Surfer's Code: 12 Simple Lessons for Riding Through Life - Hardcover

Tomson, Shaun

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1423600762 ISBN 13: 9781423600763

Publisher: Gibbs Smith, 2006

Synopsis

In Surfer's Code: 12 Simple Lessons for Riding Through Life, world champion surfer Shaun Tomson shares the life lessons he's gathered from decades of surfing-from his boyhood adventures in South Africa to the world tour in the late 1970s to the business world today. For Tomson, surfing is a hobby, a sport, a religion, an obsession and more-it is a way of life. Tomson's life lessons have guided his career to the top of both professional competition and the world of business. Now, he shares these powerful lessons, born on the world's best swells, with all people-including those who might never step on a surfboard. These lessons are born of the collective wisdom of the surf community and are a powerful source of inspiration in the face of extraordinary challenges of every day life. "I tell people that I didn't develop or create the code. I simply wrote down what was out there all the time in my heart and in the hearts of many surfers, always there but sometimes overlooked. I like to think the code was always there, a part of every surfer's life, unspoken maybe, but in our hearts, ever since the ancient Polynesians started surfing so many thousands of years ago." -Shaun Tomson
Just a few of the lessons shared in Tomson's Surfer's Code:
I Will Never Turn My Back on the Ocean
I Will Take the Drop with Commitment
I Will Never Fight a Rip Tide
I Will Always Paddle Back Out
I Will Watch Out For Other Surfers
There Will Always Be Another Wave
I Will Catch a Wave Every Day>br> All Surfers Are Connected By One Ocean

About this title

About the Authors

Shaun Tomson was named one of the twenty-five most influential surfers of the twentieth century, and one of the sixteen greatest surfers of all time. He has created two multimillion-dollar clothing brands―Instinct and Solitude. He was born in Durban, South Africa, and now makes his home in Montecito, California.

Patrick Moser is the editor of Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing (University of Hawai'i Press, 2008). He collaborated with Shaun Tomson on Surfer's Code: 12 Simple Lessons for Riding through Life and has written articles for The Surfer's Journal and Surfer. He currently teaches writing and French language at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri where he also offers a course on the history and culture of surfing.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I had not been back to South Africa for eight years. I had left the country in 1995, right at the end of the Apartheid era. Although I had grown up in the resort town of Durban, I had spent much of the 1970s and '80s traveling the globe as a professional surfer. Now, in 2003, I had been invited back to Durban to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of my six-year winning streak, from 1973 to 1978, in South Africa's oldest and most prestigious professional surf contest, the Gunston 500.
On my first day at the beach I saw a sight that I could never have imagined while growing up. I was hurrying down the sand to take part in a surfing exhibition when I looked up and saw, coming directly toward me, three very attractive young women walking with a man. The first was a lovely Hindu girl-I could tell by the bindi (the red dot) on her forehead. She had long dark hair, wore a tiny bikini, and her belly button was pierced. She had one arm thrown around a black girl on her left side, and the other draped around the neck of an Indian guy on her right. Directly behind them walked a young woman in full Muslim regalia.

Edition details

• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1423600762
• ISBN 13: 9781423600763
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208