I just want to be able surf everything - from big waves to small waves.
Every day of the year where the water is 76, day and night, and the waves roll high, I take my sled, without runners, and coast down the face of the big waves that roll in at Waikiki.
The place where I grew up is the center of surfing. Everyone who grows up on the North Shore surfs, and from October to March, you have the best waves in the world within a 5- to 7-mile stretch. I grew up in the center of these incredible sunsets and all these incredible waves. And then we have the Triple Crown of Surfing.
Surfing isn't really in my blood. It's hard to catch a big wave in Billingham.
Surfing big waves is not an extreme sport to me. I fall off, tumble down, and come up. My heart's racing because I'm thinking I almost drowned, and I thank God I can breathe again, but I always think, 'What am I hitting?' Water.
Big waves are a whole different ball game. You're riding a wave with an immense amount of speed and power, generally over 10 meters. On the face of the wave, obviously life and death thoughts start to happen.
What the studio didn't understand is that surfing is about a billion times more dangerous than skydiving. They would not allow the boys to skydive, but they allowed us to surf in pipeline in Hawaii. Nine-hundred foot waves. So we're out there in the middle where the greatest surfers in the world surf. They have these long lenses on from the beach, so they can't see anything. They are just shooting our faces in the Point Break.
I love to swim in the ocean in big waves.
I'm getting older now, and though I still surf well, it's hard for me to paddle in big surf.
