dogs and surfing

here's one from the archives...

boards with wood and other inlays

my wife stumbled across the site of a shaper in virginia who makes really beautiful boards, from carbon to wood. the photos on the site are a bit hard to navigate through and you can't link to them directly, but here's the address http://www.shirebc.com/

De Lixo a Luxo

 

o design, nos dias de hoje, tem uma preocupacao bem grande com a sustentabilidade.
o designer holandes chamado PIET HEIN EEK.
Ele desenha moveis a partir de restos de madeira, entre outras coisas. O trabalho e impressionante. E, para nao falar de sustentabilidade. Ja que esta de moda! olhem o trabalho dele e verao que justifica o assunto.
www.pietheineek.nl

favela chic

 

Nada melhor que uma cervejinha antes de uma farofada na praia.
Que calor!!!
Sou gordinha mas sou feliz.

farrrah on a jay adams!

 

farrah fawcett on an old school board!

garota de ipanema

 

cores e desenhos sao importantes para pranchas.
vejo esta cores como um estilo original e com atitude.
falta no mercado pranchas com graficos realmente criativos.

and still another...

 

more punta rocas

 

flocks of birds and schools of fish that day, so many fish that i felt dozens of them during the paddle...

punta rocas

 

snaps taken by my wife a week or so ago at punta rocas on a day with nasty drops and a dreadful paddle through heavy beachbreak...

i love fins...

i strongly suggest you check out this amazing site for far out shapes...

50 people on one point at 5 a.m.

that's right. punta roquitas was a zoo early this morning, after word spread that it was picking up north swell, which creates a nice point off the jetty. trouble is that there were 50 people in the water at 5:15 a.m. and that many of the waves were too fat to catch, or were full of people calling waves before they even made it to their feet. it's considered socially acceptable here to behave like a complete ass and not pay any consequences for it. there's really no penalty for being a jerk. strange that way. in other countries where i have lived, if you are rude in a public space people will make you pay a price of some kind, be it five people crowding around you and calling you names, or shaming you or opening up a can of whoop ass. i think the threat of whoop ass obliges people to be more polite, but not in peru. here, there's no whoop ass so people act like clods. you can be a complete tosser and people just mutter a couple of words under their breath or get all passive aggressive and paddle in front of you in the lineup without bothering to be directly confrontational. needless to say, i chose to avoid the crowd and surfed the beachbreak instead, where i dropped in on a sponger, for which i am proud. ah yes, life is full of contradictions.

pelicans and dolphins

fish were biting, fleeting and skipping across the water sunday evening and the pelicans came out to feast. they made big splashes as they swooped down and gobbled up fish. pelicans and dolphins are my favorite animals. here's a shot of dolphins.

punta rocas

a bit of longboarding on saturday here in lima. i was obsessed with hanging ten and sort of neglected to carve, but had a good time walking the plank as it were. a few times i walked right off the board. sunday had big and heavy waves and punta rocas, where we all went through the washing machine a few times and the waves were fast and fierce... my fish, i should add, had no trouble even on the more powerful waves -- in part i think because the wave is fairly fat even when it's big. more and more i'm thinking that fish only don't work in the most hollow of waves and super hollow waves just aren't that common.

greg long

i recommend the highlight reel of the eddie aikau contest held yesterday, which comes with what sounds like a special bonus track sung by ozzy. it was won by fellow californian greg long. a couple of the waves he made were just perfect. i also see that chile's ramon navarro, who pioneered the nasty breaks in pichilemu, which are frigid, have terrible currents and require dancing over rocky channels to make it to the breaks, took 5th place and won a special award for the biggest drop. no peruvians were invited, so it will be interesting how navarro's success plays here. i think chileans are some of the toughest people around.

more fish here

more fish here
here's a link full of fish boards. some of them strike me as a little insane: 3.25 by 9 feet by 22 or 23 inches. others seem sensible and fun.

fish with gas

i finally surfed my fish this weekend on waves with some gas, south of lima, and it performed better than i had expected. nice and stable on days with wind chop, and enough foam under my chest to take off at places like punta rocas, which can be quite powerful. previously, i had only surfed my fish in lima, and used to take my thruster south. it works nicely too, but prefers very smooth days. the fish, however, provided plenty of control on 5-6' foot waves, carved nicely and turned about as fast as i could have hoped. this is a big relief, because i'd previously only surfed it in lima, where the waves often lack punch, and had never had a chance to test it in more powerful surf. it's really nice.

pasamayo left

 

i hoped to also load some pix of spinalsurfer at pasamayo, but he didn't send me any of him, so you'll have to settle for this one. this was one of the few good lefts that day, as mostly we were riding the right at pasamayo, which is usually considered a reef break. there was no wind and only two other guys in the water, so take offs were super smooth, so smooth that you could just play little games with the angle by leaning your head one way or another and focusing on the subtleties at hand, instead of worrying about the crowd...

birds at pasamayo

 

spinalsurfer and i, along with our photographer for the day, went on a long journey on sunday to a lightly surfed spot that you must hike into by climbing (or sliding) down steep sand dunes. the hike up is so steep it hurts. it was our first time there so we spent a few hours looking for the break, but finally made it. good surf, a bit small but a very nice wave. gotta love the birds!

what sofia's sponsors say...

so i finally had a chance to chat with one of sofia's sponsors the other day. the sponsor was partly surprised by the rude behavior of peru's queen, but also insisted that other surfers in the water should have called her out on her rude behavior. perhaps, but i really think that it boils down to the fact that sofia is a spoiled brat (a pituca) who is obnoxious. somebody else i was at the table with that day, a peruvian, said he would have grabbed sofia's board and broken it. that sounds fine to me. i made the point that when Nike signs big sponsorship deals with athletes the contracts normally have umpteen clauses in them demanding that the athlete set an example for the sport, be polite, decent, well-behaved on and off the court (or in and out of the water), and that any thing the athlete does to the contrary could be grounds to terminate the sponsorship deal. i wonder if the folks at Roxy would be more alarmed, seeing that their product is more closely related to surfing than the other companies that sponsor sofia. witness the current noise about tiger woods potentially losing sponsorship deals just because he crashed his car into a fire hydrant because his angry wife was chasing him with a golf club...
by the way, if you want to see a role model for the sport, somebody who was born with little cash and had to claw her way up, check out this website for brazilian silvana lima. i especially recommend the wild card video. she rips.

new perceptions, new shapes

this morning's session was full of new perceptions, thanks to zero wind and the relative lack of people in the water. first, my new fish, because of its wide tail and lack of a center fin, becomes obscenely squirrely if i take off with even the slightest bit of white water underneath the tail. that is why my new dream board is this one . i think it'd be delightful to ride a short board with plenty of flotation and a big honking center fin. i can only imagine what it would feel like to hold a line high up on a wave with it. amazing! you can, of course, do that on a fish, but it's trickier. i was looking for a single fin when i broke down and bought my new fish, not that i have buyer's remorse, but i still have the desire to get a single fin. the description of the stubbie on this page says that "rebounding off the whitewater is a bit easier with the stability of a center fin." that's opening up new ideas for me, and as much as quad fins are the rage, i think i need a center fin. and, just to clarify, my 6'7" trifin provides an amazing ride, but sometimes the surf is smallish and requires something a bit more floaty like the fish. that's where i think a single fin stubby comes in to play. i also spent a lot of time this morning making a point of popping up even earlier than your conscious mind tells you to, and on one wave that was weak but walled up nicely and nearly collapsing, i went straight into grabbling my rail and sort of did a freefall down the face of the wave. this strikes me as inherently more controlled than allowing yourself to get thrown, or trying to make a drop the conventional way. it also keeps your center of gravity much closer to the pocket. new horizons on drop ins!

buena lives!

i highly recommend this video, posted by a friend behind the dig out of the famed buena pool in santa cruz, CA. the transitions are way too quick for my old bones. my back hurts just watching...

the art was done by some of the same folks that did graphics for santa cruz skateboards way back in the day. and, talking about what a community can do, check out the video of them digging the pool out of the ground and even patching up the concrete...

spinalsurfer

spinalsurfer shot some pictures of us the other week at playa norte in punta hermosa. the picture of moi is a nice momento, though the other shots are much better. that was a strange wave. fairly slow at first and then it would become massive, heavy and fast lickety split. a friend of mine surfed it really well that day but the wall on the inside turned me into a yellow belly, ja que estou quase um pai...

summer has arrived

summer has arrived in lima, and i define its arrival as three straight days of sun. today was day number 4, if i'm not mistaken. crystal clear blue skies and 80 degrees. it's like san diego or los angeles, except lunch costs only $3 bucks for a three course meal (beverage included) and you have to look both ways before crossing the street as a pedestrian. this is the view from my desk. hard to focus on work with that bay staring at you.

oh wow

here's a link to my favorite surf blog, quality peoples, whose chefao always has great stuff on wavesliding, politics, and art. here are some photos he took recently in mexico. amazing stuff. the color of the water is incredible. and the shots are full of tension as the big waves threaten to close out on the surfers.

more of the new fish!

another shot of my new fish, this time edited so the true colors shine through...
i can't rave enough about this board. it's absurdly responsive and tons of fun. what i don't know is whether it's just this board or if all fishes are so enjoyable...

new fish

i've been dreaming about having a single fin shaped for me, but my shaper is out of town so i stumbled on this old school fish with wooden fins the other day and today i broke down and bought it. a used board that's essentially in perfect condition. put a layer of wax on it and took it out for a spin. it's a twin fin, with no center fin, and so loose and responsive it feels like you are skimming on ice. i was worried there was too much rocker in the board, but now i think it's just right. it's also the shortest board i've ever surfed, a 6'1" that turns quickly but is also nice and stable when paddling. wow, i'm really impressed. the color is a kind of yellow green concoction with grains flowing through it. i was partial the same board in blue, which they had new at klimax, but it was an extra $120, so i went with this. it's much more responsive than a 6'8" hybrid fish i have -- which is a three fin and easier to hold lines on but clearly lacks the skateboard feeling of this new one...

do rude surfers merit plugs?

I got a press release today (see below in Spanish) plugging the ASP surfing tour's upcoming Rip Curl contest in Lobitos and "Peru's Own Queen Sofia Mulanovich." (The hyperbole is a bit much, along with the fact that it seems to endorse the idea of monarchies in general, which Peru spent a few centuries trying to reject, but who cares about history, right?). So, I dutifully sent an email to the kind person who alerted me to the press release and mentioned the following: that Sofia is a rude surfer who sets a bad example for the sport and Peru's image, and sent him two blog posts about my own personal experience surfing alongside Peru's Queen. I also told him that she's about as well-behaved in the water as a Lima cab driver. And, between you and me, dear reader, I've been told her dad also drops in on people. So, like father like daughter. Rude behavior is learned. It's time we break this unhealthy cycle. Learn some courtesy Sofia...
(By the way, it's amazing to me that her sponsors don't bother to impress upon her the importance of setting a good example in the water, though, according to a Peruvian newspaper, they sent her to do media training recently so that she could learn to give more than one word answers when being interviewed. See, her handlers realized that one word answers make you look either unfriendly or not too smart).

EMPEZÓ LA CUENTA REGRESIVA

Nos encontramos a menos de tres semanas para que el campeonato mundial de surf femenino llegue por tercer año consecutivo a nuestro país, con el desarrollo del “Perú Classic presentado por Rip Curl”. La gran novedad de esta temporada ha sido la confirmación de Lobitos como la playa elegida, dejando de lado a la tradicional Máncora.

Ubicada en la provincia de Talara en Piura, Lobitos es un gran acierto según propias palabras de nuestra reina Sofía Mulanovich, ya que no sólo las olas son espectaculares, sino que además se acomoda perfectamente a su estilo de surfing.

El Perú Classic presentado por Rip Curl traerá a las diecisiete mejores tablistas del mundo a esta quinta parada de la World Championship Tour (WCT) y se desarrollará del 3 al 8 de noviembre próximo. Además de Sofía Mulanovich, la australiana Stephanie Gilmore y la brasilera Silvana Lima son las principales candidatas a llevarse el triunfo.

Con 3241 puntos, Stephanie Gilmore es la actual líder de las clasificaciones, seguida por Silvana Lima con 2880 y Sofía Mulanovich en la tercera casilla con 2139. Antes de la fecha en Lobitos, la localidad de Peniche en Portugal albergará por primera vez una jornada del circuito Mundial. El Rip Curl Search se llevará a cabo del 26 al 30 de octubre.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adjuntamos fotos (cortesía: ASP) de las tablistas australianas Jessi Miley-Dyer y Stephanie Gilmore y de la peruana Sofía Mulanovich.
Agradecemos la atención y difusión de la presente.

Saludos,

the view from my window

here's a shot from the window i sit in front of at work. not bad. today the islands in the bay of lima were fogged over until a bit before sunset, when a gold band of light broke through and lit up the water and the islands stuck their necks out. luckily there's a spot i can look through to see the islands. i hope the real estate boom ends...

glassy waves at triangulo

lots of perfectly glass waves this morning at triangulo, where the waves were just big enough, at 8.5 feet, to make it break well. it's a famously tempermental spot, and the rule of thumb is that you need 9 foot swells and low tide for it to work. it is hidden behind a huge outcropping of rock at the southern end of the bay of lima, so you need a powerful swell to wraparound the rock, and the more westerly the swell the better. i think that wrapping contributes to some of the glassiness, but mostly the break is eerily smooth because the air is dead still. ain't no wind to whistle in there. this morning i took my longboard out for the first time there. it caught gobs of waves and even allowed me to paddle up next to a sea lion and say good morning to him. normally i ride my fish there, which works, but the rides are much shorter. on the longboard, the wave is big and open faced, and then walls up into something more tubey that requires you to srunch up and try to shoot through. the outside is very fat, but inside all hell can break loose in about one second. i pulled off the back of most of the waves i caught, unwilling as i was to be squeezed by a close out at a break that is known for busting boards. i got pitched there once and it hurt.

and here is a picture to go with that thought

this photo was taken in peru...

longboarding in the sun with dolphins

two straight days of sunshine in lima after five straight months of fog. only small waves poured into the bay on saturday and sunday, so i dusted off my longboard for the first time in a year and went paddling. i pulled off the outside fins and rode it with just the big single fin, hoping to get a looser feel in the small surf that the charts put at 4.5 feet. the rides at punta roquitas lasted for what seemed like an eternity, and you if you caught the right, instead of the sharper left, you could walk up the board, put a knee down, grab a rail and just squeeze yourself into the sweet spot while putting an arm up and thinking to yourself "jesus, i feel like i'm in a powell peralta skateboard video from 1984." fish were jumping out of the water. birds were hunting and, on sunday, three dolphins swam by the break to say hi. one of them was so enamored by the sunshine that he caught a wave. they are amazing swimmers, big, powerful and muscular. i know of no capital city other than lima where you can surf with dolphins and pelicans...

update 1: a kind reader wrote to say you can also surf with dolphins in capetown. now that may be, but the dolphins in lima aren't surrounded by sharks as they are in south africa...

that's no way to be a champion!

I was surfing Lobitos, in northern Peru, this past Sunday when Sofia Mulanovich paddled into the lineup. Sounds great, right? Must be fun to watch a champ up close, and pick up some tips. Sofia is a bit of an idol in Peru, and is plastered all over billboards for cell phone companies and the like. In 2004, she won three out of the six World Championship Tour events and finished the season as World Champion. She is sponsored by Roxy and the Spanish cell phone company Movistar, among others. Well, the experience caused dismay. Lobitos is a fantastic wave, a fast left that was working nicely at chest to head high, and wasn't too crowded. There were plenty of waves to go around, people were behaving themselves, and it was especially fun to see a couple of Peruvian and Brazilian guys ripping like I have never seen before. Then Sofia showed up. On her first wave, she dropped in on me. I figured it was a random act of rudeness -- until I saw her steal dozens of waves over the next two hours from virtually everyone else in the lineup. There was no reason to do this. People were eager to watch her surf and were otherwise happy to make space for her in the water. But she insisted on snaking people. I told my Peruvian friends about this and they said: "Yeah, well, that's Peru, you have to be aggressive or somebody else will steal your wave." Maybe. Snakes abound here. But you'd think her sponsors and public relations handlers would have passed along some general guidelines for behavior: like "don't drop in on people, because if you do it repeatedly without apologizing people will think you are a snot, rude, or just clueless and it will reflect poorly on us. you need to be an ambassador for the sport." Well, she either feels like rules don't apply to her or that all etiquette should be suspended when she goes into the water because she's extra special. Come on Sofia, show some class!

go pro

the fine folks at go pro cameras replaced my hero5 board mounted machine. turns out the water proof housing suffered a hairline crack when my board slid out from under me while i was sitting on it and hit my upper leg. speedy and friendly service that deserves a good plug. thanks go pro! i'll add pix when i get them...

glassy bliss

el triangulo, a quirky spot in lima that only breaks when the waves are super big, was so glassy this morning that the sea looked like a reflection pond with a wave machine underneath it. i went there last week when we had 9 foot swell, but it was high tide so it wasn't working. this morning i went out, was one of just two people in the water, and the swell said 10 feet, somewhere in between high and low tide. wow. just absolutely amazing. i've never had such a nice surf in lima. so empty, so much space, every takeoff just so relaxed. the wave has a nice speed, plenty of walls that you can carve on and just the tiny little beginnings of a barrel as you move close in to the shore. curiously nobody was in the water this morning at any of the other breaks, mainly because most of them were closing out and terribly sloppy. but el triangulo is hidden away, and you need a big swell to wrap around a piece of peninsula and then refract into a little bay. when that happens it's just about as perfect as surfing can be...

andy kessler

there is a great video up on a blog at the nytimes of andy kessler, a skateboard pioneer in new york who died of an insect bite while surfing yesterday. the article in the blog is clearly written by somebody who never skated, and has several basic mistakes in it, but the video the guy produced and edited is superb. being a west coast kid, i never knew who andy kessler was, but i realized when reading the article that i rode a skatepark he designed in riverside park when i was 27 and getting back into skating after a 10 year hiatus. and, strangely enough, a friend i grew up with was staying with me in new york at the time and he rode the skate park with me. it was like we were 13 all over again. skating brings people together. you can see the video
here if you scroll down below the article. i still skateboard nearly every day and what kessler says about those few minutes each day when you are in the flow and cruising and playing off the environment around you jives with the ineffable feeling you get on a wave. i'd say waveriding is more intense, but the two are clearly linked on multiple levels.

5.5 feet and glassy

This morning, after suffering through two weeks of heavy winds that turned otherwise perfect 9 foot waves into choppy schwag, the air was still, the ocean was perfectly glassy and the 5.5 feet waves were peeling just right. It was bliss. That zen-like surfing feeling returned after two straight weeks of despair induced by blown out waves, frigid winds and 'desordenado' mush. The break I was at, Punta Roquitas, often closes out too quickly and its allure diminishes quickly if waves are higher than 6'. But in the range that is considered small for Peru, say from 4' to 6', it works beautifully, especially if you have a fish that allows you to get up on the wave a wee bit faster and earlier. Today the conditions were perfect. All you had to do was paddle a bit, make a quick turn to after dropping in, pump your legs a couple times, put a rail halfway up the wave and then just boogie on down the line all the way to the jetty as the wave walled up ... In between waves, we watched big, lazy pelicans scoop fish out of the water right next to us...

who let the dog out?

there are dogs that surf and dogs that like to watch the surf. there are dogs that only bark when their best friends go surfing. there are dogs that swim out to sea, only to turn back when the waves come crashing in. there are dogs with surfing vests but poor balance. and there are dogs so obsessed with seeing and hearing water flow that they only drink from faucets. my dog is one of these...

shameless plug

you can check out my humble contribution to the drift blog collective here, and see photos of stitches and UFO ice cream. for those of you who don't know drift, i highly recommend it. along with the surfer's journal, which i'd love to get my hands on, it basically ignores the high-adrenaline world of pro surfing competitions, gearfests and gab to focus on the art, inspiration and culture of downhome surfing...

la gloria campestre

 

la gloria, one of lima's best restaurants, has opened a joint out in the country called 'la gloria campestre' and it is beautiful. set in the middle of a working farm that raises all kinds of organic greens and spices for a few select restaurants in lima, most of the cooking is done outside. the breads and meats are done in clay ovens and only a few things, like pasta, are done in an indoor kitchen. a lot of people in peru still cook outdoors over fires every day, especially in poor towns or the mountains, and a lot of dishes simply taste better with smokey flavor. eating is a big deal in peru and food hasn't been industrialized like in other countries. most producers are small scale. frozen fish doesn't exist, you can only get it fresh, and animals are fed real feed and slaughtered shortly before meal time, so the goat, duck, pig and turkey taste exceptional. still, i'm thinking that when i hit 40 i'll become a vegetarian again.

erosion

 

more from chilca

 

a big turnout today at a break in chilca for a bodyboard competition billed as part of one global circuit or another. the merchandising and blaring music and tv crews were a turn off, but the trip out was worth it because, supposedly, it's a 'newly discovered break.' hard to get to and you basically need a four wheel drive or a horse to get out to the break once you make it past miles of huge ovens where they cook bricks from dirt dug up from old seafloor. apparently peru's military controls the hills behind the break, so for years people weren't allowed in. it's a big, heavy wave, very fast, with a thick lip and today, so far as i could tell, it couldn't be surfed. the body boarders often were stuck in the foam as soon as they dropped in and couldn't get over to a face that folded over quickly. maybe on a smaller day. it looks and behaves like a beach break, but i think there is a reef near the shore line that causes it to jack up quickly. there is a big slab of rock that sits in front of the break, but i couldn't tell if it was part of a bigger mass extending into the water. i don't know. it could have just been hype by the town of chilca, which also promotes itself as a favorite landing pad of UFOs, trying to lure day trippers.

chilca

 

wow...

q peeps rocks sick photos today that he took in the land of Pancho Villa. he's also a new daddy and i read his blog faithfully for tips on what to do when my wife gives birth...

drift on over

please surf on over to drift, a fantastic surfing magazine that operates a bit like a collective and has put up a blogging platform for surfers. i'm honored that they asked little old me to participate. i'll be contributing posts there as well as here, and hopefully will figure out a way to post in both places at the same time. my page at drift is already up and running, though i'm in the process of writing my first post. check out the nifty photos...

can we say ginormous?

here's a photo of pico alto, the big wave spot south of lima that you need to get towed into on a jetski. it breaks right near a bunch of other surf spots i frequent. i've never surfed pico alto as it dies quickly and i can't say i find huge waves all that alluring, but this is a great photo. it was taken by a friend of mine, a professional...

big waves and thick crowds

okay, i admit it. i was feeling sorry for myself for a cut i suffered on my cheek on saturday at puerto viejo, where the waves were up to 10 feet and the line-up was so crowded that twice i dropped in on waves only to look up and see someone at the bottom of the wave waiting to get runover. there were accidents that happened, and others waiting to happen all over the place. handling a drop on a big wave is much tougher than on a small wave and when there are a bazillion people in front of you it's that much tougher. on the one good wave i caught, i waited to pop up until i had steered left of about five people. but the other times i wasn't as lucky and one time my cheek hit someone's fin. another time my nose hit someone in the shoulder. the big lesson here, for me, is that it's a waste of time and dangerous to go out when it's super crowded, even when the waves are great. and saturday was the most crowded i've ever seen it here. so, i was moping around for the last two days until i read this... ed over at quality peoples, which you can check out here, had a downright awful experience the other day. as his tale shows, surfing is the only sport i've encountered where you can have a purely blissful, almost cosmic experience one day, only to find yourself screaming in agony and feeling like a torture victim the next... (by the way, i'd say it was a stingray that got him. i got stung once and an old fisherman's wife put my foot in a bucket of cold water, rubbed tree sap on it, and then told her 10-year-old grandson light up a cigarette and blow the smoke on it. she also said the poison goes straight to your boobs if you are a woman, and straight to your balls if you're a man).

punta roquitas

nice waves this morning at punta roquitas, glassy and windless, with 5 foot waves that required you to pump like mad to make it through the sections. a nice little challenge. it can be a very, very fun break. especially on a fish that allows you to take off just a bit earlier than would be possible on a thruster. it can also be a tricky break, with quick close outs that hurt unless you pick your waves carefully. i thought today that lima should really make a big push to clean up the bay, and maybe even move some rocks around on the shallow, rocky floor to improve the shape of the waves. peru has an important surfing culture, but it could be bigger and deeper, it seems.

the big swell

southern peru is in day 3 of a 12 foot swell. things are very, very big. tried to surf caballeros on sunday but couldn't get into a wave, and on the inside things were a bit too nutty. will try again today at a more mellow break. hopefully the video will work.

finally got the video to work, on a very mushy day

gopro camera is finally working from inkawaves on Vimeo.

puerto viejo

 

dolphins or circus tricks?

back when i was a young thing, skateboarders used to argue about whether a given move had integrity, whether it was communicating something and genuinely challenging, or whether it was just a cheap, superficial show off move, which they would deride as a "circus trick." i thought about that when i saw this video below. the landing is the most impressive part for me, and the timing is unreal, but the flip in and of itself amazes me less than the reentry. it also got me thinking about where i surfed on saturday, at puerto viejo, and how a dolphin popped up out of the water and dropped in on me just as i was paddling for an 8 foot wave. he was so close to me, cruising head on at me on a big, powerful wave, that i shouted "oh my god!" -- but he was a good enough swimmer to avoid me. he then circled back and surfaced next to me and blew water out of his blow hole, as if to say hi. dolphins are the coolest creatures on earth, and they do back flips too, which they are expected to do, unlike the guy in the video below.

oh wow...

the photo in the chicama post below, i forgot to say, is of me. but it doesn't do the feeling justice. here's a video that captures the feeling of riding a crazy wave better than any i've seen... (via 70percent and quality peoples)

If in the Desert from chase burns on Vimeo.

chicama

 

just back from chicama today after a trip with an old friend. we waited for 4 or 5 days for chicama to break well, surfing spots nearby, and then popped over for one good day there. it's the longest left in the world and it really is true that your legs tire while riding the wave that never seems to end.

chicama, here i come...

i'm off for a week in chicama and pacasmayo with an old friend from highschool. it will be a pilgrimmage to what is billed as the longest left in the world. hopefully i'll post pictures from the road. we'll see. wish us luck!

another shot of the new board

 

new board

 

My new board from quiver! it's a 6'7" by 19.5" by 2.5." The nose is 11.75" and the tail is 14.75". The shaper also made my a slightly shorter and thinner board and said I could choose from the two. I thought of buying the smaller board, but he talked me into this one as everyone here thinks I'm tall and heavy, when I actually feel skinny when I go back to the U.S. Anyway, I asked for all orange and this is what they did. I kind of like the yellow band. The shape is much more aggressive than my fish, with a bit more rocker, and is double concave on the bottom. It's also not epoxy like my fish, so I have to treat it with more care.

steep to fat in nothing flat

surfed again at punta rocas yesterday afternoon. like saturday and sunday, it was 6 feet, but it was very tough to catch a wave. the takeoffs were super steep, and then fattened out almost immediately, becoming so fat you couldn't hitch rides or stay up once you had popped up. the only difference from saturday, i think, was that the tide was a foot or two higher, so the waves couldn't wall up as nicely. and i went out on a much floatier board. on saturday i used a skinny 6'8" thruster, which i was afraid wouldn't float me, and i caught plenty of waves. on wednesday, i went out on a fish of the same length which is extremely wide and barely caught anything. nature is fickle.

who's going surfing?

 

trying out the new life vest

 

punta rocas

 

a shot my wife took at punta rocas on sunday. i went to the break saturday and sunday and it was nearly perfect both days...