If 'da slippa' fits...

All Shook Up
    By Ryan Smith

Everyone needs a role model. For baseball player and recovering drug addict Darryl Strawberry, it was the inspiring catcher on his minor league team who had no legs. For me, it is Steve Fisher.

Steve is the kind of guy who is in touch with his inner self. He hears voices inside his head and acts on them. But that has nothing to do with the fact that he made his two black Labradors, Kai and Gypsy, swim from Lanai to Maui. It has everything to do with the fact that he has the courage to take life to the edge.

I first learned about Steve from his brother-in-law this summer. "He's shark bait, man," he laughed.

You see, Steve had this harebrained idea to be the first person to windsurf 2,500 miles from California to Hawaii all by himself. Some worried and discouraged him, others made jokes. I was among those who considered him insane and found the whole situation pretty funny.

On July 18, Steve set sail in his 18-foot, 250-pound windsurfer, Da Slippa II. Armed with a fishing rod, a desalinator to make sea water drinkable, and enough granola to feed him for 40 days, he expected to arrive in Maui in a month.

Forty-seven days later, still no Steve. In The Los Angeles Times, his mother insisted that the Coast Guard begin a search for her son. She lost faith. She lost hope.

Steve had not, waddling onto the beach at Kaanapali that very day with a windburnt face and scraggly beard.

Steve made it, but that is not what makes him a hero. I do not envy his ability to windsurf, nor will his accomplishment be among the more important of human events--I'd rank it right above Armando Valdés', BK '01, bid to reclaim the record for the Doodle challenge (best of luck, champ).

Still, I wish I were more like Steve. I wish I had his self-confidence and direction. At the age of 37, he had been windsurfing for more than half his life. He knew his own abilities. He knew what he loved and what he wanted to do, and he did it.

That is life. Everything else is just a cheap imitation.

And yet, knowing this, I have not excelled in living like Steve; I can only envy him. While I was belittling him from the safety of my home, he was enjoying bubbly and babes on the beach.

Steve's adventure reveals the deficiencies in our own lives, showing how too many of us have been programmed to play it safe. Everyone at Yale is extremely talented and knows it. But how many of us have truly lived? Only a very small few.

Too often, Yalies get on a track and stay there. We go to classes and read our books for four years, then we go to our successful but unremarkable jobs as investment bankers. Those who do break free often only find themselves in another cliché, like studying in London. It is tough to come out from behind our books and do what we were born to do, even if that is simply to windsurf to Hawaii.

The real Yalies who excel in living are the ones who take a semester off to head a political campaign in New Jersey. They are the ones who create a new radio program on WYBC or who decide to drive across the country during the summer, not knowing where they will work or live. They are the ones who follow their hearts.

Getting out of the daily routine and achieving the extraordinary is more a matter of attitude than of talent. You have to believe in yourself above all else and set your
sights high.

That's why Steve is the perfect role model. He realized that not everyone was supportive of his trek, but as he told the Times, those other people did not come with him. "It was me, myself, and I...," he said. Sometimes, those are the only people that matter.

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