Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [134]
They prayed and laughed a lot about the past. The memories of surfing, of course, took center stage. Hulse had first been introduced to Flame by Brad Gerlach on a perfect afternoon at Trestles. “I got a sequence in the magazine,” Hulse says. “And Brad just heckled me, like, ‘Aw man, how come I didn’t get the shot?’ Then there was a time, just Flame and I went down to this beach break in Mexico. I hooked up into a barrel—and he was right there. He goes, ‘I think that’s a cover shot.’ And it was.”
Sometime after their first trip to the Cortes Bank, Hulse made a journey out to a secret wave on the western edge of Kinkipar with Flame, Chuy Reyna, Dave Parmenter, and Gary Clisby (owner of the Pacific Quest). Everyone had been surfing well outside when Hulse noticed Flame lying on his surf mat with his head down. He paddled in and asked how Flame was. “He goes, ‘I’m seasick. I’m puking.’ I said, ‘You going in?’ ‘No, I came out here to get shots.’ So I decided to surf the inside bowl with him. I did this kind of low hook with the lip of a wave coming over me. When I made it back out, he goes, ‘You won’t believe the shot I got while I was puking.’ That was my last Surfing cover.”
Flame’s final days were, of course, hell on Candace and Colin, and Flame knew it. He had a goodly number of friends—grown-up Salt Creek rats—to help out where they could around the house, but they could only do so much. In the end, Candace’s dad reeled in much of the slack. Her father had once been a stern taskmaster, not open with his words. “But he became Larry’s appendage.” Candace says. “And the experience—it just changed him—changed him entirely. I mean, that’s what Larry did—he changed people’s lives.”
“I want you praying for my wife,” Flame told Hulse at the end. “And I want you to speak at my memorial. I want you to tell all the people there. Tell them that I know I’m going home to be with the Lord and that I’ll be okay. I want you to get up and tell them that.”
Larry “Flame” Moore died peacefully in his home on October 10, 2005, and George Hulse fulfilled his promise.
Six days after Flame’s passing, a dawn paddle out in his honor was planned at Salt Creek. The night before, lightning and thunder shook the foothills of southern Orange County, and a notice was sent out that the event would have to be postponed. Bill Sharp curses the fact that he was among those who heeded it. Yet George Hulse, Mike Parsons, Evan Slater, and a great many others didn’t get the message. As maybe 150 surfers hit the water, a hole appeared in the clouds, bathing Salt Creek in perfectly front-lit “Larry light” and enshrining everyone beneath a rainbow. “There was definitely some higher power at work,” says Slater.
The following New Year’s Day, Candace carried Flame’s ashes down to Salt Creek to cast them into his sacred waters. As she walked along the sand with Flame’s sister, Celeste, Candace noticed that they were sort of being followed by a black balloon. They walked out onto the rock jetty, which had served as a base for thousands of Flame’s photos, and released his ashes. The balloon was eventually blown out alongside them into the cold ocean. They watched it bob through the waves until it was just outside the breakers, and then it just took off and flew away in the direction of the Cortes Bank. “And we just watched it and watched it,” says Candace. “Until it was out of sight.”
A single great storm would follow in the wake of Flame’s death. It blasted across California, leaving but a small window of big, clean surf down south. On December 20, 2005, Greg and Rusty, Snips and Gerlach bounced down to Todos Santos with Rob Brown. It was shockingly big, and everyone paddled out but Gerlach, who was not too proud to admit that the very idea of paddle surfing that swell scared the shit out of him. “It was like being at a strip