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Locals who understand the situation goad Miguel until suddenly he jumps up and starts cursing loudly in Spanish, storming away from the truck. Mike watches anxiously as Miguel takes off a sandal and slams it down in the dust in front of the truck, shouting and waving his middle fingers at the young man while the whole crowd watches. Anticipating the worst, Mike starts to get up to restrain his dad. But just as he does, Miguel turns off his rage and smiles calmly.

"What? You thought I was serious, Mike?" Miguel asks consolingly.
The local men behind them laugh and joke at Miguel's fake flare-up.
"Da le un beso!" they say to Miguel in Spanish. "Give him a kiss!"
Exhausted by the intensity of the situation, Mike sighs and shakes his head.

FRIDAY MORNING
The surf for the local contest at la playa is small. Tall coconut palms line the waterfront for miles in either direction like Mexican lace. Mike and Miguel sit at a table under a palapa looking at the line-up where Mike got his first tube ride as techno blares from the judge's tower. A girl with braces brings coffee and stares longingly at Mike. Surfers come in and out of the water look at him and some come to shake his hand and introduce themselves. They all know Miguel and are anxious to meet his brave and talented son. Mike Todd is famous in Mexico. "Eres Mike Todd!" they say, half surprised and looking to confirm their assumption. "You're Mike Todd!"

How do they know of Mike? Do they know about his PSTA or Foster's Pro Tour or World Qualifying results? Have they seen him in photos plastered on the walls of surf shops, or heard tales of his bravery in big surf and his humility? Do they know that he is part of an elite new generation of big wave riders? Do they know the surfers in this group are throw-backs to an era of intrepid surfing pioneers? As the beach buzzes and the music thumps, Mike and Miguel both sip their coffee, ignorant of the trap nature has laid for them. Mike will remember the coffee Sunday night after he's heard his dad sing, after the pasta primavera is nicely ingested and after his third queasy run outside.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Mike and Miguel sit down for a game of chess over lunch. Miguel knows the King's Gambit and all the variations. He's tested the moves in parks on old chess-playing men who sit at cement tables in the sun. Mike likes the strategy and order of chess though he doesn't study it like his dad. Mike pushes his beans and rice into neat piles, puts down his fork and responds to the call of his dad's opening move, scooting his pawn one square closer to harm's way. As they play their resemblance is not perceptible. They don't even share a last name. Mike and Todd are Miguel's real first and middle names; two words written on an inaccurate birth certificate that states Mike Todd was born happy and healthy on July 2, 1981 in Waipio Valley on the Big Island instead of blue and unconscious on July 2, 1981 in a barrio outside Mexico City.

Mike used to want to use his mother's last name. It has heritage. The heritage of his sensible uncle Merv and his grandfather Max Simchowitz, the tough-as-nails Polish boxer who narrowly escaped the holocaust on a boat to South Africa. Mike Simchowitz, professional surfer. He kept the name for a short time, but ultimately decided to be Mike Todd, free and clear. A tabula rasa. Miguel reaches out his wiry arms and moves a piece. Mike responds with his young limb that bends and connects to his thick shoulders and neck. He looks healthier than his father though he wipes his nose and sniffles. Mike has incessant food allergies but they're less severe here in the humidity.

Mike is conservative in chess and in life. He's driven by a sense of duty. In physicality, disposition and view he's the iconoclast of his parent's insurrection, a rebel to their rebellion. But perhaps in that way they're the same. Mike's as much a radical as they are, defined by his opposition to their lifestyle the way they have created themselves in opposition to conventional normality.

As the two men stare intently at the checkered board and pieces, a herd of wild horses rumbles by kicking up sand as they pass into the estuary.

"There's no fences," says Miguel, plainly. "They could leave but they don't. They know better than that."

As Miguel continues he segues into the 1999 NSSA Nationals, the year Mike was slated to win after his record season, and an event Miguel had only read about in surf magazines. He wants to hear it directly from Mike and relive it with him. He asks about the interferences Mike got that cost him the title.

Next Miguel wants to talk about Mike's waves at Teahupoo two years ago, where he was towed into huge glassy cylinders and where he confirmed reports he was a hellman; the session that produced a hundred advertising photos of Mike standing calmly in the mouths of these monsters. And he asks Mike about the recent Hansen's Energy Pipe Pro where a colossal west swell caused heavy unpredictable conditions, and Mike made the semis for the second year in a row. He wants to hear about Mike's big waves in California and Hawaii. About Waimea on November 23, when surf forecasters predicted a closeout set just before dark. The story spread like a brushfire all over the North Shore and now it ignited in Mexico: