If you see a tall guy running barefoot on the beach, sporting a red bandana and red shorts and holding a large wooden stick, run. But not from him — with him. “Our brains have gone into 21st century, and
If you see a tall guy running barefoot on the beach, sporting a red bandana and red shorts and holding a large wooden stick, run.
But not from him — with him.
“Our brains have gone into 21st century, and our fabric is being neglected to perform its natural duties,” David Elindstrom said. “I’ve come up with a theory that, if we are creatures of God, running in soft sand would be the precursor to let the creature know that it can feel and understand what the God vibration would and could feel like.”
The 70-year-old man, known as “Malibu David,” can be seen almost every day running on the sand at Lydgate Beach Park in Wailua. He spends about two hours going up and down, in circles and in different patterns, most of the times carrying a stick — all the while attracting curious looks from beachgoers.
“If you want another vibration of God, having birth or having intercourse would be a natural phenomenon that we all experience,” he said.
“But running in soft sand gives you the credence and the feeling to know what it feels like to stand tall and proud, hunter-gatherer created in God’s image.”
Elindstrom’s dream is to build sand tracks around the United States, with different patterns and water sprays to give others, including children, a chance to experience what it feels like to run on soft sand. After all, people build stadiums, gyms, tracks, but no one has come up with the idea of teaching running on sand, he said.
“If you want something out of life, folks, learn how to run on the sand,” he said.
Kids who struggle in school or other areas of life would always have a chance to feel good about themselves if they ran on the sand, according to Elindstrom. He suggested that schools could get involved and build sand tracks on their campuses.
“You get them before their brains get too caught up in the 21st century,” he said of young children.
Nobody would be out of shape if running on the sand was a pre-requisite in college, Elindstrom said.
You can fake how cool you are with words, but it’s delusional, abstract, there is too much fluff, he said. If you can run in the soft sand, you have “substance.”
“I’m the real deal,” Elindstrom said.
Running on soft sand eliminates the fluff — there is no fluff when you’re running, he said. What you’re feeling is joy.
“Your fabric doesn’t care if you went to college; it’s still crying out loud, ‘I want my fair share of the original blue print,’” he said. “If we can all do this, it would be hard to imagine people actually getting sick.”
Elindstrom moved from New Jersey to Malibu, Calif., when he was 27 years old. While surfers were busy chasing waves, he was busy chasing girls.
“I stayed in the sand, cause I knew where the all the chicks were,” he said.
After working several years as a butler for the rich and famous in Malibu, Elindstrom left for the islands.
He shipped his VW van to Kauai nearly 30 years ago, and since then has made the Garden Isle his home.
For many years, he worked pouring cement, earning the nickname Super Dave. And he kept running on the sand.
Then his van rusted out, so he got a second one. And a third one.
In the meantime, he paddled Hawaiian outrigger canoes and worked as much as possible. And he ran.
In 2005, Elindstrom invested some $60,000 on a brand new, state-of-the-art RV from the Mainland, fully equipped for living. It has a satellite TV, a kitchen, a bed, air conditioned and other perks. Its license plate reads, “Malibu,” which prompted his latest nickname.
Though he always ran on the sand, in the last six years, he has been doing it pretty much everyday, he said.
To really breathe and feel the strength, you have to really believe in what you’re doing, Elindstrom said. By running on the sand, it does take a little bit of “let’s-do-it kind of thing.”
At the end, he said, you’re going to say, “God, I want to thank you for allowing me to be me.”
It all makes sense, it all connects, he said.
“Life is like a jig-saw puzzle, but it’s a circle effect, and you got to get the right pieces into the right sequence before anything makes sense,” Elindstrom said. “It’s like a sentence; the sentence doesn’t make sense until there is enough words in place for it to actually have some sense.”
Life is the same way, he said, but for some reason, they haven’t put soft sand running into the equation.
