Dear Fellow Philo-surfer, This week I'm doing a deep dive into the swell event that just pulsed through the East Coast. We had some of the best waves we've had in a long time. The video above is a 35 min raw edit shot by me and MG Bruno. Swell Event: October 13-16, 2025 The Week Before The week leading into this swell was intentional preparation. Wednesday and Friday I ran a mini intensive with Carla. Monday was a full yoga day. Tuesday and Thursday I hit strength bouts. Every single day...
9 days ago • 18 min read
Zach and Yimin party wave at La Grande Plage last December! Dear Philo-surfer, Switching things up this week and starting with housekeeping. Literal and figurative! France trip is completely locked and ready to go: France Trip Details Dec 3-19 Hossegor: The Air Bnb I have from the 3rd-19th is a 5 min drive from this wave. One of the more protected beachbreaks by Hossegor. All manner of beachbreaks. There are gentle sandbars and tubing wedges. I expect a nice mix. If a massive swell comes...
16 days ago • 20 min read
Dear Philo-surfers, This week's zine is a report of how I tracked and surfed the Imelda + Humberto swell. If you follow me on IG, you would have seen the new forecast reels that I posted. Casandra encouraged me to do that. The goal for my increased social media output and optimization is to grow my account so that I can find those people, people like you, who want to be here reading this. Those are the few who will see the value in the free content and know they can get more insight, more...
23 days ago • 13 min read
Moss Landing from above. The Kinship Structure: Why Most Surf Education Gets Learning Backwards I have been watching people surf since I started watching any humans doing anything in particular at all. Some of the first words I read were penned in my dad's Surfer Magazines that were piled up in the hull of the sailboat we lived on. I still remember the smell of the boat: damp salt air, a slight mildew, and wood varnish. Oh yes, and low tide. Low tide has a particular smell. The beach I grew...
30 days ago • 17 min read
The roots of this radical anti gravity move lay in wave judgment, a solid take off, and fundamental timing skills. Dear Philo-surfer, Today I want to meditate on the word “radical.” It’s charged both in politics and in surfing, so I think it’s worth breaking down. Let’s start with the etymology. The “root” of “radical” is “radix, radici,” which is Latin for “root.” In this sense something “radical” is something “rooted.” What does it mean to be rooted or have roots or be root-like? In the...
about 1 month ago • 14 min read
Pita and I in Spain last December. Check out Last Lines to hear about this year's Europe location! This week’s issue is about chronic pain, surf-specific energy expenditure, and surf trips! Rockaway has been producing fun waves all week! I have enjoyed a week full of windswell, US Open tennis, office work, and mostly free from intensives and hurricane missions. Labor Day weekend was a blast. Forecast was dicey with the offshore flow potentially making it flat, but flat it certainly was not. I...
about 2 months ago • 15 min read
Hurricane Erin: Full Swell Report Last week's zine was short with just a big raw edit of all the Hurricane Erin surfing content because I was coaching through the entire swell, then went straight into prep for this intensive. Here's the play-by-play of my read of the swell. Hurricane Erin was getting hyped while I was still in Costa Rica. People were texting me about it. I had some messaging in the previous zine about how that stress was getting to me, so I decided: only zine subscribers are...
about 2 months ago • 12 min read
Hurricane Erin: Full Swell Report Last week's zine was short with just a big raw edit of all the Hurricane Erin surfing content because I was coaching through the entire swell, then went straight into prep for this intensive. Here's the play-by-play of my read of the swell. Hurricane Erin was getting hyped while I was still in Costa Rica. People were texting me about it. I had some messaging in the previous zine about how that stress was getting to me, so I decided: only zine subscribers are...
about 2 months ago • 12 min read
In the middle of the Hurricane Erin bender. I’m not going to lie to you. I haven’t “worked” on the zine all week unless you mean by “work” that I surfed and coached my brains out, then yes. It’s 430p on Friday, August 22nd. The sun is blaring in my office window from the west. I’m in NY. I surfed Matunuck in RI first thing this morning and then tried to hustle down in hopes of offshore winds all day. No luck there. There’s a SW bump on it now. Still plenty of swell in the water. Nevertheless,...
2 months ago • 5 min read