Not exactly clear-eyed, but in the clear. Bubble boy Gabe Kling celebrates with Jody Davis and keeps us out of the dog house... for the time being. Photo: Jimmy Wilson

In This Issue

"Mistakes are like turds. Everybody makes 'em." 

My grandfather was a pretty cool guy. I especially appreciated the way he so eloquently trivialized the human capacity for error. He's passed on now, but I still like to think of him sitting somewhere up there in his rocking chair in the sky, gazing down on me with pride as he peels a handful of dry-roasted peanuts. I wonder what he would say about the many mistakes I've made during my five-and-a-half-year tenure here at Eastern Surf, most of which were etched-in-stone guidelines I fumbled during a three-month stint as an editorial intern here in 1999: 

Never promise anyone editorial coverage until all the photographic content has been assessed. "Uh, yeah, there's something I need to tell you guys."  

No matter how much they pester you, never send a story back to an interview subject for perusal. Let 'em sweat it out with the rest of our readers until the issue's off the press. "Oh, shit. Force Quit! Force Quit!" 

And of course, one of the most fundamental laws of journalism, the Separation of Church and State. Editorial content and advertising must never cross their streams... Well, that's actually one I've been very conscious of, while so many other publications blatantly ignore this caveat and run their editorial photos right next to profanely traded ad shots of the same rider. (And if you're wondering how I can speak so indignantly from this moral high ground that the rest of you get vertigo, then turn right around and insert a Gabe Kling Matix poster next to Gabe's mug on this page... well, you're just gonna have to figure that one out for yourself.)  

The point is, just like with any job, the mistakes I've made simply contributed to my education about this business and my place in it -- life lessons which, years later, I can reflect upon with far less embarrassment than amusement.  

But there's no way I would've ever been able to live down this potentially monumental fuck-up: jumping the gun by running an ESM Interview with Gabe Kling last issue ("Kling-On in '07" Vol.15, #117). In case you missed it, we blew up the fact that, after years of toiling on the WQS, Gabe had become the first North Florida surfer to ever qualify for the WCT. It was a glorious headline for East Coast surfing, albeit one we prematurely celebrated in the way of a full-blown, six-page interview, complete with a from-birth-to-present timeline of his surfing achievements, not to mention a contextual intro scribed by Yours Truly. Here I was, gambling with yet another fundamental law of journalism: Never make a claim until you check, and recheck, your sources. 

The thing is, I did check my sources. ASP Tour Manager and master statistician Al Hunt assured us via e-mail that Gabe was 99.9% confirmed. Time to break out the champagne, right? Which is where my party foul came in -- that cursed .1%. As our own tour correspondent, Matt Walker, writes in this issue's ASP Behind The Heat Sheet report (Page 59): "Blinded by our own infectious desires, and a lot of gray-area statistics, we thought Gabe was a sure bet and gambled big by saying so in the way of an in-depth ESM Interview. But no sooner did we go to print, and the odds turned to 99.9%. We spent all of Haleiwa's Op Pro cursing ourselves all the way to the quarters of Sunset Beach's O'Neill World Cup when Kling was officially in the clear." 

The hours between those two Hawaiian events were some of the longest of my career. I envisioned myself hiding like a lab rat behind the ESM booth at Surf Expo, people everywhere laughing at those pages while Gabe looked disgustedly at me from across the carpet, making imaginary bullseyes around my head with his index finger. As the main filter keeping cancerous assumptions from entering the conscience of the East Coast community, it is my responsibility to report the truth. And I was blowing it. Bad. That .1% was going to turn me into a hack. A bad reporter. A liar. 

But to my relief, Gabe did end up qualifying. The biff of the century was undone, but not before teaching me, once again, an invaluable lesson: Don't gamble with fate until it's 100% decided. And it ain't over until Big Al Hunt sings. Sure, to err is human. But to dare, and then err, is human excrement. 

Or as Grandpa might say, "Nobody wants to read a turd..." By Matt Pruett