This is my story.
I had just started school when my life changed for ever. Some say for the worse, some say for the better. It is debatable.
But I try to live by these three simple words:
God, gratitude and generosity.
So with that in mind, I choose to believe my life changed for the better.
In 1975 I joined my brother and his friends on a teenage joyride - the car was what is known as a beach buggy. They have different names around the world but it is basically a very unsafe open topped buggy with a roll bar to protect you.
The roll bar broke off when we crashed and I was thrown out and hit a tree, the impact broke my right arm and severed my brachial plexus nerve high up in my neck.
We didn't know it at the time of this picture but my arm was permanently paralyzed.
I was 5 years old.
My parents were hurt the most. It is always harder for parents I think, and for siblings.
The physical injury is one thing but the emotional trauma rippled through our family and everyone I know
But that is another story. For now, for this story, I will focus on the silver linings, and there are many.
My big positive was that my parents got me a surfboard, the doctors said that it may encourage my to paddle with both arms.
Of course that never happened but what did happen is that the thrill of riding waves gripped me with a wonder and excitement that I still have today.
The irony here is that I started surfing because of my disability, not despite it.
I heard those words so often, spoken within earshot of me by the adults in the room.
The context was always that I did everything even though I had this disability, as if I was special.
They were wrong though, I wasn't special, I was being human. And also, I was doing all these other sports not despite of my disability but because of my disability.
It was like I wanted to prove them right, I could do anything.
What a wonderful serendipitous encouragement for a young boy who was enduring PTSD.
I am so blessed to have had my parents as parents, my Family as my Family, and my friends as my friends.
I am so grateful.
My Dad was fiercely competitive, and I inherited that.
I competed in every sport I did, and there were lots of sports. But you cant do them all and as my life progressed, surfing became my main competitive sport.
I have competed at every level possible, from school and club contests at a teenager, to Provincial/state and National championships as a Master.
All of these contests were able bodied, there was no such thing as competitive Adaptive surfing back then, there were adaptive surfers, but no competitions exclusively for surfers surfing with disabilities.
I was never the best surfer in the contests and almost always never won them, but I held my own.
I just loved to compete.
The truth is that the sport of competitive Adaptive Surfing was around long before the first ISA (International Surfing Association) World Championships in 2015. There had been contests held in California way back in 2010 and before that in Brazil.
But it was the ISA's CEO Fernando Aguerre and his team who breathed life into the sport and thrust it into mainstream surfing.
That World Championship at La Jolla in September 2015 was magical, on many levels. We made lifelong friends from all over the globe and we all shared the remarkable commonality that we surfed by adapting our style and surfboards to make surfing possible for us.
That is the common thread that unites us.
The other magical thing for me was that I realized that I was among best adaptive surfers in the world at the time. And that sparked the competitive fire in me to chase down multiple world and national titles, US Open titles and many other successes around the world.
This story is not about those successes so if you are interested you can read about them here
But This story is more about the journey I have had though the sport.
So many people have supported me in my journey, my wife is at the top of that list, and so is my family, my friends, companies, and even strangers who I have never met have invested time, love and money into my journey, it is very humbling.
As my adaptive surfing story moved forward I started to lean more into sharing my experience and knowledge with others, I guess it's called coaching.
And I love to coach.
On the left here is Noluthando Makalima. I have helped her over the years, in the water, on board choice, heat strategy, traveling tips, and she ended up second at the ISA world Championships.
That is second in the world
She calls me her mentor, and that makes me proud.
My story is far from over, but I will leave it here for now.
In closing, here is a little story I wrote about me and my relationship with my right arm. It sums it up accurately. Thanks to my sister Sandy, who is photographer and storyteller for pushing me to write it.
....and taking the picture of course!
God gratitude generosity
