The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

Baboons are interesting animals. They are best known for having huge pink arses, shitting in their hands and throwing it at people they don’t like, and dragging their knuckles over the ground while they walk. They have occasionally been known for their penchant for exhibitionist sex. Most bafflingly among their many intriguing attributes is their uncanny ability to be able to learn how to read, that is recognise words and distinguish them from others. They share this ability with humans, and, curiously, Columbian pigeons. It is unclear whether a diet of cocaine was involved in the development of the ability in the latter. Words baboons have in the past been proven to be able to recognise include the words “surf”, “wave”, “swell”, “drop-in” and “you bastard”. Under test conditions they have been shown to be able to acquire a vocabulary of up to 308 words, the vast majority of them swear words.    One ability baboons are emphatically not renowned for being able to master is th...

Before I learned to surf I was a kayaker. I worked as a seakayak guide, taking paying customers, usually tourists, out on the ocean to find, observe and interact with marine wildlife, like turtles, dolphins, whales, and, occasionally and unintentionally, sharks. Before that I worked as a guide on whitewater rivers, running kayaks through rapids. For years I led multi-day kayaking trips on creeks, rivers and lakes in remote and wilderness areas for a living. My first forays out into the world of catching waves on the ocean were done in kayaks. I’d use a small, short kayak with a lot of rocker, a lot of curve in the bottom shape, and I would drop down into holes and race away along towering green walls while paddling like mad. The first barrel I ever got myself into was in a kayak. There’s drawbacks to that. You can get in there all right. You just don’t get out in one piece. The shape and size of a kayak is ill-suited to the confines of a barrel, and there’s no room to swing a paddle ar...

There is a particular type of torture, much beloved by the US military and other freedom- and democracy-loving agencies for societal improvement, that involves locking people up in a floatation tank of water that is exactly just at human body temperature, say, 37.2 degrees, and that is completely and hermetically sealed off against the penetration of all light and sound. Air is provided unnoticeably. The overall result is that the hapless victim that happens to find themselves at odds with the humanitarian agency for Betterment of the Human Condition at hand, potentially by failing to vote for the required person or party, or, worse luck, by voicing opinions considered detrimental to the lucrative and continued conduct of business, ends up in a state of complete deprivation of sensory stimulation.    While it may not seem all that unpleasant to be floating around in peace and quiet in total darkness in a tank of warm water without, for instance, having to go to work, pay the...

The full moon sat high in the sky. It smiled down upon us in a benevolent, silvery sort of a way.    We had gathered again for our monthly ritual of surfing by the light of the moon. The wind, swell and tide had conspired to produce first class waves for us to ride. I had arrived early, and had climbed the look-out by myself, for a sticky-beak. The quiet night-time bay stretched out endlessly in front of me, with long, straight and regular lines of swell rolling in from the wide ocean, pulsating in regular intervals. It looked very promising indeed.    Five of us members of the crew, of the Brotherhood of Madmen, waded out through the shallows near the rocks and pushed out into the waves. First cab of the rank was The Pocket Rocket Grommet, pint-sized and possessed of never-failing good nature and an eternal smile and limitless kindness for everyone. Hard on his heels was myself, The Baboon, living evidence that primates left Africa millions of years ago and padd...

I looked over the edge and time stood still. The salt water froze over, my blood coagulated in my veins, and a hazy veil drew over the world. The clock stopped between two ticks.    Below me lay nothing, a gaping chasm of emptiness, an inscrutable ravine of darkness, in which no features could be made out. I balanced on the knife-edge high above it, in perfect equilibrium, at the exact halfway point between the See and the Saw.    We had drifted here as refugees, more or less. Cast adrift at sea on a frail and unreliable vessel, chasing an elusive goal. There were three of us on this day. There was Chief Switchfoot, he of the enviable and admirable ambipodous ability to surf goofy footed or natural footed. There was also The Grinner, currently doing service as Chief Switchfoot’s Son-Outlaw, i.e. his daughter’s boyfriend. Whenever he gets on a wave there’s a massive grin that cracks open his face from ear to ear, sheer joy at being able to ride a wave beaming off ...

The moon had come around again, and so we answered the call.    Big, bright, silver and round it sat high in the sky as we walked down the boat ramp to our beach. In addition to the attraction of surfing by moonlight, the eerie stillness of the night, the blanket of stars spread out high and icey above us, the quiet murmuring and rushing of the black water, there is also a very real and pragmatic consideration that comes into it. During the daytime, that is, realistically, anytime after seven, or sometimes six thirty, or, on a really bad day, six in the morning, our home break gets crowded out something shocking.    We have the great good fortune of living on a world class surf wave. Swell will come rolling in from around the corner, any direction accept west, and it’ll peel off at the sharp rocks of the headland and form into an immaculate wave that can often run in a straight unbroken line for up to seven hundred metres, offering glorious Vertical Walls Of Plea...