Surfer's Code 12 Simple Lessons for Riding Through Life

I had not been back to South Africa for eight years. I had left the country in 1995, right at the end of the Apartheid era. Although I had grown up in the resort town of Durban, I had spent much of the 1970s and '80s traveling the globe as a professional surfer. Now, in 2003, I had been invited back to Durban to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of my six-year winning streak, from 1973 to 1978, in South Africa's oldest and most prestigious professional surf contest, the Gunston 500. On my first day at the beach I saw a sight that I could never have imagined while growing up. I was hurrying down the sand to take part in a surfing exhibition when I looked up and saw, coming directly toward me, three very attractive young women walking with a man. The first was a lovely Hindu girl-I could tell by the bindi (the red dot) on her forehead. She had long dark hair, wore a tiny bikini, and her belly button was pierced. She had one arm thrown around a black girl on her left side, and the other draped around the neck of an Indian guy on her right. Directly behind them walked a young woman in full Muslim regalia.Tomson, Shaun is the author of 'Surfer's Code 12 Simple Lessons for Riding Through Life' with ISBN 9781423600763 and ISBN 1423600762.