patriot

 

Winter is here, snow is falling in the mountains and the thicker rubber is back in rotation. It also means i see this view a lot more often!

cotton candy

Classic lomography, vignette, light leak, torn sprockets. late summer, early weekend

dawning

 

There arent many good things about dark mornings but seeing the sun rise is one of the few

twisted

I stripped all the wax off my favorite log the other day. It was about time, it pretty much looked like it had been Tarmaced! Much to my horror i noticed that the blank has twisted, pretty significantly. It wasnt entirely unexpected, i know most of the other boards shaped from that batch of blanks have a twist to some degree, an unfortunate dodgy supply i would assume.

The weird thing is that it's (still) an amazing magic board. It's always paddled slow but it has been and (since noticing the twist still ) remains one of my favorites. I'm pretty sure the twist has been there for a while which leads me to question how much difference does it actually make? In theory you are only engaging one rail at a time (the basis that asymmetric boards work on)

I mean is the twist in the rail actually part of the magic? The argument for hand over machine shaping has always been one which says that it is the inaccuracies in a handshape that make the difference between a great board and a mediocre one and the precision of the machine loses this "magic touch"

As far as i can see the only problem is that it affects the resale value.... which is fine because this log is a keeper!

zigzagsurfer

Kept meaning to post this, it's a cool little clip - made me want to go surfing anyway!

Surfer is Mike Siordia from South Bay LA, riding for Nighttrain surfboards now although he used to ride for tyler

in golden fields....

As commutes go, it's not a bad one.

So i'm trying hard to keep this all surfing related generally but as i type this i'm in france and it's raining, massive and onshore so i aint surfing today, in fact as surf trips go, this one has pretty much sucked.

 As you all know, surfing and waves in general are fickle beasts. For every hour surfing we spend precious few minutes actually stood up and riding waves and countless more watching, waiting, hoping for somthing to happen. That puts surfing at odds as a "sport" with most other conventional sports. Take tennis or swimming or football (or most anything else) Once you have negotiated a window to go do them, it's pretty much just a case of turning up and playing. Even skateboarding and snowboarding, our closest cousins, are the same, theres always something to ride on the mountain and skate spots only change slowly over time.

Book a week or two at the beach though, especially if it's a european beach break and you could luck into 10 days of perfect warm swell or the hundred year storm and the ensuing fall out. This holiday has definately trended towards the latter........

Patience is key but in our ever more busy lives it's a difficult lesson to learn!

essentials

 

One of the things i like about surfing is that, for all the fashionable quiver building and techological advances pushed by the big companies, at it's heart it's a simple pleasure.

all you need is a board, some wax and a wetsuit