Russell Bierke isn’t the loudest man in the lineup. He’s often the most quiet, but his surfing screams from mountain tops. In O’Neill’s latest film, Inner Mechanics, Bierke’s “relentless drive to paddle into the biggest and heaviest barrels in the world” is laid bare.
The film, which follows on the heels of Bierke and director Andrew Kaineder’s Outer Edge of Leisure, is an intimate look into what makes one of the world’s best heavy water chargers tick.
What makes him tick, as it turns out, is a fear not of wiping out, but of missing out. “In hindsight,” Bierke says about a bone-rattling wipeout at the beginning of the film, “it probably wasnt’ the smartest idea to go on that wave, but I feel like I would have been pretty pissed off if I let that wave go without having tried.”
That’s the kind of mentality it takes to do what he does. The fear of not trying is worse than the fear of the possible consequence of trying, and although he appears to be fearless on a wave, Bierke is absolutely terrified of not putting himself in every possible position to get the wave of a lifetime — which is why he’s had so many of them.