Surfing and SUP Legend - Laird Hamilton

The Evolution of An Adrenaline Junkie

- Kesley Elgie-Domier

What makes an innovator? Where’s the best surfing? We pick Laird Hamilton’s brain in this exclusive interview from 2015.

I&T Today: Tell us about the sheer adventure, risk, and feeling of big-wave riding. What goes through your mind when you’re riding a wave like Pe’ahi ( Jaws)?

Laird Hamilton: Well, I think that’s an ongoing understanding. You know, the more I think about a question like that, the more I realize when you’re doing it, you’re so in it. It’s a place of ultimate focus which really narrows your vision and dulls your hearing. Being in that state turns off all of those things in your system that aren’t essential to the act itself or surviving it. I think we seek that feeling out and that it’s something so innate to us. In big surf on an intense ride like Jaws, that is one of the few places that you are as present as can be on the planet that we’re on.

I&T Today: Why do you think a select few people in this world feel that innate desire to push the envelope riding building-sized waves, skydiving from the stratosphere, or summiting Mount Everest? Where do you think this desire for the ultimate adrenaline rush originates?