I’d hate to be his soon-to-be widow, though.

Unless he’s like, really, really rich. And ugly. Which he’s not. Okay, so I’d also hate to be Laird Hamilton‘s soon-to-be widow; I’m projecting a bit, but sue me; it’s my fantasy, okay?

So this is what Mike Parsons does when he’s bored. As Gerry Lopez says, “Now, let’s just pause and examine this…waves so big you can’t paddle in; you’ve got to be towed in by jet ski. Think about that.”

If he had, he’d never have found himself on this incredible wave at Cortez Banks, 150 miles off the coast of San Diego. Any good trigonometristes out there care to give me an estimate of the height of that thing?

Wave forms have fascinated me ever since I had a physics prof named Rotcod Swehttam (Doctor Matthews, backwards). It was a bit like having Dr. Who as your physics 100 instructor; he demonstrated wave theory with two fixed points and one fixed point by playing the violin (2) while playing a tiny organ (1) with his toes. My addiction was only strengthened by my subsequent reading of The Perfect Storm (did you know a rogue wave blew out the pilothouse windows of the Queen Mary, or that they are 92 feet above the water line? I shall carry that knowledge to my grave, and a fat lot of good it does me on ferry crossings) and my addiction to that place on the west side of Vancouver Island which shall remain nameless but which is referred to here as Not-Ucluelet.

So. Mike Parsons. Nuts. via Dully.

See for yourself: