the wishthound.........

skates better than you!

28 seconds......

So, Christian Wach must be officially one of the most talented noseriders ever, winning the Noosa noseriding comp for the 4th(!!) time with a noseride clocked at 28 seconds! I so want to go surf there!

p.s obviously not my picture, not sure who's it is, if it's your's, it's sick, please claim it. Apologies in advance!

what's old is new again

The wishthound gave me a new skateboard a month or so ago, much to my wife's disgust i might add.Since then i've spent an enjoyable number of hours (in upstanding member of the community fashion not like a ne'er do well abusing council property or anything :-)) rolling around Barnstaple's new-ish skatepark. I have discovered a few things:

Firstly i'd forgotten how much fun skating is, not having ridden anything other than a big long skateboard for 5 years. I can actually remember how to do some tricks though i've forgotten more. Each time i leave for home, i remember something else that i should have tried, a trick that used to languish in the bottom of the trick bag. all those years ago. There is still that same satisfaction from landing something (however simple now) and rolling away clean that never changes.

Secondly, i don't bounce like i did ten years ago. I have a fraction of the bottle i used to have, gone are the days of throwing myself down sets of stairs with abandon. The threat of broken limbs & their consequences loom ever larger and well, concrete is hard and it hurts, for a lot longer as well at my advanced age. In the wishthounds words, the ability curve for surfing is gradual but with an overall upward trend for most of your life, with skating it peaks early and it's pretty much all downhill from there, but if you're having fun, who cares right?

Thirdly, like surfing, it never truly leaves. Skateboarding was a big part of my growing up, becoming a man, it shaped my future path in life in a way that i only recently understand. It changes how you look at the physical world we interact with on a daily basis and i don't think you ever fully forget that or ever lose the desire to skate, it's just your body that lets you down. Even though there are a couple of long periods when i haven't rolled around, it's always in there bubbling away under the surface.

Finally kids today have it easy! The park in the pictures is one of at least five small skate facilities (off the top of my head) within a 30 minute drive, in a relatively rural area, all well built and good to skate. Back in the early nineties, my friend's mum fought for years for our midland council to build some ramps and when they did it was virtually unusable. Skateboarding is acceptable now in a way that it never was when i started (though there is still a punk ethos like there used to be once you dig beneath the shiny veneer of tony hawk & the x games)

Kids today learn tricks in their first year that were beyond the imagination of the pros of the eighties and it's easy to learn them because the boards are light and you can see things to inspire you in magazines, dvd's, on youtube and in your local town. Things never used to be like that (please excuse the monty python style "it were hard in my day" monologue but..)

Take learning to ollie for example, essential basic skating building block. That took us ages to learn, we had heard reference to it & seen stills of people in the air but never actually seen a video or much less anyone do it in real life. Our town had no older skaters to copy and it wasn't until a friend of a friend managed to get a photocopy of a "how to" from an old mag that we managed to see how it was done, before that it might as well have been magic. In fact i can still remember the afternoon my friend and i first managed to properly leave the ground.

Steve Pezman has a great quote in Andrew Kidman's Glass Love where he talks about surfing as you get older being just as challenging and rewarding even though your actual ability level might be decreasing as your body ages. His point is that as even the simpler things become harder, the satisfaction in still achieving them increases and the sum total of joy (or stoke if you like) in that is the same as it ever was. I think he's right and the same applies to skating, surfing, pretty much any physical activity

So here's to my fellow old skaters with a peter pan complex! It's a shame i have a princess obsessed daughter, a son might have given me the perfect, spouse approved, excuse to keep going!

Incidentally i just saw the latest Flip movie (Extremely Sorry) The level of skating is fully RIDICULOUS!  I always have a soft spot for Flip, being the phoenix from the ashes of Classic Brit brand Deathbox & sponsors of two of my favorite ever skaters Tom Penny & Geoff Rowley. Their new dvd is well worth a watch if you get the chance, just not with any young impressionable children in attendance!

all washed up

Free your ankles!

a word in your ear...

Surfers ear is hardly breaking news. A cursory trawl of the net will reveal a wealth of wealth of information about the condition. Unless you are a complete beginner, chances are you will have either had some surfing related ear problems or at the very least know someone who has.

I'm not going to insult your intelligence by going into detail about why our beautiful obsession with waves can lead to repeated ear infection, partial deafness or unpleasant surgery to sort the problems out. What i am going to do is encourage you to be proactive about it.

Most of you will be aware that the damaging effects of wind and water can be reduced by wearing earplugs when you surf but most people don't start using them until they are already having problems. If you will allow me to offer a piece of advice - start wearing them now, before you get a problem, you'll thank me in the long run!

There are lots of different options, blue tac does work as do off the shelf silicon putty plugs but the safest option is custom made earplugs exactly like the ones Rob Shaddick at surfplugs made me. Granted they are more expensive than blue tac but (unless you are a muppet like me and lose one) they last for years. We spend hundreds of pounds a year on boards, wetsuits, petrol, carparks all in the pursuit of waves and custom plugs are realtively cheap in comparison, especially as they will help prevent a condition that could seriously limit or curtail your water time eventually.

Surfplugs are made in a cast of your ear, poured up from a silicon rubber impression Rob takes of your inner and outer ear which is an interesting and slightly weird experience in itself. After placing a piece of sponge over your eardrum the rubber is injected into your ear and sets hard enough to remove in a couple of minutes.

My plugs were back in about a week and, once you have the knack, are easy to place and remove. It does take a few sessions to get used to them. Lots of people say it affects their surfing but i honestly think if you wear them for every session you adapt to the feeling of wearing them quickly. I think lots of people dont wear plugs consistently enough to get past this. They dont affect your hearing enough to stop you chatting in the line up, though you can feel a little cut off in winter if you are wearing a hood as well.

Having already worn the putty style plugs for a number of years i've found the custom plugs more comfortable and you dont spend half your session pushing them back into your ears. I now feel a little uncomfortable surfing without them, especially in winter when it seems the cold gets inside your head more without them in.

Don't just take my word for it, many of the best surfers in the country are wearing Robs plugs, whether the logo is on their board or not. If you want to find out more about the plugs themselves or surfers ear, click here

GS go blogtacular....

Gulfstream surfboards have a new blog up and running featuring the ramblings of shop monkey Will. Check them out here

Picture of Skelton ducking for cover to prevent passersby being blinded by his wetsuit courtesey of Rob Tibbles. Moral of the story is never let someone else have free reign over the colour of your custom wetsuit!

coulda, shoulda, woulda...

I often feel my surfing life is filled with near misses and if onlys. I am lucky that i get to surf quite a bit but i am generally limited to the closest beach and whatever stage of the tide it happens to be when i engineer a slot to go. Consequently i am often left feeling like it would have been better an hour ago or a couple of hours later or just round the corner or.......

Today had the right ingredients just the wrong mix, sunny offshore, few people but not quite enough swell and more than enough wind. It left me thinking how much the wind changes the shape and nature of our beachbreak waves. This spot is usually one of the mushiest breaks on the coast.

Least i got to try out the new family snapshot point and shoot pentax which just happens to be waterproof too! Of course that had nothing to do with my choice of model :-)

toys

So i've kept this fairly surf based so far, but those who know me will know that guitar & music in general is another of my life's obsessions. I recently treated myself to the little vox amp in the picture. Four watts of lovely rich tube tone, looks like a handmade chocolate and best of all?

It's quiet & aesthetically pleasing enough to be allowed downstairs in the house!

This pic and the water shots on film are from another new toy, an ebay bargain waterproof film camera + some film that expired 6 years ago. Seems like an experiment that has worked so far!

self portrait

pitted

Though he's far too modest to claim it, this is the local legend that is Mr Skelton owning the point last week. In his usual understated manner he snuck the wave of the day from under the noses of the local pro's & photogs before disappearing back to continue rennovating his kitchen.
Photos & questionable tv border via Rob Tibbles.

bleakers!

My friend Chris just posted a great interview with Sam Bleakley on Drift, check here. Chris is a fine photographer and one of the people who inspired me to pick up a camera. Check his work out here

go lateral

Those of you who actually read my ramblings will have noticed a common thread to my choice of surf craft. Personally i believe style is all important in surfing, i don't care how radical your turns are, if you have an ugly style i'm not interested. Having been initially drawn to the style inherent in traditional longboarding, once i started to experiment with shorter boards i looked for shapes that would still allow a smooth flowing style, one that works with the wave, rather than trying to beat it into submission.

When i'm trying to explain it to others i often term it like this: Conventional shortboarding is all based on getting vertical, drawing very "up & down" lines on the wave. The surfing i'm into is based very much on drawing more flowing lateral lines on the wave, heavy single fin logs on small waves, two and four fin fish on bigger waves and lately, the ultimate lateral trim machine - the displacement hull.

Some of you will relate to that, some of you will think it's boring surfing. Thats cool, each to their own, the world would be a boring place if we all liked the same thing.