![]() They haven’t had an easy ride,” said family friend and the Florence’s old neighbor, Pete Johnson. ![]() We have all kind of grown up together in our own little world here on the beach.” “My kids have always been my best friends. My kids are close to me we’ve been through a lot together.” The inevitable divorce followed-John John was 5 at the time-and the split remains raw. Surfing was an escape for me and it made me happy, and I brought the boys with me into the water because I just wanted their lives to be happy. “I’d just go to the beach with my boys all day to escape it. I used to watch it all the time when I was a teenager and I was like, ‘I’m going there! I’m going to be one of those girls on the beach.’” She married early, had boys, three. “You definitely caught us on a mellower morning.”Īlex Florence moved from the Mainland to Hawaii on a whim at 16. Amid the chaos the kitchen table is the eye of the storm, and Alex Florence sits, nursing a cup of tea. “We just walked our stuff down the little dirt road here which was pretty cool,” recalls Alex. They moved in here seven years ago from the house two doors up and are unlikely to move again. The Florences could always move somewhere bigger, but where they live is who they are. The timbers creak in protest as the boys walk around. Up until recently all three boys shared the one bedroom, but John John, now 18, has recently moved out onto the guest bed in the sunroom. John John, Nathan, and Ivan Florence roam the house, cell phones in hand. It’s almost Christmas, and they’re in the process of packing up their tiny, whitewashed beach house at Ehukai to vacation rent while they’re in the snow. The Florences are going snowboarding in Mammoth. Alex Florence sees her three sons standing in its branches, staring down the beach straight into the barrel at Pipeline. ![]() The crow’s nest has developed a distinct lean. ![]() The branches no longer grow toward the sun, they’ve been trained Earthward by a million pounds of grommet. They’re all spidery limbs and teenage beef, and the tree is struggling to hold them. The kids even built a crow’s nest from some old timber to improve the vista. For years they’ve scampered up its branches for a view of the surf, snowy little monkey heads emerging from the canopy as each set rolls through. The winning wave of the 2011 Da Hui Backdoor shootout. At 18 years of age, John Florence may be the most accomplished teenager to ever surf Pipeline. ![]()
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