Newsletter
I Want to Tell You About Craig
6/11/26
HALF / LIFE
June '26
Today's email: ~ 3 min read
I Want to Tell You About Craig
I want to tell you about Craig Stokely.
They call him Air Stokely. The Flippin' Lawyer.
The lawyer part is real. Craig is an oil and gas trial attorney down in Texas, a husband, and a father of two boys. It's the kind of work that runs on control, precision, and very high stakes, the sort that uses up a specific part of a person by the time Friday rolls around.
The Air part is what he does about it.
Craig is one of the best wake foil aerial riders going, and he didn't back into it. He went all the way in. In the offseason he was on a trampoline in Colorado, drilling the rotation until he could put a full spin inside a flip and land it clean. He's ridden out a cork 7 on a wake foil, which is the kind of thing most people only ever watch in slow motion. He once threw fifty flips in a single birthday session. And there's rarely a day where Craig isn't the last one off the water.
Here's the part I keep coming back to.
A courtroom is all control. Foiling is the opposite. You commit to the rotation, you leave the water, and for a second nothing is in your hands at all. For a guy who spends his weeks managing other people's stakes, that's the release. Foiling and skiing are where he gets to put it all down and just be himself again. He comes off the water ready for Monday.
You know what that's like. Most of you reading this have your own version of it. The trail, the court, the water, or just the sound of the door closing behind you on a session nobody asked you to do. Whatever yours is, it does for you what the flip does for Craig.
And here's what fits the month. Back in the first newsletter I said June is our new year, the time to decide who you're going to be. Craig already lives that. He didn't wait for permission and he keeps adding to it. The trampoline work, the new rotations, the next clean landing. It got bigger because he kept letting himself want more of it.
He's a foundation of our Texas crew, too. He knows those lakes cold, but you'll also find him towing into freighter wakes in Galveston and chasing waves in Costa Rica and Hawaii. Wherever there's a way to fly, he goes and finds it.
That's what crew is. It isn't a sport and it isn't a product. It's the Craigs of the world finding more of what makes them feel like themselves, and the rest of us finding people like Craig to show up next to.
So the question for this week is the same one I always land on. Who are you doing this with?
HALF/LIFE Store
Until next Thursday.
All the best,
-Tim
P.S. If you've got a Craig in your crew, send them this. And if you don't have one yet, you're probably closer than you think. Most crews start with one session and one person.
Lessons with HALF/LIFE
This is what it looks like when it clicks. One session. The right water. Somebody on the boat who's done this a thousand times telling you exactly when to stand. That's the difference between watching videos and actually getting flying. Spring is here! Your setup matters more than you think. Every rider's environment, weight, and goals point to a different kit. That's why we do this. $25 gets you 15-30 minutes with us to figure out exactly what makes sense for your water. We've built hundreds of custom setups. We'll take the consultation fee off your order. No pressure, just answers.
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