JohnFlorence

Most common misconception...hmm...I don't know, it's probably that picture you see in your head of that guy with long hair down at the beach smokin' weed, haha. I guess that would be it.

In reality it's pretty professional, like in the contest stuff guys really train hard. I don't train very hard, but other guys do, ha!

I don't smoke weed.

I don't know if I have a best surfing story overall — I have some pretty funny ones and scary ones.

My scariest one was when me and my friends surfed this big outer reef wave, and it was just us two, and we didn't really know how big it was, because it was really far how there. We had the new blow-up vests and all that stuff. And so we paddled out, and we were like sitting there and I was like, "I think we're in the spot right now." And we paddled over a smaller wave, it then there was like maybe a 20 foot wave breaking behind it. I was just looking at it like, "We're not in the spot right now!" It landed on us, and I was underwater for a while and I was trying to stay calm. Finally I was like, "Okay, I've gotta go up." So I pulled my vest, and it blew up, and I slowly started going up. And then right as we got to the surface, another wave hit me and I just went straight back down. I was just like, "Oh no, this is really scary." And then I was kind of getting rolled with the wave, because my vest was blown up. Yeah, it was just a long time underwater. Two waves. Really kind of scary moment, because we had no water safety or anything.

One of the best moments? Probably at the same wave, like a year later. It was just me and my friends. We were on jet skis, and we do step-offs off the jet skis. We'd go in pairs, my friend was driving and then I'd just step off the side of the jet ski and get these huge waves on little tiny boards. We surfed it for like 6 hours that day. Me and like five of my friends, and we were just taking turns getting the biggest, best waves of our lives. And just screaming the whole time. So yeah, that was cool.

The worst injury I've gotten surfing... I broke my back, that was probably the worst one. That was the scariest one. I broke it at Pipeline right by my house. The lip just kinda landed on me and it folded me forward and yeah, I fractured my spine so that was a pretty painful one.

One surfing tip would be to make it fun and not make it too serious. I mean, I think a lot of people try to be too serious about it and you're kinda losing the fun of it... Surfing - you wanna just have fun really.

I actually haven't been over there yet, but I'll check it out!