opening the toybox

lunchtime

Whenever I travel to surf, it always strikes me how much easier it is to be a surfer in some other places - California and Hawaii are great examples. There's almost always a wave somewhere and generally there's going to be somewhere the wind is reasonably favourable or the bottomshape is strong enough to keep the wave quality ok. I honestly think people in these places wouldn't bother to get in the water in half the stuff we regularly paddle out in. Surfing is just "there" to take or leave as life allows. You don't need to be quite as obsessive as UK surfers often "need" to be

The
point I'm making is how "on it" you need to be to get any good at surfing here. Almost everyone I know tries to keep their schedule as flexible as possible, constantly keeping an eye on the tide and forecast hoping to create a slot of freetime at the right time.

I'm lucky, I work 5 minutes from the beach and whilst I cant always pick the perfect time to get there, I can find a slot most days there are waves. Then its just a case of having a quiver of the right boards in the mobile garage that my van constitutes and hoping the summer traffic isn't too bad.

Lomo LCa picture from just after a springtime liquid lunch

peak experience

Another one from my ride in the dark peak.

all piggy and stuff

So i've had a good chance to put my new gulfstream log through it's paces over the summer so far, both here and in some zippy French beach break.

I can honestly say it's one of the best longboards I've owned. Its got the perfect mix of solid noseriding and whippy turns and I'm increasingly convinced that this type of slimmed out, wide point back template flat out works, especially in the choppier conditions we get lots of.

It seems like more and more people world wide are moving towards this kind of board - almost everyone at the recent joel tudor duct tape at the US open was riding something similar.

while I haven't got a clip of the Slimpig in action, this clip of CJ Nelson in mexico on his Australian Slasher model shows exactly the kind of surfing that the slim pig is designed to do. Note how much more aggressive his cutbacks are
compared
 to
footage of him riding a more classic noserider template. click the link to watch, it wont embed for some reason!


http://www.surfermag.com/videos/be-here-now/#xxllDMREYokRr1F0.97

post roman post

Big skies in the peak district before a really fun descent down an old roman road. Rocky, long and loose, it's one of the first times ive properly experienced arm pump on a bike!