“Yet no one wants to admit that all we do with his bald, bloody and slightly chubby corpse is drag it through the streets.”

Think about how much of your life you spend waiting.

Waiting for the swell or the turn.

Waiting for the end of the day, the next holiday or for their answer.

Or you may simply be expecting something to happen to you. A stroke of luck or an offer that could set the pendulum of your life in motion.

We are all guilty of this.

We had waited seven years to return to Fiji and now we had to wait a few more days for the waves to come. And when they filled up for the start of the competition, there was enough to get us through a full day of first round and eliminations for the men and first round for the women.

There were moments, as always, but it’s hard to say that the wait was worth it.

I spent most of my time drinking, gambling, and playing pool, my attention wandering and divided. I would have bet big on Sierra Kerr and Erin Brooks, such were the odds. No doubt some of you did too. Some of those bets still stand. Many don’t. And you hardly need to point out the foolishness of betting so much on two seventeen-year-old girls who may be talented but are untested at this level.

But what else is gambling? That was what I was pondering as I stalked around the pool table, making shots I shouldn’t have made and sometimes hitting them anyway. I didn’t care about positioning.

I don’t want to wait. I want to experience these moments, the electric shocks of a life where the past and the future are unimportant and opaque. Maybe that’s a flaw. But that’s just who I am. And in this life or the next, I’ll be exactly the same.

Some people just can’t change. Whether it’s nature or stubbornness, it hardly matters. And so everyone else is forced to orbit around them, challenging or giving in to this unshakeable force.

This is the case with Kelly Slater, who receives a wildcard at the Fiji Pro and is competing here for the fourteenth time.

But why? What is his purpose in coming here and putting the vest back on? What is there to gain?

Maybe he’s just escaping the responsibilities of new fatherhood and needs a break. But then why doesn’t he just surf somewhere else? You know, for fun.

Kelly Slater must know countless other places in the world where he could vacation, have fun surfing, or swim in calm waves with friends.

But instead, we are once again trapped in this public and performative death spiral where everyone around Slater (and that means absolutely everyone associated with the Fiji Pro) has to go through this GOAT farce over and over again.

We are presented with graphs of career statistics on the screen. We have to rewatch clips of his past performances from his heyday. We have to endure the commentators telling us again about his greatness and how nobody wants to compete against him, not here, not anywhere. That his career statistics are “crazy,” just crazy. They never seem to be more or less than crazy.

Even Yago Dora has to stand up after his victory over Kelly in the elimination round and tell us that he never expected to beat Kelly, that Kelly is so great here in Fiji. In fact, the greatest of all time. Imagine beating the GOAT, just imagine it.

Dora has to pretend that this wasn’t an inevitability that we all recognize but never want to admit.

And on the one hand, he’s absolutely right to pay tribute to influential people, as we all should. But Slater’s funeral procession is a funeral procession that never ends. We can’t just sing a few hymns, pay our respects and then move on.

Instead, we will have to exhume the remains of the Slater we loved every time he turns up at a competition (which could be for another ten years or more), and we will have to endlessly sing the same tired platitudes about greatness and madness, and he will leave every competition ingloriously with a pair of fours, and yet no one will admit that all we are doing is dragging his bald, bloody, slightly corpulent corpse through the streets.

And we’ll keep pretending he’s still Kelly Slater in black and white. Kelly Slater bending every iconic wave to his will. Kelly Slater gently slapping the water and conjuring waves from still oceans. Kelly Slater staring at Andy Irons and saying, “I love you, man,” and then retreating back into his smooth, rippling silence.

And we will continue to wait for it to end without being able to end it ourselves. Because Kelly is still waiting. Even if he no longer knows exactly what for.

We will also be waiting for John Florence to finally retire from competitive surfing at the end of this season. Maybe as world champion, maybe not.

With his victory today, he is assured of the number one spot at Trestles, but not a title.

And unlike Kelly, this is a relationship that is over, one that we are still involved in, and we have to recognise that we (and by us I mean the WSL) are the ones who let John down. The Tour would be less valuable without him.

Could we lose Medina too? That would have been unimaginable once. But there is a change in Gabriel Medina that has been evident throughout the season and is even more apparent now. The dark and angry boy we once knew seems like a distant ghost that he is desperately trying to escape from.

Maybe he’s happier personally, has the divorce papers behind him, is reunited with his family and is just enjoying his surfing. And we can’t blame him for that. But the calm, smiling Medina, who jokes about his misfortune in post-heat interviews, lacks edge. And that doesn’t exactly make for good entertainment.

Regardless, Medina has won twice in Fiji and could do it again. If he can do that, he will secure a top-five finish for Trestles. But there is nothing on his face that suggests he really cares, just as there was surprisingly little anger and vitriol after his disappointment at the Olympics.

Has it really been a decade since Medina’s last win here? Time seems to have flown by. Too much waiting.

And yet, my pondering was turned completely on its head by Rio Waida as I sat on the couch where I had slept and watched replays of all the heats this morning.

After beating Jordy Smith and Matt McGillivray in the first round, he was effervescent. He spoke of his joy at being in Fiji, the warm water, sleeping and waking up in swimming trunks. Like home, he said.

I thought of my own better days, when I had done the same thing in his homeland, needing little more than a pair of shorts, a little food and a few Bintangs.

Waida said he was exhausted after the Olympics, but coming here, for his last competition of the season, was a pure pleasure. He is enjoying surfing, enjoying his life and is just happy to be part of this history, he said.

Yes, I thought. He’s right.

There is a man who doesn’t wait, he just lives.

And that is what we should all strive for.

(Sorry if you came here for a competition report. This is my hangover and I cry when I want to.)