At the age of 29, after much travelling, "a lifetime of silly ideas" and the odd bit of stand up, Sully McLeod decided, while in a Norwegian sauna, that he was going to try to make it as a professional surfer. Okay, he was overweight, unfit, broke, and hadn't surfed since he was eleven, but it was an idea.
Subtitled The true story of my probably insane quest to become a professional surfer, Tunnel Vision is the story of the nine months McLeod spent training (mostly drinking) in his home town of Margaret River, funding (persuading a brother to add on to the size of a business loan), and competing (see 'training) in Indonesia, South Africa, England, France Portugal, Spain, Brazil and Hawaii. Along the way he meets a variety of predominantly agreeable people, has almost everything he own stolen (including his boards), and winds up in a detention cell because he entered a country without a visa.
This is a highly entertaining and genuinely interesting tale that made me nostalgic for the misspent, impulsive youth I managed to avoid. The irreverent tone and 'she'll be right' attitude could only be Australian, and I found McLeod's take on his homeland as interesting as his account of the circuit, with the added bonus that it wasn't complicated by surf speak (there's a handy glossary at the back, though). I particularly liked his description of Melbourne as a place where, if you distilled its essence you'd have "a young woman with pink beads in her hair who studies law during the day and karate at night."
There aren't any great insights or life changing events, and this travel book has much in common with others written by young globe trotting men in their twenties, but it was amusing and the quest was absorbing enough that I almost feel bad McLeod won't get anything from my having read it, as I polished off Tunnel Vision in a spare hour or so between meeting a friend for coffee and meeting my parents for dinner. - Alex
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