So I Iost one of my four temporary charges–three black cats and a black dog–for a day and it was a short trip from there to despair and searching of the soul and such matters. I got to thinking about how I should be somewhere else, in my own home (with my own dog) and not wearing someone else’s for a week like a sorry hermit crab, talking to someone else’s beloved pets like a crazy man–they just stare back in what looks like alarm and then bolt and hide for as long as they’re hungry–and to hell with cats anyway, who just want to run away for good as soon as they find the gap to a better life.

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I drove a ski-boat down to Alexandria, Minnesota for something called “winterization”, listening all the way to the country music stations popping up from town to town: Tim McGraw singing how he’ll always be, and another man singing them pantyhose ain’t stayin’ on for long if the DJ puts Bon Jovi on.

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The Joburg Boardriders, South Africa’s first ever landlocked surf team. From left to right: Nathan Gernetzky, Shane Rielly (manager), Shane Warren, Byron Loker, Kevin Trevaskis, Tasha Mentasti and Dominic Barnardt (photographer).

Hailing from the “mining town” of Johannesburg, aka “the big smoke”, the Joburgboardriders Club became the first ever landlocked team in South Africa to compete in a national surfing event—the 2016 Billabong SA Interclub Surfing Championships—held this past weekend near Cape St. Francis, site of the legendary Bruce’s Beauties break.
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SUNSET INDUSTRY: Scarborough-based Pierre de Villiers is known for his eclectic but thoroughly big-wave tested surfboard shapes. Photo BYRON LOKER

Published in The Times newspaper, Oct 7, 2015

As a surfer of limited means (which many of us tend to be for some reason), I have always had a rather fraught relationship with the tools of the trade, so to speak. When it comes to the acquisition of “new” surfboards, I usually scour the second-hand surf-shops and Cash Converters of the neighbourhood where I happen to find myself resident and fetch up the cheapest, most serviceable-looking shape I can find—beggars can’t be choosers, as they say. (more…)

Then there was the time while I was living in the English Professor’s home in Kalk Bay and wondering what to do with my life, that I got Depression really badly and nearly died. I had stopped taking the medication a year previously because I thought I was fine and cured and would be OK, but, as it turns out, I wasn’t.

At the worst time of it I couldn’t get out of bed for four days, except to take a piss. Eventually, I knew I had to get up and go outside and try to do something to stay alive when I couldn’t even get up to take a piss anymore. I still had the job then where I would work on the Internet all day copying and pasting things, so I could work from home most days of the week and not get out of bed on those days, and not manage to eat anything. (more…)

Eastern Cape surfers don’t know how good they’ve got it… one of the most memorable sessions of my life—banging, six foot, chunky runners down the point, eight guys out—at the crown jewel spot in Slummies, Nahoon Reef.

One of the perks of my new so-called career as a project manager based in Hell, aka Johannesburg, is that I am still getting to travel to coastal regions and maintain some sort of status as a surfer. (Some of the other perks being the colourful assortment of ulcers, cancers and nervous conditions I am accumulating in the soft tissues of my body.) (more…)

There is no doubt on Earth about J-Bay, the wave. But with J-Bay, the place, I have always had a rather ambivalent relationship. It may have something to do with the architecture: those “luxury boutique hotels” that blight the point while brick monstrosities hulk seaward, the coast buffered only by soulless strip malls replicating someplace like Indiana or Bloubergstrand. It definitely has nothing to do with the people.

A few years back, I decided to head up during the Billabong Pro. I wanted to meet Kelly Slater and give him a copy of my then newly published book before it sank without a trace – as most newly published books do in South Africa.

Read the full story on TheInertia.com, “the planet’s largest network of thinking surfers”.