Kainehe Hunt Still Hasn’t Washed His Truck
The 6’6″ tall 21-year-old from Kauai recalls getting the best Backdoor pit ever recorded.
Kainehe Hunt is still beaming after making the best tube ever ridden at Backdoor on Wednesday.
81% percent of our IG audience were in agreement with that call, btw.
The best compliments he’s received so far were from Kala Grace and John Florence, who gave him hugs.
The praise has been ‘nice but a little overwhelming’ says Kainehe – who also goes by several nicknames including: ‘long grom’, ‘stick bug’, ‘ne ne balls’ and ‘aloha tower’.
“I was just sitting at home on Garageband,” recalls Kainehe. “Kuio [Young] texted me and was like, ‘fuck, it’s kinda cooking, you should come surf Backdoor’. I was lagging hard. I asked Kaimana Henry if it was cool to wash my truck at the Volcom house, which I’ve been meaning to do for weeks, but right as I was about to start I saw Barron and Matahi come in, which increases your odds of getting a wave substantially…”
The car wash could wait…
“Still I was taking my sweet time. Kicking sand and dilly dallying on the beach and whatnot. But then as soon as I paddled out. BOOM. Sets start coming. Torrey went first one and then the next one came and I saw Brodi Sale hesitate for a second. I’m like, ‘okay, you hesitated. I’m fucking going’. I think the devil horns came out of my head like DING. It didn’t look like a normal Pipe wave, it had that shape about it like it was just going to keep barreling…”
And it did.
“As soon as I got to my feet I was like ‘fuck, this thing’s pretty stretched’. I adjusted my line a little and then gave it one big pump. My feet were way up on my board. Once I got in there, it wasn’t that big of a barrel. It was changing rapidly and it was really fast. There were points where I was so small and contorted because I was trying to manage the foam ball, but then at the same time, I’m so tall, so I needed to make sure I didn’t poke my head through the roof. There were probably four or five times where I thought, ‘fuck, I might be done here’.”
But he wasn’t.
“When I popped out and it felt like I was reliving my birth or something. Like the magnitude of the world hit me. All the boys were screaming, but it was more raw energy than sound. I could hear all the boys at the Quiksilver house banging on the house, punching the walls and shit.”
To celebrate, Kainehe went straight to Foodland, brought a 24-pack of Modelos and slammed beers for the rest of the evening. He also ate a head of cabbage, played some Mortal Combat and had a sleepover with a beautiful lady friend. “Yeah just kept the ball rolling,” he laughs.
When I ask ‘is it weird that you might have already caught the best wave of your life?’, Kainehe simply responds, ‘Uhh, I’m not dead yet.”
And no he still hasn’t washed his truck.
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