Synopsis
From the best freestyle surfer in the world, an inspiring and moving memoir about his ascendance to the top of the surfing world while struggling for most of his young life with undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome
Clay Marzo has an almost preternatural gift with a surfboard. From his first moments underwater (he learned to swim at two months old) to his first ventures atop his father’s surfboard as a toddler, it was obvious that Marzo’s single-minded focus on all things surfing was unique. But not until late in his teens, when this surfing phenom was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, did the deeper reasons for his obsession—and his astonishing gift for surfing—become clear.
Just Add Water is the remarkable story of Marzo’s rise to the top of the pro surfing world—and the personal trials he overcame in making it there. Marzo endured a difficult childhood. He was a colicky baby who his mother found could be soothed only with water. Later, as he entered school, his undiagnosed Asperger’s made it tough for him to relate to his peers and fit in, but his relationship with the wave was elemental. Marzo could always turn to surfing, the only place where he truly felt at peace.
Unflinching and inspiring, Just Add Water is a brave memoir from a one-of-a-kind surfing savant who has electrified fans around the world with his gift and whose story speaks boldly to the hope and ultimate triumph of the human spirit.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Authors
CLAY MARZO is a professional surfer, widely regarded as one of the best in the world. Also a YouTube sensation, he has won numerous surfing competitions and was the subject of the popular surfing film Just Add Water. Marzo works extensively with Surfers Healing, a charity for autistic youth.
BOB YEHLING is an award-winning surfing journalist and author of nine books.
From the Back Cover
Advance praise for Just Add Water
A hyperactive, autistic kid who could not pay attention in school becomes a top surfer. The water was his power source and he thrived in a sport that he loved.
Temple Grandin, author of The Autistic Brain
Clay Marzo is an amazing, nearly amphibious surfer, with a one-of-a-kind life story. What an inspiring book!
Matt Warshaw, author of The Encyclopedia of Surfing
Marzo is one of the most amazing surfers to come along in years. He s fantastic and so is this book. Great stuff.
Peter Townend, 1976 world surfing champion
A hyperactive, autistic kid who could not pay attention in school becomes a top surfer. The water was his power source and he thrived in a sport that he loved.
Temple Grandin, author of The Autistic Brain
Clay Marzo is an amazing, nearly amphibious surfer, with a one-of-a-kind life story. What an inspiring book!
Matt Warshaw, author of The Encyclopedia of Surfing
Marzo is one of the most amazing surfers to come along in years. He s fantastic and so is this book. Great stuff.
Peter Townend, 1976 world surfing champion
From the Inside Flap
Clay Marzo has an almost preternatural gift with a surfboard. Kelly Slater envies his creativity, Laird Hamilton admires his artistry. From his first moments underwater (he learned to swim at two months old) to his first ventures atop his father s surfboard as a toddler, it was obvious that Marzo s single-minded focus on all things surfing was unique. But not until late in his teens, when this surfing phenom was diagnosed with Asperger s syndrome, did the deeper reasons for his obsession and his astonishing gift for surfing become clear.
Just Add Water is the remarkable story of Marzo s rise to the top of the pro surfing world and the personal trials he overcame in making it there. Even with the incredible support of a passionate surfing family, Marzo endured a difficult childhood. He was a colicky baby who his mother found could be soothed only with water. Later, as he entered school, his undiagnosed Asperger s made it tough for him to relate to his peers and fit in, but his relationship with the wave was elemental. Marzo could always turn to surfing, the only place where he truly felt at peace.
Unflinching and inspiring, Just Add Water is a brave memoir from a one-of-a-kind surfing savant who has electrified fans around the world with his gift and whose story speaks boldly to the hope and ultimate triumph of the human spirit. Now, for the first time ever, Clay Marzo tells his story.
Just Add Water is the remarkable story of Marzo s rise to the top of the pro surfing world and the personal trials he overcame in making it there. Even with the incredible support of a passionate surfing family, Marzo endured a difficult childhood. He was a colicky baby who his mother found could be soothed only with water. Later, as he entered school, his undiagnosed Asperger s made it tough for him to relate to his peers and fit in, but his relationship with the wave was elemental. Marzo could always turn to surfing, the only place where he truly felt at peace.
Unflinching and inspiring, Just Add Water is a brave memoir from a one-of-a-kind surfing savant who has electrified fans around the world with his gift and whose story speaks boldly to the hope and ultimate triumph of the human spirit. Now, for the first time ever, Clay Marzo tells his story.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In the Pocket
There’s a set! Look at the set coming! Look at the first one barreling .?.?. here comes one—look at this one, dude! See how you go underground when you’re in there, then it throws you into the shallow? Sometimes there’s a little left that goes into the bay, a re-form that happens when it gets really big—but you’d rather surf somewhere else .?.?. you don’t want to surf out here when it’s bigger than five or six feet. It gets too gnarly, closes out, and throws you on that shallow reef. This is a small wave spot. It’s the steepest small wave around. It’s best when it’s glassy, but the wind’s coming from a weird direction .?.?. see how the wave is balling up?
was a big set we saw earlier, so much bigger than anything else .?.?. that was the north influence. The south influence pushes into the total wave shape. It breaks from two directions here, sometimes at the same time. It gives me a thrill, this kind of wave.
The pristine waters off Maui’s west coast convey majesty and presence befitting the ancient Polynesian Sport of Kings. They are about to be stirred by a tall, angular magician with a swimmer’s build and moves that very few on earth can match. Every time Clay Marzo enters the Pacific—nearly every sunlit hour of every day he’s not traveling, if the waves cooperate—he paddles out to commingle with his soul, which seems to breathe with gills. Waves come to him as if silently summoned, enabling him to turn around, drop in, and unleash rides so dynamic, outrageous, daring, and graceful that you’re left grasping for superlatives. He speeds through waves like a dolphin, explodes off the top like an attacking leopard, inverts and bends into impossible positions like an Olympic gymnast .?.?. and always seems to land on his feet. Like a cat.
Such is the case on a warm morning charged with sea spray and crowded surf spots, which can mean only one thing: the waves are pounding. The season’s first major northwest swell has arrived, bringing waves up to forty feet at infamous Pe’ahi, or Jaws, where tow-in surfers risk their lives as they tackle the monsters calved by a disturbance in the Aleutian Islands, far to the north. Meanwhile, at a break called Windmills, Clay Marzo sits with a videographer, fifteen miles and a world away from the nineteenth-century colonial seaside mystique of Lahaina and the luxury resorts on Kaanapali Beach. To the southeast, Haleakala towers two miles above the island, a conic crown and dormant volcano where Jimi Hendrix once played live, where silence surpassed only by space exists.
Silence. Nothing suits Clay better. He is entirely silent as he faces west, his hands smacking the steering wheel, his body twitching. He surveys the horizon, then the lineup, where waves peel in both directions from their breaking point. His mind works out the wave angles, where they break, how they break, and how the current and ever-present trade winds impact them. When wave faces approach fifteen feet, as they do at Windmills on this day, good choices can become life-saving choices. His focus is laserlike, absolute. Nothing can or will interrupt his concentration.
After studying the waves for forty-five minutes, Clay grabs his board and walks toward the ocean. He walks away from his life on land, a mighty and never-ending struggle between the way his brain is wired and the noise, crowds, social interactions, expectations, anxieties, and facial expressions the rest of us use to get by. He negotiates the everyday world clumsily, always a step off or to the side, it seems. If he’s connected to it at all, which is often not the case. If the activity of the moment isn’t about surfing, eating, basketball, music, or his girlfriend, Jade Barton, he’s oblivious. Uncomfortable.
There’s nothing uncomfortable about the way he approaches the ocean. His coordination while walking rocks and steep trails is superior, rhythmic, and smoother than the way most people amble down the road. His eyes scan from side to side, watching the action of every wave, calculating where to paddle out and position himself. He throws himself into the frothing shorebreak, surfaces, shakes his head a few times, yells out with excitement (or is it the relief of no longer being on land?), and sets off in the direction of the neighboring island of Lanai with paddle strokes that his videographer, Adam Klevin, calls “the best I’ve ever seen. He would win every paddle battle there is. Hands down.”
Minutes later, a set of twelve- to fifteen-foot behemoths approaches. Clay paddles into position. He notices a bump in the wave, a subtle shift beyond the sensory range of most humans. He wheels his board around and strokes to a point he’s already predetermined and anticipated through knowledge and intuition. His deep, powerful strokes are those of a champion swimmer. His instincts are beyond that. When a wave emerges and jacks up to its full two-story height, Clay sits in perfect position. He sticks a GoPro camera in his mouth (he and Klevin are filming), paddles hard, easily catches the wave, and looks down the line, his right foot forward, the direction in which he faces the wave.
Let the show begin. Clay connects in a way one would imagine Mozart diving into the wellspring of his latest symphony, Beethoven hugging the floor with his deaf ear to feel the vibration of his Fifth, or Monet immersing himself in French light. He races down the wave face as it peels behind him, seemingly at one with it. Clay leans like a motorcycle street racer into a deep bottom turn and propels himself up the face, then slots himself inside the pocket of the wave.
Just like that, he’s gone. Disappeared. Out of view. Spectators on the rocky beach or in their cars wonder the same thing: is he coming out?
Seconds later he emerges, arms raised high, GoPro still in his mouth, the shot of him scorching a nasty Windmills barrel certain to be played over and over on his flat-screen later in the day. And soon, on video throughout the world. Whenever Clay Marzo hits it big, the beach buzzes and the world finds out soon enough. “Kid’s off the charts,” says Les Potts, a long-board surfing legend who’s produced and witnessed plenty of greatness in his fifty years of surfing. “How’d he find that tube?”
This is where rides usually end, where most surfers pull out and paddle into position for another wave while story-building their ride to everyone else in the lineup.
Clay is warming up for round two. His fans on the beach wonder, what the hell is he going to do next? They cannot guess, but they know they may see something no other surfer in the world will attempt, let alone execute successfully. Anything is possible.
Clay whips to the bottom of the wave to gain speed and propulsion, then smacks it off the top, getting a few feet of air before landing in the wave. He throws the tail of his board sideways, like a skateboarder in a half-pipe, leaving a rooster tail of displaced water, and descends onto the diminishing lip backwards.
Now it’s time for the Merlin moment, when a wizard’s instincts take over: about to be swallowed by the massive turbulence, and while lying back almost in a sleeping position, he whips the tail of the board back around. With cat-quick moves and the flexibility of a long-standing yogi, he jerks to his feet, his reverse throw-tail complete, and snaps a few more moves—Bam! Bam! Bam! He keeps standing until his board sinks, slowly taking him down. Call it surfing’s version of the denouement, when the hero rides into the sunset.
There’s a set! Look at the set coming! Look at the first one barreling .?.?. here comes one—look at this one, dude! See how you go underground when you’re in there, then it throws you into the shallow? Sometimes there’s a little left that goes into the bay, a re-form that happens when it gets really big—but you’d rather surf somewhere else .?.?. you don’t want to surf out here when it’s bigger than five or six feet. It gets too gnarly, closes out, and throws you on that shallow reef. This is a small wave spot. It’s the steepest small wave around. It’s best when it’s glassy, but the wind’s coming from a weird direction .?.?. see how the wave is balling up?
was a big set we saw earlier, so much bigger than anything else .?.?. that was the north influence. The south influence pushes into the total wave shape. It breaks from two directions here, sometimes at the same time. It gives me a thrill, this kind of wave.
The pristine waters off Maui’s west coast convey majesty and presence befitting the ancient Polynesian Sport of Kings. They are about to be stirred by a tall, angular magician with a swimmer’s build and moves that very few on earth can match. Every time Clay Marzo enters the Pacific—nearly every sunlit hour of every day he’s not traveling, if the waves cooperate—he paddles out to commingle with his soul, which seems to breathe with gills. Waves come to him as if silently summoned, enabling him to turn around, drop in, and unleash rides so dynamic, outrageous, daring, and graceful that you’re left grasping for superlatives. He speeds through waves like a dolphin, explodes off the top like an attacking leopard, inverts and bends into impossible positions like an Olympic gymnast .?.?. and always seems to land on his feet. Like a cat.
Such is the case on a warm morning charged with sea spray and crowded surf spots, which can mean only one thing: the waves are pounding. The season’s first major northwest swell has arrived, bringing waves up to forty feet at infamous Pe’ahi, or Jaws, where tow-in surfers risk their lives as they tackle the monsters calved by a disturbance in the Aleutian Islands, far to the north. Meanwhile, at a break called Windmills, Clay Marzo sits with a videographer, fifteen miles and a world away from the nineteenth-century colonial seaside mystique of Lahaina and the luxury resorts on Kaanapali Beach. To the southeast, Haleakala towers two miles above the island, a conic crown and dormant volcano where Jimi Hendrix once played live, where silence surpassed only by space exists.
Silence. Nothing suits Clay better. He is entirely silent as he faces west, his hands smacking the steering wheel, his body twitching. He surveys the horizon, then the lineup, where waves peel in both directions from their breaking point. His mind works out the wave angles, where they break, how they break, and how the current and ever-present trade winds impact them. When wave faces approach fifteen feet, as they do at Windmills on this day, good choices can become life-saving choices. His focus is laserlike, absolute. Nothing can or will interrupt his concentration.
After studying the waves for forty-five minutes, Clay grabs his board and walks toward the ocean. He walks away from his life on land, a mighty and never-ending struggle between the way his brain is wired and the noise, crowds, social interactions, expectations, anxieties, and facial expressions the rest of us use to get by. He negotiates the everyday world clumsily, always a step off or to the side, it seems. If he’s connected to it at all, which is often not the case. If the activity of the moment isn’t about surfing, eating, basketball, music, or his girlfriend, Jade Barton, he’s oblivious. Uncomfortable.
There’s nothing uncomfortable about the way he approaches the ocean. His coordination while walking rocks and steep trails is superior, rhythmic, and smoother than the way most people amble down the road. His eyes scan from side to side, watching the action of every wave, calculating where to paddle out and position himself. He throws himself into the frothing shorebreak, surfaces, shakes his head a few times, yells out with excitement (or is it the relief of no longer being on land?), and sets off in the direction of the neighboring island of Lanai with paddle strokes that his videographer, Adam Klevin, calls “the best I’ve ever seen. He would win every paddle battle there is. Hands down.”
Minutes later, a set of twelve- to fifteen-foot behemoths approaches. Clay paddles into position. He notices a bump in the wave, a subtle shift beyond the sensory range of most humans. He wheels his board around and strokes to a point he’s already predetermined and anticipated through knowledge and intuition. His deep, powerful strokes are those of a champion swimmer. His instincts are beyond that. When a wave emerges and jacks up to its full two-story height, Clay sits in perfect position. He sticks a GoPro camera in his mouth (he and Klevin are filming), paddles hard, easily catches the wave, and looks down the line, his right foot forward, the direction in which he faces the wave.
Let the show begin. Clay connects in a way one would imagine Mozart diving into the wellspring of his latest symphony, Beethoven hugging the floor with his deaf ear to feel the vibration of his Fifth, or Monet immersing himself in French light. He races down the wave face as it peels behind him, seemingly at one with it. Clay leans like a motorcycle street racer into a deep bottom turn and propels himself up the face, then slots himself inside the pocket of the wave.
Just like that, he’s gone. Disappeared. Out of view. Spectators on the rocky beach or in their cars wonder the same thing: is he coming out?
Seconds later he emerges, arms raised high, GoPro still in his mouth, the shot of him scorching a nasty Windmills barrel certain to be played over and over on his flat-screen later in the day. And soon, on video throughout the world. Whenever Clay Marzo hits it big, the beach buzzes and the world finds out soon enough. “Kid’s off the charts,” says Les Potts, a long-board surfing legend who’s produced and witnessed plenty of greatness in his fifty years of surfing. “How’d he find that tube?”
This is where rides usually end, where most surfers pull out and paddle into position for another wave while story-building their ride to everyone else in the lineup.
Clay is warming up for round two. His fans on the beach wonder, what the hell is he going to do next? They cannot guess, but they know they may see something no other surfer in the world will attempt, let alone execute successfully. Anything is possible.
Clay whips to the bottom of the wave to gain speed and propulsion, then smacks it off the top, getting a few feet of air before landing in the wave. He throws the tail of his board sideways, like a skateboarder in a half-pipe, leaving a rooster tail of displaced water, and descends onto the diminishing lip backwards.
Now it’s time for the Merlin moment, when a wizard’s instincts take over: about to be swallowed by the massive turbulence, and while lying back almost in a sleeping position, he whips the tail of the board back around. With cat-quick moves and the flexibility of a long-standing yogi, he jerks to his feet, his reverse throw-tail complete, and snaps a few more moves—Bam! Bam! Bam! He keeps standing until his board sinks, slowly taking him down. Call it surfing’s version of the denouement, when the hero rides into the sunset.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Search results for Just Add Water: A Surfing Savant's Journey with...
Stock Image
Just Add Water : A Surfing Savant's Journey with Asperger's
Published by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2015
ISBN 10: 0544256212
ISBN 13: 9780544256217
Used
Hardcover
Seller: Better World Books, Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Very Good. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. Seller Inventory # 10881320-6
Stock Image
Just Add Water: A Surfing Savant's Journey with Asperger's
Published by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
ISBN 10: 0544256212
ISBN 13: 9780544256217
Used
Hardcover
Seller: ThriftBooks-Atlanta, AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0544256212I4N00
Stock Image
Just Add Water: A Surfing Savant's Journey with Asperger's
Published by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
ISBN 10: 0544256212
ISBN 13: 9780544256217
Used
Hardcover
Seller: ThriftBooks-Atlanta, AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. Former library book; Missing dust jacket; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0544256212I4N11
Stock Image
Just Add Water: A Surfing Savant's Journey with Asperger's
Published by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt July 2015, 2015
ISBN 10: 0544256212
ISBN 13: 9780544256217
Used
Hardcover
Seller: Montclair Book Center, Montclair, NJ, U.S.A.
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: USED Very Good. Seller Inventory # 179810
Stock Image
Just Add Water: A Surfing Savants Journey With Aspergers
Published by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
ISBN 10: 0544256212
ISBN 13: 9780544256217
Used
Hardcover
Seller: Brit Books, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Used; Very Good. ***Simply Brit*** Welcome to our online used book store, where affordability meets great quality. Dive into a world of captivating reads without breaking the bank. We take pride in offering a wide selection of used books, from classics to hidden gems, ensuring there is something for every literary palate. All orders are shipped within 24 hours and our lightning fast-delivery within 48 hours coupled with our prompt customer service ensures a smooth journey from ordering to delivery. Discover the joy of reading with us, your trusted source for affordable books that do not compromise on quality. Seller Inventory # 3889149
Buy Used
US$ 8.30
Shipping:
US$ 21.00
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Quantity: 1 available
Stock Image
Just Add Water: A Surfing Savant's Journey with Asperger's
Published by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
ISBN 10: 0544256212
ISBN 13: 9780544256217
New
Hardcover
Seller: Toscana Books, AUSTIN, TX, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: new. Excellent Condition.Excels in customer satisfaction, prompt replies, and quality checks. Seller Inventory # Scanned0544256212
Stock Image
Just Add Water: A Surfing Savant's Journey with Asperger's
Published by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
ISBN 10: 0544256212
ISBN 13: 9780544256217
Used
Hardcover
Seller: medimops, Berlin, Germany
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: acceptable. Ausreichend/Acceptable: Exemplar mit vollständigem Text und sämtlichen Abbildungen oder Karten. Schmutztitel oder Vorsatz können fehlen. Einband bzw. Schutzumschlag weisen unter Umständen starke Gebrauchsspuren auf. / Describes a book or dust jacket that has the complete text pages (including those with maps or plates) but may lack endpapers, half-title, etc. (which must be noted). Binding, dust jacket (if any), etc may also be worn. Seller Inventory # M00544256212-B