The Most Decadent Humped Milk Since Motel Hell

All photos by Elina Naboka.

“The surgeon initially considered drilling through my skull, but the AVM (arteriovenous malformation) was buried about two inches deep in my brain,” Simon Hetrick told us last September, five months post the brain surgery that saved his life.

“The aftermath of the procedure is pretty gnarly. They make you lie flat on your back for six hours without moving a muscle. I genuinely thought I was dead — I felt like I was in purgatory for two hours. I was so out of it from the anesthesia and drugs, just totally disoriented and not really aware of what was happening.”

Simon had drawn the short straw in the genetic lottery — his AVM, a snarled mess of blood vessels and arteries, had been lurking in his brain, waiting for its moment. He only discovered it after a concussion refused to fade, leading to a round of scans that upended his world. The doctors rushed him to the emergency room, de-tangled his brain, and bought him another spin of the wheel.

A hell of a story, but before all that, Simon spent a month in the land of camels, serpentine medieval quarters and blistering right-hand points with his partner — photographer, and filmmaker, Elina Naboka.

“We tried to dig into the culture and showcase more than just a surf trip,” says Simon. “We spent a month there, so it was more than just a little strike. We mostly camped out at this slab in the back half of the film, but we got to score the points a bit too.”

That North African stint became episode two of Simon and Elina’s See You Next Time series. Episode one covered South America and was entirely scored by Simon himself.

For this episode, he let local Moroccan musicians handle the soundtrack, which ran through the film like it was always meant to be there. The first half finds Simon swooping on enviably perfect point breaks on elongated boards, before finishing on a rasping rock shelf along the same North African coastline. 

Elina shot every session, every moment in between, and then they cobbled the film together in the editing bay. She burned through seven rolls of film that month, with a selection of the photos scattered throughout this article.

Well worth your time. Read our full interview with Simon here. 

“Morocco is the very embodiment of colour. It is a land where the shades of blue, ochre, and brown are alive.” — Henri Matisse