Most of my surf life I have been all about progression. Supporting it, encouraging it, and — hopefully at times — participating in it to some degree. Both in the water and culturally.

To begin my “career”, I was the editor in chief at Surfing Magazine for a few years. While I was there our crew really leaned into being the antithesis of our arch rival Surfer Magazine, which held itself to the holier than thou standard of being “The Bible of the Sport.” At Surfing Mag, we wouldn’t even acknowledge that it was a sport.

We experimented and pushed the envelope with what we could get published, ran controversial writers, ran photos that weren’t “sharp” and generally tried to ruffle anyone in the ad departments’ feathers by any means necessary during what was a fairly conservative surf culture landscape.

Most magazines at the time had a pretentious quality about them that was stuffy. And our overlords were some titans of media based in New York. Since our mag was selling better than most, we could do no wrong. We decided our mag’s path was progression and juvenile delinquency because it was only surfing, right? I think our peak moment was getting our corporate bosses to pay for a run of new t-shirts that said, “Surfing Magazine: What are they gonna do, fire us?”

Another time we had Andrew Doheny’s experimental prog/noise rock band that had formed maybe 3 days prior come play in our art director’s cubicle as a form of protest. We had been recently relegated to an Office Space-looking corporate building with a bunch of other magazines and we needed to express the audacity that a surf mag was being made in a place so stale, it looked like Initech. I’ve still never heard anything as loud and ridiculous as that afternoon at the “Source Interlink” offices.

After that, I befriended Kai Neville and we joined forces with progression in mind and the rest of that is modern history. From Modern Collective to Cluster and our time at What Youth, progress, progress, progress!

Now, I tell you all of this because I recently had my first taste of regression and it tasted like shit so I spit it out.

Paddling out for the first time in two months this week (doctor’s orders!) I felt the tinge of pain that has kept me out of the water, but for the most part, most of the motor skills and reflexes came right back to me and we were surfin’. But before paddling out I had promised myself I’d take it easy, you know, just cruise on a few. Regress.

Well, the waves were fucking pumping! It was like a weird 2 pm gentlemen's hour so no one was out and it was combo swell delight with just a puff of wind on it — perfect air crumble. Lips were begging.

Despite protest from the nerves in my neck, “cruising” didn’t stand a chance. I threw everything I had at every lip I saw — and while timing was a bit wacky, and the grimaces I made would have been “mug of the month” worthy, progress was definitely made and my reputation remains in tact.—Travis Ferré

[Above artwork: Portrait of My Lover, 1961 by Niki de Saint Phalle]