Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [87]
Yet it was that commitment to surf and nothing else that eventually drove Mauro and Parsons apart. Early in what Mauro calls his “flash-in-the-pan surfing career,” he defeated Parsons in Fiji. There, he began to see his longtime mentor and drill sergeant as an equal. He bristled when Parsons treated him like a little brother, and he quickly tired of the endless routine of airplanes, cheap hotels, and nonstop competitions that fueled Parsons’s fire. “He’d be like, ‘I’m driving the rental car,’” Mauro says. “But I’d paid as much for the car as him. I wasn’t his sidekick anymore. I’ve analyzed our thing, and he and I laugh about it today. He was so singularly obsessed with surfing—getting his fix—and he’s still that way. Mike hitches himself to the people who are as hooked as he is. He’s obsessive-compulsive, and surfing is his biggest vice.”
Mauro found his limits, and happily so, both as a competitive athlete and a big wave surfer. He was and has remained a committed surfer, but he reached a point where he wanted to move on, maybe take a stab at writing (which would eventually lead to an editorship at Surfer). This, of course, led to the end of the “Sis” and “Snips” surfing partnership, but they remain close friends.
Yet really, Parsons’s focus was shifting, too. In a lengthy 1989 Surfer profile, Mike admitted that competition wasn’t “everything.” If I find myself getting disappointed with all the travel and contests—which I definitely do now and then—something right always seems to happen. Like, I’ll take three days off in South Africa and get 8-foot Jeffreys Bay. You get a fix like that, you know you’re on the right track—in life, I mean. And that’s not a competitive thing.”
Parsons had climbed well into the Top 16 on the ASP World Tour, but rarely actually won a contest. In the ASP’s more typical small wave competitions, he was too calculating, too precise. He performed best in big wave contests, where he didn’t have to think too much. Eventually, eleven months a year on the road took such a toll that even the competitive machine was worn down. Parsons wanted to focus on surfing big waves and competing closer to home. He joined the U.S.-based PSAA Bud Tour in 1991—a contest circuit ironically held at mostly small wave venues—and won the whole damn thing.
The same year, Brad Gerlach finished second in the world to Aussie Damien Hardman. Many felt Gerlach was robbed. Gerlach had been featured on a few MTV shows—where his looks and hilarious, chatty style suited the network perfectly. He wanted to set off in other direction—–film, music, a move to LA. Jeff Novak thought he was crazy. “We took a long walk,” Novak recalls. “I said, Brad, it’s great you have those aspirations, but you’re second in the world. I did all I could to talk him out of it, but he was like, ‘No, I’ve already made up my mind.’”
Yet stepping off the tour was a mixed bag. Musical success didn’t come immediately, and Gerlach found that he actually didn’t like the celebrity and loss of anonymity wrought by MTV. He stepped out of the spotlight, choosing a low-budget life chasing waves and photo incentives around the world. It was a pretty decent life, but he was no longer a rock star. Brad and his father, Joe, founded an entirely new type of team-based surf competition, which they called “The Game,” and Joe invented a revolutionary downhill skateboard called a Carveboard, whose turns greatly mimic those on a surfboard. Neither effort made either one of them rich.
Joe is in his seventies today, and I once asked him if he looks back and sees much of himself in his son. He says it’s something he thinks about often. “At first, I’d only notice [similarities] when I’d see the bad stuff,” he says. “When I want to advise him on something and