The beginning of the latest post from Zeke Lau has a moment of surprising vulnerability from the Hawaiian CT competitor. As he walks to Oahu’s famed Banzai Pipeline, Lau admits that he does, in fact, get anxious before wading into the break on heavy days.
“Always get a little nervous when Pipe’s firing,” says Lau. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s big. It’s scary. You could also get the best wave of your life, so always gotta take a little risk to get a big reward.”
Of course, he ended up getting several waves that, to the average surfer, would be the wave of their life. He also had a wipeout that would have probably ended their life. For a Pipeline aficionado like Zeke, it was really just another day at the office.
Afterwards, he sat in the sand, describing to fellow CT competitor Ramzi Boukhian his worst wipeout of the session. “Got so smoked on that wave, almost a two-wave hold-down,” said Lau. “I was upside-down. I had no idea where I was, just trying to protect my head.”
As they sit, they watch the waves start to build. Lau asks if it was like that when he was out, to which Ramzi replies that it’s just been getting better and better since he returned from the water. A tale as old as time.
