{"id":119850,"date":"2021-08-22T05:33:31","date_gmt":"2021-08-21T20:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/?p=119850"},"modified":"2021-08-21T14:44:04","modified_gmt":"2021-08-21T05:44:04","slug":"the-ben-aipa-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/?p=119850","title":{"rendered":"The Ben Aipa Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-119853\" src=\"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5794-600x360.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5794-600x360.jpg 600w, https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5794.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Ben Aipa was a very big part of my life. \u00a0he was a surf coach back in the 1980&#8217;s when surf coaches never existed. \u00a0so yeah, you can call him the first surf coach ever. \u00a0Ben spent countless hours of his valuable time coaching me for 3 years. \u00a0he coached me at Kewalo&#8217;s, Diamond Head, North shore, Sandy Beach, and even in Japan. \u00a0after we trained, i would go to his house and we would look over the video. \u00a0he taught me about competition, about the ocean, about surfboards, and about winning. \u00a0there are so many wonderful memories throughout three decades of knowing him. \u00a0and the one thing Ben taught me that i will never forget was to \u00a0&#8220;fake it.&#8221; \u00a0i&#8217;ll explain what that means later.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-119852\" src=\"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5795-600x352.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"352\" srcset=\"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5795-600x352.jpg 600w, https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5795.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>thousands of people around the world will surely miss Ben. \u00a0so saying goodbye was pretty emotional for everyone. \u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-119851\" src=\"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/20070201_201695-600x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/20070201_201695-600x450.jpg 600w, https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/20070201_201695-560x420.jpg 560w, https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/20070201_201695-80x60.jpg 80w, https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/20070201_201695-265x198.jpg 265w, https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/20070201_201695.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>my friend Kevin Kamakura took this photo of me riding one of Ben&#8217;s &#8220;stinger&#8221; surfboards back in 1988. \u00a0Ben hung this on his shaping room door for many years. \u00a0he told me &#8220;that&#8217;s how i want you to push my board on every turn you do.&#8221; \u00a0that inspired me a lot and every time i did a turn like this, i would do it for Ben Aipa&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Aipa was a very big part of my life. \u00a0he was a surf coach back in the 1980&#8217;s when surf coaches never existed. \u00a0so yeah, you can call him the first surf coach ever. \u00a0Ben spent countless hours of his valuable time coaching me for 3 years. \u00a0he coached me at Kewalo&#8217;s, Diamond Head, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-119850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-kirbyblog"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119850"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119855,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119850\/revisions\/119855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}