Think of it as a parable, which applies directly to you.

The Makaha morning dawned bright and sunny.  But by late afternoon the sky was dark and the atmosphere gloomy. The day began with ten foot waves. Now the waves were twenty feet or more, crashing over in "The Bowl" and getting bigger. The day also began with a couple dozen surfers in the water. Now there were just two. These two were the superstars of surfing. They sat on their boards a hundred yards farther out than anyone else had a Makaha Point. Each was determined to ride the biggest wave. Buzzy Trent was determined to catch the wave no one else would catch. George Downing was intent that no one on this earth was going to ride a wave biggger than he. It was a war beeen two surf stars.

The Star War began not just that Saturday morning in 1959 at Makaha. It began years before, when these two surfers were molding their young  personalities. Buzzy Trent was a "coast haole" growing up in the Malibu era of TubeSteak Tracy, Moondoggie, Melon Head and Mickey Dora. The Malibu clique, that insisted a surfer be pretty darn good to crack through their icy aloofness. George Downing grew up as a Hawaiian, loving, living and prospering in the spirit of surfing.  He stalked Waikiki during the years of the Second World War, the forties. A gremmie trying to learn a buck. Then he met Wally Froiseth, the master surfer. Under Uncle Wally's coaching, George Downing became a legend. In the dwindling light over Makaha Bay, a set of swells loomed up, on the horizon. Waves surfers on the shore thought no one could ride. The set formed so far off the Point it looked as if they would break clear across the bay, from the Point to Claus Meyer's house.

The murmuring crowd on the beach knew that whoever caught one of these waves would be, Number One. But what it looked like was that both of the tiny specks on the water were frantically paddling OUT, out toward the horizon and the safer, deeper water.