Thursday, November 08, 2007

IT is ALWAYS better where your friends are riding waves.

The cheeks are starting to hurt from all the smiling the daily wind and surf has been delivering this week. Again today if was four or five hours of fun conditions... On the way to work this morning as on all other mornings this week, friends were calling up to outdo each other on stories of how where they were riding was far better that where we were.. Now, sometimes it is actually the case but somehow we happy primates just need to embellish the stories to make friends a bit green with envy. When you are already stoked out of your gord from umpteen great sessions in a row, the stories need to be of epic proportion...
Jaimie told the mondo stories the last few days...He was kiteing with us up at County and the waves were great yesterday but the pack of surfers in the blown out but sizable surf looked like ants stuck in the icing of a melting wedding cake. Every wave was packed with tumbling floaters who rarely could make more than one hit prior to being shut down by a closing section... Ediquite required us to pull out of the best section on many of the better set waves. That still left quite a few good point waves with just one of us wind powered surfers milking them with alongside a huge pod of bottlenose porposes making sections our paddle brothers couldn't make.. We all still do surf heaps so emphathy for the blown out conditions surfers plight absolutely colored our decisions to smack that next lip or not.... Well, that and basic Harbor and Navs rules of course... J and I moved far north to get the left and bowling right at that point knowing we would be limited to three hits if going right prior to interacting with the semipermiable wall of bobbing fiberglass sitters... J took off south through one of the rare holes in the pack on a set wave and revisited Bombora reef's smakin lefts that we had hit earlier in the session..and then moved on to one of my old favorite wave haunts just down south.. It is very hard to concentrate on the super model you are with when a friend is holding the hand of the supermodel you used to date...Bad analogy but same dumb thinking going on here...... I could just see him down there and the question to leave great waves to chance getting a less crowded area and equal, skunk wind shut down spot.... or....oh crap... even better conditions had me not appreciating how freaking good I was getting it right there for about three minutes as the surfing crowd thined dramatically in the increasing wind..

J spent about 15 minutes letting me know why he had it better than I did yesterday, the day before and the day before that.. Now this same story for every different location and time was repeated by Billy, John, Vic, Mo, Alidad to some degree though granted the number of adjectives and adverbs used to add glitter to the uber-event is inversly proportional to the square of the actual water outings merrits in most cases ...but not all......Name person here and their mailman plus myself in this dog crap landmine jacked sand auditorium of braggarts... The true reason for our flapping jaws is to relive the great experience again and again in our minds and hopefully let the information fall on appreiciative wave addict ears who would have the B.S.. filter turned on but not the volume of the exageration anouncment unit.. Our pets certainly won't listen to that same story again..

I actually now look forward to the stories of great sessions even after 37 years of surf story creativity from friends and even their significant other who learn the art of surf talk BS early on in the relationship..... Started telling these stories early on the first surf day of my nine years old Malibu fiberglass in surf experience and will continue around plates of jello at the home for salt water head geriatrics in Rusty Trailer Town USA towards the end of this carbon unicycle ride..... Some of these stories are dead true and not embelished but those stories are only told when the other crap slingers are humble enough post sesson, not to be standing around post session and saying "did you see me ripping out there?" Till then the latex gloves stay off.. Sometimes you just have to throw down the crap to keep down the stink.. It is all good and was even better yesterday if you had only been where I was.... Put that in your crack pipe and smoke it...

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Can you see the waves through the smoke??

The Malibu fire had us scrambling out of the unfiltered burning Malibu plastic castle smell and up to switch around NW winds at C Street. We scored some fun waves and wind for a few days inbetween carcinogen rich breaths of Moorpark, and other city fires.... The sky was so dark with soot on the way home, four of us ended up reversing course and spending the night up in Santa Barbara. Great wind and waves for regular surfing and the kite powered stuff. One of our instructors went down to San Felipe on a students jet and met some other students who drove down. The conditions were strong and fun to say the least. 40-50 mph the first day... Tom is still farting dust is the rumor from those that dare drive in the Tom mobile.. That has got to be some bad hang time methane.. I'll drive myself thanks....

Locally it has been fantastic wind and surf every evening this week with a great south swell hitting the last three days and well overhead conditions with nine meter and 12 meter kites each day. I have been testing the new Light Wave Dave 5'8" four fin directional board alongside our undergrounds and other surf style rides. The board is very loose without the usual tracking feel of a four fin. The fins are quite large and the board has a wide point moved back ala the Cheyne Horan surfboards of yore and our no nose windsurfing boards from back in the day. The board goes top to bottom with aplomb and can be broken loose at will though it does hold very well when powered in a hard bottom turn. The pointy nose in conjuction with the foot straps moved to the second from the rearmost (tons of adjustment range) hole front and rear, blasts the board through the lip with a bit less knee slamming "SHMACK" and lands reentries well. You HAVE to add a nose guard if you want to prevent frequent body piercings from this baby. The pads are very nice and cover all of the deck needed. This is a thin board and not a super floater so a bit of wind is needed to get me up and going on it but it is better than we expected in the marginally windy stuff and will probably be just fine for someone of the lighter weight set.. Build quality is what you would expect of a board with such a great price but it is holding up well so far amongst all our testers.

The new Peter Lynn water kite is about to come into our hands and all preliminary reports are raving about the Synergy quick turning and grunt per size relative to any PL in the past. The kite looks great in the new colors and hopefully we will have some in a month or so to let our buds try. Heaps more power per size has us all excited for the ultimate ease of use, stablity and user friendlyness line of kites.

The new GK kites are out with our favorite Trix in some new colors with even more duro added and with a new bar. The Sonic has added center canopy area and ease of use increase with a point in the leading edge and an extended area behind.. Each year the GK designer comes up with something the other brands are hussling to copy ASAP..