At least once a year I find myself suspended in a blissful Utopian bubble. I’m with my favorite people in South Carolina’s Low Country, enjoying amazing food and drink, worries forgotten for a few days because of the guaranteed rib-twisting laughter that is always laced with humidity, saltwater air and never-ending sunshine. The high is constant and enhanced by the area being a local surfers’ paradise; that low key carefree attitude, flip flops, crashing surf, tequila sunrises and Mexican street corn at Taco Boy. This is how we collectively and bittersweetly say goodbye to our favorite time of year – the last weekend of the eighth month of each and every year. All of us find ourselves marking time by Folly weekend. You know what I mean – how many days until…how many weekends until…how many weekends since. That’s how special it is.

On the car ride home from last year’s sojourn, I was catching up on my usual pile of digital mags, and decided to focus on the August issue of Surfer magazine as a way to maintain the buzz for the best surfing I’d had so far on my home coast. For me it’s sort of like replaying a song or repeatedly inhaling the faint scent of delicious but fading flowers. Anyway, the issue included an article, now a favorite in my library, on the intriguing and stunningly beautiful Tahitian destination known to surfers and locals as Raimana World. The epicenter of Raimana World is the convergence of Raimana Van Bastolaer, one of the world’s most extreme and respected surfers, with the world’s thickest, most powerful wave that is, Teahupo’o – the break that is at the very tip top of my surf destination bucket list.

Raimana is revered because with each swell he takes the best of this planet’s surfers, grown and groms alike, and gives them a chance to [safely] surf one bad-ass, frightening wave. As I read this particular piece, my face was in a constant face-cracking grin, much like when I was riding my own spirit wave the day before. But then I watched the video which has become a well of Sensepiration I’ve drawn upon time and time again ever since. Besides the beautiful location, I’m moved by the energy of the wave, the courage, talent and free spirits of the surfers, all of which is paired with a perfect Black Angels soundtrack. I never fail in wanting to be there with them. Which is exactly how I feel about Folly and the Folly Gang. I never fail in wanting to be there with them.