Jordy Smith in hotel room, 6am on the Gold Coast, Australia

The charmed and cursed life of a professional surfer. During this epoch in South African Jordy Smith’s life, there exists a delicate balance of sleepless nights, training sessions, hotel rooms, parties, endless flights and stop-overs, fast and willing women, furious expectation, and a surfeit of waves that scratch all corners of the atlas. One of the harshest realities of frequent travel is that of jet lag, and lack of the body’s willingness to immediately adapt to time-zones. So when you’ve worked on some dance moves and pleasured yourself with moisturiser and a box of tissues but still can’t sleep, options start becoming real limited. If you’re like Jordy, y’touch down on new soil for a contest and shapers are tripping over each other to get their boards under your hoofs. Though the photo above only shows around half the amount he received, Jordy arrived on the Gold Coast to find 23 boards in total waiting for him. DHD’s, Channel Islands, Chris Christenson’s and even a coupla JS’s that’d been on ice since last year’s Quiksilver Pro were all at his disposal. Photog Ryan Miller (who shot this image) arrived at Jordy’s room at 6am and was surprised by what he found: “When I rolled up into his room it looked like someone had had a fucking surfboard party. There were boards everywhere, stickered-up, painted, pads on, everything. He said he couldn’t fall asleep last night from the jet lag and just went mad with his new boards. Today is going to be a long day for him for sure.” Below are some Tweets Jords fired off during the early hours. See, we weren’t just spit-balling about the dance moves. Or the self-pleasuring. It’s hard not to love honesty.