This book was fucking awesome.

I loved the end where William says that now with a Pulizer prize…….to go surfing is now a valid excuse not to work!

I found and bought "Barbarian Days" at the Daniel K. Inouye Airport in Honolulu. I started reading the book before I boarded my flight. Immediately, my jaw dropped and my eyes became saucers. The first 2 chapters were not only about where I went to school, but I knew Glenn Kaulukukui and Ford Takara. Glenn, was in my 9th grade homeroom, and I had known about Ford since the 3rd grade at Waialae Elementary School.
Gllenn, from what I remember, was mostly absent. He wasn't a trouble maker. But there were rumors, even among us by-the-book kids, that Glenn could surf. What an understatement.
My neighbor from up our street introduced me to Ford when we were 3rd graders. He had a green baseball cap with a white "S" on it. He played for the Senators in the KYL baseball league. Ford was a good athlete, very quiet and respectful. Later, my neighbor told me Ford was, "da bull," and not a person to mess with.
By the time we were 9th graders at Kaimuki Intermediate, stories about Ford also started to surface. He was supposed to be totally committed to surfing, and surfed Cliffs (Diamond Head) every day. Years later, I remember driving up Diamond Head Road one afternoon heading home. and there was Ford walking towards Waikiki after his session. I later discovered if it was between 3:00 and 5:00, chances were 50-50 or better that I'd see him always with a white board under his arm.
My final encounter with Ford was surfing at a sketchy shallow break outside of Ala Moana Beach Park in the mid 80's. Ford and two other guys paddled out. I had never seen them there before, so wasn't sure what to make of the situation. They did some subtle eye balling of me, but after everyone caught a few waves, there was no tension. I just thought it was weird to be surfing with a local legend more than 20 years after I first met him.
They paddled in after few hours when the tide filled in, but I wondered if Ford had any memory of me.. As he paddled by, he gave a slight head turn. I saw this, nodded in his direction, and he nodded back…I think.

I’m a huge Finnegan fan! Hearing his stories reminds me of one of my personal fav “Doc Stories”:

Surviving a Huge Day at the Middle Beaches with(out) seasoned veteran Mark ‘Doc Hazard’ Renneker, 1978, San Francisco.

I'd done my time in the Crazy Zone with Mark 'Doc Hazard' Renneker…

I’m not talking about joining him on his try at surfing Potato Patch, though I was surfing with him at Ocean Beach in those days..

Instead I’m talking being WAAAY the hell outside waiting for set waves, all alone… looking for Mark who was the RING LEADER to get me and him out there!

… i'm talking HUNDREDS of yards off shore.

It happened during my 2 years of college at San Francisco State, when I moved up to SF from Santa Cruz, 1977-79.

SFSU is the closest college to the gnarliest and most exceptional beachbreak on North America’s West Coast, second only to Puerto Escondido, Mex.

One day, in the Winter of 1979, Mark convinced me to paddle out with him on a day the middle beaches (always the biggest part of Ocean Beach) were a bonified triple overhead… but PERFECT! Irresistable actually.

We were hyperventilating just putting our WETSUITS on, let alone standing at ocean level and prepping to paddle out!!!

It’s always a “Holy Shit” moment to view the OB big days from atop the 60-foot high ice-planted dunes, visualizing your perfect, quick slot you’ll be paddling thru, only to get down to sea level and realize THAT’S not gonna happen…

45 minutes later your still getting pummeled, just hoping for a 30 second break in the intervals.

Mark and I hung together for the first 10 or so minutes of the paddle out, but when I finally made it out a half hour later, Mark was nowhere to be found.

I suddenly realized I was farther out that I had ever been at Ocean Beach…or ANYwhere I’d ever surfed!

The VFW Building, Sutro Tower… Everything looked like it was miles away; it felt like I could see down the Golden Gate into The Bay to Angel Island, that's how out in the ocean I felt…

And thumping, slow mo mounds were peaking everywhere.. it was HUGE.

And I was completely alone.

I just tried to breath… settle. I was scared.

But I stayed out there—I was actually kinda getting into the Fear Thing… trying to paddle into one macking peak, then another, but when it’s that big it doesn’t just let you in, you have to be in the perfect spot.

Finally I said, "screw this," and caught a "smaller" set wave (only about double overhead).. made it down the face, dropped to my stomach, put the death grip on my rails just as I was BLASTED by the lip that plunged top to bottom at my feet, exploding behind and on me. I held on thru the whitewater and was shot way out ahead of the foam.

It was actually one of those deals where you are thrown so far ahead of the whitewater that your board is up on a plane, then the board would actually slow down and start to sink before the next onrush threw me and the board out ahead of the foam again and again…

… rinse, repeat… I’ve never ever ridden a wave so far, on my stomach or otherwise.

It finally began to feel safe. I realized I’d gotten past that point where I might pearl or be dumped … rode that baby all the way into the beach… I actually rode up onto the sand.

And looking at me as if I'd just landed from Mars where two older couples strolling on the water’s edge, completely blown away that I'd emerged from nowhere.

THEN came the strange question I and many other Ocean Beach surfers have been in the position to ask themselves on days like this: "Where am I?"

I'd drifted/been swept some eight blocks south of where Doc Hazard and I paddled out from. I was closer to Sloat Street than I was to our middle beach area starting point… had to walk all the way back to my car parked on Noriega Street…

Tied my board to the racks and drove to Sloat, the only other place anybody could even get out, though even there it was with great difficulty.

Sloat seemed mellow after what I’d just been through, and all the guys were out, including Doc Hazard, who later told me he'd given up at Noreiga.

So, I got out and Doc didn’t… That will proudly go on my Lifetime Resume.

That was the year Renneker “inducted” me into his DOA Club (Double Overhead Association)… and I guess that day I earned it…in the Increments of Fear Department if nothing else. Because I’ve never been so scared in my life as I was that day, alone, a LONG ass way off Noriega Street.