I had been the outdoors editor/writer at The San Francisco Chronicle for a long time. Sustaining my journalistic credibility at this paper, I reckoned, was a major chunk of Job One. And of that ...

I’m the sole paddler I know of — or have ever heard of — who has surfed a tsunami. Does this claim sound grandiose? Might it seem more cloaked in modesty if I say it took me more than 30 years to ...