In his deepest darkest oh, shit moments, Laird Hamilton never once thought he should have become a CPA. Photo: Aika Lau/The Inertia
Laird Hamilton’s notoriety in the surf world has reached what you might call the “first name level.” There’s a select group of surfers who, if you referred to them by their first name alone, remain unmistakable. Laird is one. Kelly, Bethany, and maybe John John (although that’s two names) are a few others.
Unlike his counterparts, Laird’s fame comes from having never entered a single competitive surf event – save a few during his childhood. That’s pretty remarkable especially since Laird was widely acclaimed as a big wave pioneer and visionary before the age where free surfers were able to carve out a decent living. In other words, if you weren’t competing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, you had to be doing crazy shit for the world to pay attention. Laird was one such person, helping to usher in the tow-in era of big wave surfing, later pioneering the hydrofoil, etc., etc.
Recently, Laird phoned into NPR‘s weekly game show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me to regale the hosts with a few of his oh, shit moments and answer a few questions about channel surfing. When one of the hosts asks if Laird ever had a moment where he thought he would’ve been better off being a CPA, he responds, “Well, never that.”
“Let me get this straight,” says another host. “You snowboard glaciers, but the most terrifying thing is being a CPA?”
