Picture a near vertical 8-foot wave face. Maybe a little bigger; Strong offshore winds under sunny, blue skies. Friday - Arguably, THE day of the year. I had just paddled out and was sitting away from the pack when I saw THE wave.

I paddled hard to get out a bit in front of the peak as it was about to heave, but right as I was getting to my feet, the offshore wind let up a bit and the lip shifted out in front of me. My board left the water completely and I began to free-fall. Reacting to the wind blowing up the face, my board began rotating clockwise. And as I fell through space my pitch was going from nose-down to nose-up at the same time. Right there, I knew I was going down hard in front of about 30 people and 4 cameras. I was dead meat.

Divine wind...

If I had continued to rotate I would have landed completely parallel to the wave with my heel-side rail underwater - the antitheses of the desired bottom turn stance. In other words, I would have taken the Nestea Plunge, and eight feet of wave would have unloaded on my head. But by some divine action, at that exact moment a huge gust of wind blasted me right back into the wave. My tail made contact with the water and the drag gave me just enough time to stop my rotation. I landed tail first in a stalling stance; a perfectly controlled stall complete with the most ridiculously casual pose imaginable. I held the stall for about a second more when to my amazement the entire lip brushed the top of my head and then threw out in front of me. I was in a standup barrel striking this insane look of control as if I did this sort of thing everyday. I couldn't believe it!

I gently shifted my weight forward, gathered speed, and came out of the barrel and onto the shoulder like a shot. A guy sitting about 10 yards inside did his best impression of a guy fishing from his dinghy in Caddy shack who has just realized that he is directly in the path of Rodney Dangerfield and his 65-foot cabin cruiser.

I went out on the shoulder and made a big, sweeping cutback and dropped back right into the pit. I lined up another cutback and did the exact same thing. The wave hit deeper water and I rode out over the back. I still couldn't believe it.

I paddled back outside feeling like I was going to explode. And I STILL can't believe I made that drop!

- Ryen Phillips