Boone Daniels lives to surf.

He doesn't want to talk about the big swell right now, because talking about it might jinx it, cause the swell to lie down and die into the deep recesses of the north Pacific. So even though Hang Twelve is looking at him with his usual expression of unabashed hero worship, Boone changes the subject to an old standard out on the Pacific Beach Dawn Patrol line.

The List of Things That Are Good.

They started the List of Things That Are Good about fifteen years ago, back when they were in high school, when Boone and Dave's social studies teacher challenged them to “get their priorities straight.”

The list is flexible-items are added or deleted; the rankings change- but the current List of Things That Are Good would read as follows, if, that is, it were written down, which it isn't:

1. Double overheads.

2. Reef break.
3. The tube.

4. Girls who will sit on the beach and watch you ride double overheads, reef break, and the tube. (Inspiring Sunny's remark that “Girls watch-women ride. ”)

5. Free stuff.
6. Longboards.
7. Anything made by O'Neill.
8. All-female outrigger canoe teams.
9. Fish tacos.

10. Big Wednesday.

“I propose,” Boone says to the line at large, “moving fish tacos over all-female outrigger canoe teams.”

“From ninth to eighth?” Johnny Banzai asks, his broad, generally serious face breaking into a smile. Johnny Banzai's real name isn't Banzai, of course. It's Kodani, but if you're a Japanese-American and a seriously radical, nose-first, balls-out, hard-charging surfer, you're just going to get glossed either “Kamikaze” or “Banzai,” you just are. But as Boone and Dave the Love God decided that Johnny is just too rational to be suicidal, they decided on Banzai.