at the beach, I've seen some pretty interesting.

01:03:22.389 --> 01:03:30.563
Marine life, when I tell people that I've seen dolphins out there just that part, I think dolphins and the occasional whale out there.

01:03:30.563 --> 01:03:32.203
I people get pretty astonished.

01:03:32.393 --> 01:03:38.793
So curious what has been some of the most interesting wildlife that you might have seen, in the water.

01:03:38.983 --> 01:03:45.180
And if you have also ever seen the, the men in the, in the gray suit.

01:03:45.436 --> 01:03:46.466
So to speak.

01:03:46.651 --> 01:03:52.493
I have, I've had one encounter with, a great white, at a sort of remote spot south of here.

01:03:52.823 --> 01:03:55.703
Again, right in peak great white season.

01:03:55.753 --> 01:03:57.880
And, um, it was profound.

01:03:57.910 --> 01:04:00.817
It was close to me and it was telling me I'm here.

01:04:01.276 --> 01:04:13.623
It was this, it came up out of the water about 15 feet away from me but it first appeared as just a dome of water being lifted and when it was about 2 feet high.

01:04:14.043 --> 01:04:17.846
Then I saw pectoral fin just slicing through it, and it was elegant.

01:04:17.886 --> 01:04:24.946
It was elegant how it slides through, and then the head emerged on the other end of the dome, literally with the eye looking at me.

01:04:25.476 --> 01:04:48.183
And it was this, you know, it was checking me out, uh, it was territorial, the place where we were is, uh, you know, it's a, it's a seal rookery, so, so what do you expect, dumb shit, you know, but in all these years I've been surfing there, I've never had such an encounter right away it was okay, ever more for about that June through end of September, early October.

01:04:48.634 --> 01:04:52.693
I'm not going to surf there again, and I've held to that pretty rigorously.

01:04:53.123 --> 01:05:09.640
The other most profound experience was I was out with one friend on a big day at Mavericks, and it was getting into the spring, so February, March, something like that, and this friend says, Doc, there's a whale going to ram us.

01:05:10.205 --> 01:05:11.648
And it's coming up from the south.

01:05:12.123 --> 01:05:15.123
it's a giant gray whale, whatever, 60 feet or something.

01:05:15.593 --> 01:05:19.203
it's not doing the diving thing underneath or porpoising kind of thing.

01:05:19.203 --> 01:05:21.473
It's just streaming across the surface.

01:05:22.013 --> 01:05:28.743
And it's, I don't know, 75 feet away or something heading right at us as a set came.

01:05:29.243 --> 01:05:29.863
Oh,

01:05:29.998 --> 01:05:33.898
I was exactly in position to take off and I, and I just wanted to get out of the way.

01:05:34.743 --> 01:05:39.613
And so I took off on this wave and I'm on like a 10 and a half foot board or something.

01:05:40.083 --> 01:05:44.873
And as I'm dropping in, the whale's back was in the trough in front of me.

01:05:46.343 --> 01:05:54.413
And so I had to fade deep around the whale, which I made, I made, I made, I made the fade.

01:05:54.413 --> 01:05:59.423
I made the bottom turn, rode the wave, came back out.

01:05:59.453 --> 01:06:08.773
And my friend is sitting there white because the whale, after it had done that, it had been breached through the back of the wave.

01:06:09.273 --> 01:06:15.223
And came down landing exploding right next to him just feet from him and then just kept on his way.

01:06:16.223 --> 01:06:17.463
gosh.

01:06:17.763 --> 01:06:24.163
That's, uh, that's, that's a remarkable, uh, thing to happen in the water.

01:06:24.163 --> 01:06:27.833
And, sounds like both of you came out unscathed, uh,

01:06:28.178 --> 01:06:28.538
Oh, yeah,

01:06:28.583 --> 01:06:29.103
like

01:06:29.438 --> 01:06:32.388
frequently re recreate the memory of it.

01:06:32.388 --> 01:06:34.418
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you remember that time.

01:06:34.888 --> 01:06:35.509
Oh, yeah.

01:06:35.759 --> 01:06:36.388
Oh, yeah.

01:06:37.033 --> 01:06:37.634
That's awesome.

01:06:37.973 --> 01:06:39.766
Mark, just some fun questions.

01:06:40.266 --> 01:06:48.686
talked about your food habits before, but, uh, if you had to, you know, eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would that be?

01:06:49.161 --> 01:06:57.641
That's easy, I've done three long trips to Japan, especially to the Northern Island Hokkaido, found some amazing big waves there.

01:06:58.422 --> 01:07:03.531
I could eat Japanese food three meals a day and be utterly happy.

01:07:04.000 --> 01:07:04.690
it's funny.

01:07:04.690 --> 01:07:11.019
Uh, when I spoke to our common friend, Kevin Starr recently, uh, guess what his, uh, response was.

01:07:11.179 --> 01:07:11.829
Similar,

01:07:12.250 --> 01:07:12.569
Yes.

01:07:12.779 --> 01:07:14.500
Hey, Mark.

01:07:14.500 --> 01:07:15.379
I know you love movies.

01:07:15.469 --> 01:07:18.480
Uh, what's a favorite movie you could watch again and again?

01:07:18.980 --> 01:07:30.189
you know, I worship Buster Keaton and I never tire of watching Keaton's films and, uh, During the pandemic, even it was probably the thing I missed the most.

01:07:30.269 --> 01:07:42.202
We're seeing those kinds of repertory or silent films and special showings and, I love Kurosawa's films from Japan and, and I miss those too.

01:07:42.577 --> 01:07:47.465
for better or for worse, just love really bad, dumb movies.

01:07:47.735 --> 01:07:50.305
And I've always, I've always loved horror films.

01:07:50.355 --> 01:07:50.955
Always.

01:07:51.790 --> 01:08:01.105
And fortunately, there's no shortage of good, bad horror films, so I put in a fair bit of time with, with them,

01:08:01.785 --> 01:08:02.285
Excellent.

01:08:02.984 --> 01:08:08.984
There was a big billboard out there and, uh, you wanted to leave a message for people out there, what would it say?

01:08:09.484 --> 01:08:09.914
huh?

01:08:10.914 --> 01:08:11.304
Okay.

01:08:11.642 --> 01:08:20.542
I mean, the master, Jordan Peele is the master now of, the short title, he hasn't done one called, huh, but he'll get, he'll get there.

01:08:20.797 --> 01:08:21.307
Sure.

01:08:21.523 --> 01:08:27.105
I mean, and, and and part of that reflects, I can't help but, of come down to earth on.

01:08:27.404 --> 01:08:33.823
It's disappointing the issues of truth in America, when I hear The bullshit, if you will.

01:08:34.096 --> 01:08:35.695
My reply is, is, huh?

01:08:36.012 --> 01:08:38.523
It's like, what, huh?

01:08:39.239 --> 01:08:39.829
No.

01:08:40.029 --> 01:08:40.239
I

01:08:40.364 --> 01:08:40.605
it.

01:08:40.855 --> 01:08:42.954
or Jordan Peele would say nope.

01:08:44.835 --> 01:08:45.555
Same difference.

01:08:46.645 --> 01:08:46.935
okay.

01:08:46.939 --> 01:08:52.430
So Billboard one would be her, and maybe if there was a choice for a second one, that would be Nope, and I, I love

01:08:52.444 --> 01:08:53.784
But nope, nope's already taken.

01:08:53.824 --> 01:08:54.429
that's his that's

01:08:57.529 --> 01:09:00.009
have to be like, the most original, exclusive one.

01:09:00.009 --> 01:09:03.033
Maybe just the one, you know, one that resonates with you.

01:09:03.416 --> 01:09:08.461
I think on that, that note of note, It's been most excellent, conversation.

01:09:08.609 --> 01:09:09.378
Alrighty, Kush,

01:09:11.628 --> 01:09:13.878
Wow, how inspiring is mark?

01:09:14.509 --> 01:09:15.918
Denesha is skilled.

01:09:16.548 --> 01:09:20.898
And meticulous in his approach in seeking adventure of the highest caliber.

01:09:21.528 --> 01:09:24.588
At 70, he is chasing monster waves.

01:09:24.918 --> 01:09:25.848
With the best of them.

01:09:26.718 --> 01:09:29.148
With an approach honed over decades.

01:09:29.748 --> 01:09:31.158
Of hard work and awareness.

01:09:31.788 --> 01:09:34.759
My jaw is still dropped from some fun stories.

01:09:35.418 --> 01:09:41.538
I came out inspired and wanting to double down on my own physio before the next season arrives.

01:09:42.078 --> 01:09:43.428
Thanks for tuning in France.

01:09:43.668 --> 01:09:45.948
Hope you enjoyed this chat as much as I did.

01:09:46.352 --> 01:09:49.926
Please give us a follow Until next time stay.

01:09:50.256 --> 01:09:50.796
ASIS.