On Nov. 1 at 8 a.m., the Rip Curl professional surfing contest commenced out at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, just south of Kelly's Cove. The Rip Curl Pro is scheduled to run through Nov. 12 if necessary, and the 30 minute heats will be surfed depending on wave conditions.

As far as the contest organizers are concerned, the bigger the better. By Saturday waves could get up to 12 feet, which promises to be a great time to watch. The contest features 34 of the best surfers in the planet, including one of the best surfers in the galaxy, Kelly Slater. On Wednesday. Slater made it through the third round of the contest, which secured his 11th world title. Slater owns the distinction of being both the youngest and oldest world championship surfer. His dominance of the sport over the last two decades has led people to speculate that Slater may be one of the greatest athletes ever.

Thank goodness for the Internet, if you can't make it out to the beach the contest can be viewed at www.ripcurl.com. (Or check out the video with this story of yesterday's action at Ocean Beach.) On Tuesday I couldn't make it out to the beach, but while getting my kids got ready for school I was able to log on and watch some of the insane action live. My daughters each got a taste of it while brushing their hair and teeth, watching one pro surfer pull off an incredible tube ride and another get six feet above a wave and execute a perfect landing. It's a great time to be a surfing spectator.

If it hadn't been the day after Halloween I would have strongly considered pulling my kids out of school to attend the contest. As it stands there will be more than enough time to watch the Rip Curl Pro on the Internet, plus I might still bring them to the beach on the weekend. The beach can get pretty crowded though, so again viewing on the Web is probably the best and easiest shot at watching the live action. Plus you can't beat the slow motion replays for catching every gravity defying move. Ripcurl.com also has a neat feature where you can play back all the heats anytime, even drilling down to each ride. This is the first professional contest to hit Ocean Beach in decades, since before Al Gore's Internet. The Bud Pro Tour briefly had a stop at Ocean Beach in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. I was living out at the beach at the time, on the Great Highway and I remember when the tour came to town. The surfers were doing unimaginable things in the water, pulling off moves that left us local surfers dumbfounded. It didn't seem fair. We toiled every day in the water while they made it look so easy!

So now the professionals are in our waters again, setting a whole new standard for a wave one surfing buddy of mine used to call, 'the most powerful beach break in the world'. He wasn't exaggerating. The surf forecast calls for good waves and conditions during the contest. On Wednesday the announcers started the contest by calling the waves 'epic and legendary', which wasn't an exaggeration.

This is one of the best times to be in the water all year at Ocean Beach. Seasonal offshore winds hold up the wave faces, creating vacuous tubes and vertical walls which are ideal launching points for the professional aerial attacks and their other worldly maneuvers.