Wave Pools Are Not Like Saunas Featuring Kelly Slater, Kai Lenny, And Dusty Payne

The inspiration for wetsuits, as with many great inventions, came from Mother Nature. 

“Seals look warm,” Jack O’Neill (or whoever you personally believe invented the wetsuit) must have thought to himself while watching Steamer Lane peel seamlessly down the line in mid-January. “Why don’t we just wrap ourselves in some sort of faux blubber and then go surf?”

Thanks to seals, Jack, or whoever might have conceived of the first neoprene leotard, we’re now able to surf in the coldest corners of the planet, from the Great Lakes (which reached -40 a couple weeks back) to Lemoore, CA, which according to a Floridian and two Hawaiians is glove-worthy in the winter. 

(You boys do know you can just lift your hands up, right? It’s not like you have to take more than four strokes out there.) 

Sensitive hands aside, it’s been a while since we featured the Surf Ranch, so here you go. Three minutes of tubes and turns at the world’s most fun-to-ride but boring-to-watch wave. 

Sorry, true!