A few inches shorter than you'd expect a surf god to stand, Kelly Slater goes almost unrecognized at Natural Cafe, his favorite organic restaurant on State Street in Santa Barbara, where the current record-holding eight-time world champion has been living with his girlfriend for the past six months. Slater orders a crunchy salad and a bottle of water. Behind the counter, the teenage girl's eyes widen as she clocks her celebrity patron. Slater smiles shyly and shoves a few bills in the tip glass.
Soft-spoken, Slater projects a kickback Cali-attitude, replete with flip-flops and a saunter, yet he leads a fast-paced, frenetic life. He literally follows the waves. One day he's shredding in Tahiti, the next week Mexico, then Hawaii. He casually mentions that he's flying to Fiji in two days. He stores surfboards all over the globe: around 30 in Florida, 50 in California, 40 in Australia, 20 in Hawaii, a bunch in Fiji and Tahiti.
"Technically, I'd say my home is Florida," Slater says between chomps of lettuce, bean sprouts and cucumber. "I've spent two weeks there in the last two years. I'm probably here in Santa Barbara about half the year." Slater regularly logs on to Surfline.com and other sites that forecast the next awesome swell. "With surf forecasting now, you can find out what will be good all over the world and just fly there." Hello Fiji!
This year, Slater's mission is to snag his ninth world championship title, which involves racking up major points at contests all over the planet. "It goes down all year. It could come down to an event in France in late September. That's the earliest you could win it, if you had a great year." Slater, who won his last world championship in 2006, already clinched the record for most world championships when he won his fifth (in 1997). At 36, he claims to be wary of the challenge. "I'm hesitant to go for the ninth one hundred percent, because I don't know if I want to dedicate another year or more of my life to then try and go for the tenth. If I win the ninth, there'd be a really strong pressure to go for ten."
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