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YOUR warm flexible suit has been 60 years in the making and it all started with Mr Jack O'Neill and a PVC vest.
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FOR one glorious day the drought broke, La Grav pumped as did every sand bank up and down the Frech coast.
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TRIGGER fingers at the ready, submit your pics of Hurricane Katia swell to win FCS gear and a commission.
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GULF Stream surfboards now has an extensive website, and online shop featuring 50+ boards and an exclusive clothing range
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JOHN John Florence wins Billabong Rio Pro whilst runner-up Joel Parkinson takes rating lead
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[PT-Talking treatment] 
Maurice and his Pro Tow model.© 2009 - TransworldSurf/Steindler
Yeah, I had a stomach complaint in France this year, and when I got it checked out with my doctor in Australia, I ended up having to get a damn colonoscopy. It’s something I don’t recommend to everybody. But, uh anyhow, I went through this whole amazing set of circumstances when I had the colonoscopy, and I asked for my health to be checked by my general practitioner. He called me immediately and said, “Hey I want you to do another blood test tomorrow, you’ve got a really high PSA.” And I went, “What the f—k’s PSA?” And he says, “Ah, look, just do it. And let’s meet really quick.”
So then I found out that I had a PSA level of 35, which is basically inoperable. From there I went to a urologist and they gave me the bad news—that I couldn’t be operated on. They gave me all these treatments, and it was pretty negative actually. They said they could put me on hormones. But you lose your facial hair—and this is the more negative side—you grow boobs, you put on a bit of weight. Luckily, over the years my journey has included becoming really good friends with Dr. Warren Kramer, his wonderful wife, and his family.He’s the doctor/surgeon that a lot of the World Tour surfers go to.
Yeah, and he did my shoulder reconstruction years ago, and I’ve got a ton of confidence in him. I called him up, and I was in such a negative space. I’d found out that a lot of the treatments available in Australia were not as good as in America. You guys are about five years ahead. My GP will kill me for saying that, but it’s true.
So Warren checked it all out, and we short listed to a guy in San Francisco and a Doctor in Ventura, Dr. Bahn. Then it took me six weeks to get a visa. I finally got out here and they all agreed that I was too far gone to be operated on and take it out, and to be cured. So basically what I’ve done is accepted a holistic approach, combined with modern medicine. I’ve read all this stuff that Dr. Bahn put me onto, in regards to diet, and stuff about sugar feeding cancer, and stress. In the past I’ve been a sugar-a-holic, and of course I love my cheeses since I lived in France all those years.
But I read a book that my daughter got me called Anticancer. A lot of it has got to do with the diet. Suddenly I could envision this entity living inside me, called Mr. C, Mr. Cancer. And I could see that over the last four or five years, I got caught up with a bunch of shady business partners, and ended up losing everything I owned, and went to a pretty dark place. I had chronic depression and went through a very dark period of my life and I was eating sugar and smoking, and letting my diet deteriorate.
But no one forced me to do that, it’s part of my journey. And so all of a sudden I got back to Australia on November 4, I watched the election and was just going, “Yeah, woooo!!!” I watched all of that, Obama getting in. And then I read this book and since then it’s been no more sugar, no more dairy products, no more pasta, no more bread, no fruit—I’ve totally cleaned up my life.
I’m having cryosurgery tomorrow to remove most of the tumors. And then my immune system is going to kick in, so we’ve boosted that up, and this Dr. Bahn is pretty revolutionary.So this is an experimental, cutting edge procedure?
Haha, that’s one of my puns, I’m supposed to say that. Yeah so it is, it’s a really cutting edge procedure, and there’s a little bit of risk involved, more so than getting a traditional hormone and radio therapy. But I’ve taken risks all my life, I don’t know how many times I’ve nearly died. I’ve lived the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. It seems my life’s been like that even though my family would just like it to get a little more balanced. But that’s where I feel I’m at now.
It’s been a real wake up call for me. All these amazing things have happened since I’ve come over here, I’ve caught up with old friends like Jeff Baldwin and Steve Sherman, and some really good old friends. It’s like all of a sudden all this magic is appearing in my life and I see it as an amazing thing, and I wouldn’t be sitting here today and have been able to develop all these new boards that I’ve been working on for the last five years.There’s going to be a lot of people wishing you well, and we wish you well, too.
Yeah, some people go, “I wish you luck.” But I’ve always said, “You don’t rely on luck, you make your own luck.” It’s a part of having a really positive outlook. It helps to have people around you that are positive, and I’ve realized that I’ve got a group of friends, a real bunch of freaks, and they’re all so positive. One of my sayings now is, “One of the greatest challenges is always turning a negative into a positive.” You always can. It’s easy to say, but I’m actually living it day by day now.
You mentioned going into a dark place for a little while, with your last project unraveling. But at the same time, that also led to you having all this time to develop these new surfboard designs that you’ve brought with you to unveil.
Exactly, I had nothing else to concentrate on, and so I got into this. Ross Clark-Jones and I would have days of surfing twenty foot waves and testing boards, and the boards got better and better and we’d change from all fiberglass then we went to carbon and Kevlar. We were making quantum leaps in design—very deep concaves.
The World Tour is a bit dull and boring, to say the least. So I went down another track of testing boards; we’re doing tow-ins—I call it my Formula One, that’s the analogy. You’ve got the fastest cars, the best braking, the best air foils, you’ve got the very best of it all. Why do they spend billions of dollars on Formula One? Because they don’t bring that technology down to the next level.
So I’ve done the opposite again, I haven’t used the pros this time for board testing. I tried to get pros to surf some of these boards, but people would just reject them and not even surf them. So I just kept going down this track, and surfed them myself, and Ross, as well. And I’ve got friends and people like Jeff Baldwin, who are the first people to surf these boards and they’re just going, “Huh, they look weird.” But, there’s a lot of thought and substance in every part of these boards. And that’s where we are now. It’s like a whole new world. I’ve come out and gone, “What’s everyone been doing for five years?” I’ve come out from under my rock.
This article has been given an average rating of 3.43 from 1099 votes.
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Billy wizz178 days ago
