Hollister Ranch is a private fourteen thousand acres for a select few millionaires and billionaires who have homes on hundred-acre parcels, and sole land access to some of the best waves in California. James Cameron. Jackson Browne. Yvon Chouinard.
Casey and Brock have met them and they’re all nice guys if you ask Casey. They’re creative, liberal, and corporately responsible. Jackson writes great songs. He and Yvon surf. Brock’s not a fan.
The ranch break at Cojo Point, an hour and a half north of LA, is picture-perfect that afternoon—four to seven feet, big-shouldered, and uncrowded.
“Extraglassive,” says Casey.
“That’s not a word, either, Casey.”
“Should be.”
Casey and Brock carve it up on their small-wave boards, making things look easy. The locals watch and cheer—which, Casey knows, without the Stonebreaker brothers’ surf pedigree and celebrity—wouldn’t happen in a million years.
Casey makes the drops with muscular precision, slashes the bottom turns up and off the lips, rides the barrels until the crests eat him alive, stays invisible in the white chaos, then comes charging out like the six-foot-two, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound sculpture he is, all corded neck and shoulders, water-resistant and built for strength.
He gets caught inside on a bigger set, which lets him watch Brock full frontal, Brock at his casual best, rising and stalling deep into the tubes, then blasting out with a spit of spray, with one hand patting the faces lightly, casually, like the pictures of their dad. Unlike Casey and their dad, Brock is rangy, flexible, and ropelike. Darker skin, and the brown dreads. He has the reflexes of a boxer, and the tattoos swirling over his body gives him—Casey thinks—unintended menace. But he’s not a menace. He’s too busy helping people in need.
Watching his brother shredding a fast Cojo Point right, Casey prays, asking that he win the Monsters.
Him—Brock.
They surf four hours, well past sunset, hit Lance and Teresa Blacketer’s for barbecued steaks, potatoes, asparagus, and wedge salads, key lime pie, and Pacifico.
Lance is a venture capitalist headquartered in Palo Alto; Teresa an intellectual property attorney specializing in AI, based in San Francisco. They’re the ones who got Random Access Foundation interested in Brock’s church.
Casey declines the beer, doesn’t like the foggy alcohol buzz. Declines the grass, too.
With the kids in bed, Lance, Teresa, and Brock do their share of both beer and dope, nursing little waterpipe bowls of powerful indica. The stuff is expensive, Casey knows. Brock has these island connections through Mahina.
So Casey masks up against the secondhand smoke, like during Covid. Brock just shakes his head.
They talk about the Monsters and check the online BetUS Sportsbook World Surfing League contest odds. The surfers’ names come up on the big screen, with soft-focus, slow-motion waves breaking in the background. They’re handicapped like thoroughbreds, which we kind of are, thinks Casey, especially us big-wave dudes. We’re like specialized muscle masses trained to do just one thing. We work hard and sleep a lot. He wonders if, like a horse, he’ll be put out to pasture someday, hopefully at Main Beach in Laguna where he can loll around in the sand like a sea lion, catching rays and croaking for handouts. He wonders if the potent herb is getting through his KN95.
Casey is among the favorites, paying even to win at 2–2.
Brock the same.
Jack Briggs from Hawaii is favored to win.
Mike Schwaner from Australia right behind him, favored to place.
Astonishingly—though not surprisingly, after the way he handled Mavericks and Jaws and Nazaré last year—nineteen-year-old Thomas Tyler from Santa Cruz is picked to show, and he’ll pay out 2–5 if he wins.
Casey thinks it’s weird to bet on surfers but some people will bet on anything. If he had money, he’d bet on Brock. But he’d still surf like heck because God will be with him on every ride.
Brock and Lance get into a rambling discussion about the way time changes when you’re in the barrel of a wave. The bigger the wave, the slower time gets.
“And you know,” Brock says, “when you’re locked in way deep, and you’re going real fast, and you look out to that big lip closing down, but opening up ahead of you all at once, and you feel like you’re going backwards? Well, you are going backwards in time because the future and the past have collided, and time has stopped.”
“So true, man,” says Lance.
“Which is why every time I come out of a wave I feel younger,” says Brock. “I am younger. I’ve stood still with time.”
“I know exactly how that feels,” says Teresa. “Like if you catch enough barrels you could live a long time. Maybe forever.”
Casey says good night early, just past midnight, his muscles heavy from four hours of surfing in cold water.
Posts a quick report on the Hollister Ranch surf today, and wishes for a good night to all. And a selfie in which he looks tired but happy.
He’s only been sleeping an hour when he dreams that the bedroom door is opening and someone is coming in. Then he hears the voice and sees the faint light outlining the guest room door.
“Hi, Casey, it’s me, Alyssa.”
“Oh wow, hi.”
“I’m the older girl.”
“Sure, yeah.”
“Sorry to wake you up but I wanted to talk to you.”
Casey sits up in the bed, leans his back against the headboard, pulls the bedspread close. Funny, he was dreaming of a girl, well, a woman—Tessie from the Barrel, actually. Now this.
“Talk about what?”
Silence, then the door closing quietly on the light.
“I watch your videos and listen to your Surf Nation podcasts. I follow and like you all over the place, get your blogs and those extra cool CaseyGrams you do. Mom and Dad know.”
“I’m stoked, Alyssa.”
“But I have these dreams about you all the time. Mom and Dad don’t know that.”
She sits on the foot of the bed. Casey tries to draw the cover tighter.
“So, I was wondering if you’d like me to get into bed with you.”
Surprised as he is by this, Casey doesn’t hesitate.
“No, Alyssa—I don’t think so. You’re too young.”
“I’m seventeen and it’s not illegal if I consent. Which I do.”
“I mean, you know, that’s still awful young.”
“You’re only twenty-four. It’s up to me and you. Consensual.”
“I don’t think it’s right.”
