I’ll never forget the summer I road-tripped to Hawaii with my two best friends. While it started out as a surf trip, we ended up learning a heck of a lot about ourselves.

Skip, Benny and I were just some knuckleheads from SoCal when we packed our bags and set out to catch some serious barrel. While we had our fair share of fun, this adventure was anything but smooth. I mean, we really had no idea what in the world we were doing. Our first hiccup came pretty early on when we threw our boards in the trunk of the car and drove straight into the Pacific Ocean.

Benny was the first to pass away. He knocked his head pretty good on the windshield when we plowed into the ocean at 60 miles per hour. We always loved making fun of Benny for his huge head. You could could stuff a few grapefruits in there! Skip was in critical condition after his seatbelt jammed and he nearly drowned. Luckily, we got him to the hospital really quickly. Unluckily, he was beyond saving and died soon after our arrival.

In hindsight it was a totally doofus move to throw the car into sports mode and floor it right into the ocean, but how could we have known that? We were kids for crying out loud.

Years later, it’s always fun to look back on that trip and think about where we are now. As I explained earlier, Benny and Skip both died because we drove our car into the sea. I’m now a successful accountant with a wife and three beautiful children. Sure, I live a good life. But sometimes I find myself staring out the office window at the breaking waves and craving the feel of the surf wax beneath my toes. Sometimes I think of calling up Skip and Benny to see if they want to shred one last time, until I remember that they both perished on account of us plowing into open water with our car.