On surfing’s many hazards

What are the typical hazards of surfing? There’s first and foremost the economic hazard of breaking a board (a worse scenario in the post-Clark Foam era). There are occasional bumps and bruises from a bad wipeout. In dirty water, sinus and respiratory infections are fairly common. And there can be freak injuries that are far more serious.

Step the intensity level up and the hazards grow accordingly. Surfers are seriously injured and even killed in truly epic surf -- it happened late last year at Pipeline in Hawaii.

And then there are hazards at the far extremes of the surfing lifestyle, where Huntington Beach’s Timmy Turner has lived and made his name. Turner is recovering from a life-threatening staph infection that developed after he -- according to the best information available -- fell on a reef in Indonesia. Left untreated, the cut landed him in the hospital (but not before he’d taken another trip to Mexico), where his condition got so serious that he was put into a medical coma to help stabilize his system.

Turner, thankfully, is on the mend and beginning to receive physical therapy, but his road to full recovery will be as long as any he took to find empty waves in the world’s remotest points. It will be as tough as the story he told in his 2004 movie, “Second Thoughts,” which captured one of his most dramatic, most intense journeys -- it’s a movie that in many ways transcends typical surf films, becoming a study of the three young men, Turner and two friends, living beyond the edge of civilization.

Turner now will have to transcend the typical hurdles in life. But, certainly, anyone who has pushed himself to such extremes (which we have witnessed through his films) will be able to push himself through this next challenge.

We join the rest of the community, especially those who surf or even just grab an occasional bite at his mother’s restaurant, the Sugar Shack, in wishing Turner and his family the best during this difficult time. And though the prognosis is a grave one, we expect to see Turner back in the water -- here and elsewhere.