I've been thinking about the worth of celebrity riders. It's something I've been mulling over since news that John John Florence signed to Hurley for a rumoured $40 million over ten years. At the time Brendan Thomas, editor of Surfing Magazine made a poignant Tweet, and I paraphrase: "Companies that get caught in bidding wars are like two surfers paddling each other too deep on the peak – no-one wins."

The professional surfing tour and coporations attached to it preach creativity and freedom in the slogans but it's possible to argue that they actually bury them, destroy them, make them only connotesales. The professional surfing tour can be argued to be surfing as control – an apparatus of capture. As the commentators and judges remark, he/she surf's "in control".

So what to do?

We are all part of the crowd, but in some weird schizoid manifestation of our primitive instincts, we all loathe it at the same time. So in the spirit of reframing and trying to see something positive in even the worst of circumstances, consider the few, pathetic, advantages that come from that seasonal swarm of humanity that sweeps down upon your local surf spot at this time of year.

It's been two weeks since Garrett McNamara rode his latest Nazare behemoth and enough time has passed to allow some perpsective. Not that it's really required; it was the mainstream world that went into a lather while the surfing world did little more than blink at the size of Garrett's wave. We clicked 'like' on the Facebook photo and quickly shuffled on to other matters faster than you can say 'Kony'.

I need to preface this article by stating that when the best East Coast swell in recent memory hit – the classic July 2001 swell – I was laying prostrate. Didn't catch a wave for the entire three days of the event. Pinched a nerve in my neck just before that almighty swell made landfall and I missed the whole damn thing.

It wasn't the first time I'd blown it and wouldn't be the last. Take today for instance.

Tim Bonython is the king of the phantom forecast chart, a passionate publisher of the 144 hour apparition. At the merest gathering of isobars Tim excitedly posts the swell models, his exhilaration betrayed by enthusiastic babble and WANTON USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS. When he's in full flight Tim's excitement makes Big Kev look like a dullard.

Cyclone Bruce will do a fridge-to-fridge tour of the Queensland coast finishing at the Point Lookout Hotel for an extended session of binge drinking. Happy and cheerful at first, he'll begin to challenge fellow drinkers with chants of "piss on or piss off", before taking a swing at a confused tourist, vomiting on his feet and then falling asleep in the gutter. The next day there'll be pumping waves.

During the finals Mavericks looked like my local big wave spot, Queenscliff Bombora, during high tide on a dropping swell. A Swellnet commenter asked why the competitors were doing "the Huntington Hop," on their ten foot boards, bouncing up and down to connect the barely-capping outside reef with the inside ledge. If Slater were there he would've ridden a 5'11"