Have You Ever Wanted To Be Like Laird Hamilton?

Tell me you didn’t just scroll past that video titled, Take Every Wave: Laird in VR.

Surely you didn’t. You couldn’t have, could you? Is there anything, like even one thing, more 2017 than Laird riding a SUP-foil in virtual reality? That was also rhetorical. Of course there isn’t. 

Now, this video. It would be easy to poke fun. To poke fun at the SUP foils, the foot straps, the camera angles*, the SUP foils and so on. But isn’t it time we embrace Laird, and accept the origins of our jealousy, once and for all?

Because if we’re being honest, there’s not one among us who is more talented, more handsome, more charming, more business savvy, more adept across all forms of waveriding, and has a new full-length film coming out about him than Kai Lenny. But Laird is a close second while we, the spiteful masses, bounce around in the mid-4,000s.

I believe it’s time to confess, and in confessing to permanently vanquish, our Laird envy. No matter how many jokes we make about his boy-band hair, his Sequoia-thick neck, or anything he says or does, we must be willing to admit that Laird is better than we’ll ever be at mostly everything, but especially surfing.

That’s why, if you ever see Laird paddling, or rowing, or doing that weird hydro-foil hoppy thing into a wave near you, it’s best pull back and enjoy the show. Because Laird’s taking it, no matter what. He literally takes every wave. 

*Fun fact: the press release we got from Take Every Wave‘s production company, RYOT, noted that they used a “drone that can fly humans” in the making of this clip, which I find pretty hilarious, because that is, by definition, no longer a drone. That’s just a helicopter.