Finishing my workout at the gym in Bali, I reached into my locker when my phone suddenly rang. “Hello?”
“Bru, it’s Simon. You need to get your ass home — now. There’s a huge fire next door to your place. It doesn’t look good.”
I didn’t even say goodbye.
I was already moving.
Sprinting to my motorbike, I launched down the slope of the gym’s driveway, and tore onto the road, whispering the only words my mind could form:
“Please, please, please…”
The divide of asphalt blurred beneath me as I sped toward the coastline. In the distance, a thick plume of black smoke was twisting upward, visible for miles.
“Please just let me get my computer.”
My computer. My hard drive. My life’s work. Every song, every project, everything that lives inside that machine.
If those burn, there is no rebuilding.
Nearing the cliffside village, traffic was dissolving into chaos. People were running in every direction—most of them away from the smoke and flames. Zigzagging through the narrow, lane-sized roads, I raced toward the top of the cliff.
Dumping the bike in the nearest clearing, I sprinted toward the narrow alleyway — 200 steps down to the sand. Another 22 up to my third-floor home.
“Don’t go down there!” someone yelled. “It’s all on fire!”
I didn’t even break stride.
The smoke thickened into a black wall. I yanked off my T-shirt and wrapped it around my face, tying it as I ran — choking, coughing, eyes burning. I knew these steps by heart. I’d climbed them every day for years. Now I was bounding down two at a time, the heat pushing up the corridor nearly sizzling my hair.
The sound was hitting next—a constant and violent crackling, loud pops ricocheting like fireworks below the cliff.
Reaching the sand, I looked up. The fire had already devoured the entire fourth floor of my building and was clawing through the north end of the third—straight through my rooms, kitchen, and toward my recording studio. The bedroom ceilings had already collapsed in fiery mayhem onto the beds and furnishings below.
I ran up the stairs to my front door.
My racked quiver of surfboards in the entry was melting — resin bubbling like wax.
Flames licked through the crack between the double wooden doors.
I remembered the rule from childhood:
Feel the door. If it’s hot, don’t open it.
I didn’t need to touch it.
No way in. 
Going through those doors would’ve been suicide.
Sprinting back down to the beach, I scanned for possibilities. The fourth floor was a furnace. The south side was collapsing. The north wall had no climbable access.
Only one option remained — the ocean-facing third-floor deck. A risky proposition.
Running up the first set of steps to the second floor, I climbed onto the railing, grabbed a support post with my left hand, and leaned out reaching for the overhang with my right. My fingers slipped off the corrugated fiberglass. I nearly pitched two floors down.
Think. Think. THINK.
Near the edge of the overhang was a strip of wooden façade — just enough to grip if I could just break through the fiberglass.
For a split second I hesitated, not wanting to destroy the roof.
Then I scoffed — “What the hell am I protecting? It’s all going to burn anyway.”
I wound up and punched the fiberglass with bare knuckles.
Nothing.
Again.
Still nothing.
Third punch — a crack.
“Game on.”
I punched like a madman — barefoot in board shorts, shirt tied around my face, flames roaring above me — until enough of the wood frame appeared. Enough to grip. Barely.
With bloodied knuckles, adrenaline took over.
I grabbed the exposed wood with one hand, swung out, grabbed with the other, and hauled my body over the third floor railing onto my deck. 
Inside, the kitchen was already on fire — cabinets hissing, smoke thickening in the air.
Reaching for the doorknob, the studio door was locked.
Where’s the key? Think! Fast!
The oven mitt. Hanging on the wall.
Of course.
Jumping around flames, I ripped down the mitt, grabbed the key, and unlocked the door.
There it was — my computer.
My hard drive.
Throwing both into a backpack sitting on the floor, I instinctively turned and grabbed my favorite guitar.
As I stepped back into the kitchen, the fire had doubled — flames spiderwebbed across the ceiling and raced down the walls.
I ran for the railing.
My friend Rosanna stood on the beach below, arms raised.
“Throw it!”
“It’s too heavy!” I responded. 
I wasn’t about to drop a fully loaded backpack two floors onto her skull. I threw it into a tree instead — it caught in the branches.
The guitar followed, bouncing through limbs until it wedged near the trunk.
I swung a leg over the railing.
That’s when I saw it.
The blue propane tank at the far end of the deck — flames curling around it, rubber melting, a stream of fire hissing through the severed hose like a blowtorch.
Shit!
Turning away, I prepared for the worst.
Grabbing the wooden façade with both hands, I swung off the deck, dangling blindly until my feet hit the second-floor railing. From there, I jumped onto the wooden floor and sprinted down the steps to the beach.
Barefoot, shirtless, skin singed, heart pounding.
Behind me, the propane tank exploded — a roar of white fire lighting the entire deck.
Only later would I understand: this wasn’t where my transformation really began.
Long before the fire, long before Bali, there was another moment that changed the course of my life — on an island called Tortola. That was the day my father called and everything quietly came undone.