This is The Outside Podcast with Paddyo.

How do you yourself, like, fight off being myopic and territorial and try to stay zen about the physical pursuit of surfing?

Yeah, I mean, I think I do what like a lot of other

servers do. I either like know I'm going down to trestles in July and a south swell that's been

forecast for five days and everybody and their uncle will be out surfing and I just kind of resign

myself to trying to, you know, be in the crowd. I'll either try to surf off times or I'll

surf lesser waves. I do think also the best surfers who are the fittest and know the waves

the best do tend to get the waves. There is a bit of like meritocracy out in the water. So you just

make these tradeoffs about like what your goal is for the day.

Do you think that type of attitude is kind of the keystone and motivating more than the 1% of surfers to join surf rider and start moving towards the pursuit of surfing as a way to protect the environment?

I would hope that if you spend enough time in the ocean

and you learn to love these places that you're surfing,

that that would ultimately motivate you to become a steward of those places.

Oftentimes it takes a threat, whether it's a pollution event and oil spill,

a threat to a wave.

People will be shocked out of their complacency

and be like, you know, that's when they're really quick to call. Yeah. How can I help? All of a sudden,

I'm their best friend. One thing that I love about people who recreate outdoors is that we

mostly accept that enthusiastic effort in no way guarantees a desired outcome.

We climb heinous hills in search of yippy-filled downhills,

but we know there's always a chance we'll be greeted with icy death cookies from hell

or a gear malfunction that derails the entire adventure.

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