more sunshine on a grey day

 

Funky restored beach shack at Crystal Cove near Laguna on a hot summers day. Pretty much my girls favorite US beach. More of a skimming than a surf spot though so not really mine!

i heart california......

Santa Barbara sunshine, born on the fourth of july

hiatus

 

and...................... we're back in the room!

Slight hiatus in posting, partly from busy life syndrome, lack of water time to get excited about and not having any new film pics to post. Maybe im mellowing with age but there hasnt been much to rant about either......

New year's resoloution is to keep this up though. I guess life moves on. When i started Adventures up, blogging was hot news but modern life evolves at such a pace that i suspect blogs are generally less visited than they used to be. Instagram has become such an all pervading platform for visual media that a lot of the photographic content of blogs has migrated there (& twitter i guess)  I'm as guilty of that too. I always think it's slightly ironic that instagram is an app aimed at making crisp digital pictures look like the expired, badly developed, crappy toy camera ones that people were taking 50 or 60 years ago.

What's old is new again i guess. Anyway my instagram is here 

Less film, more immediate probably more muddy bikes and coastal vistas.

doho days.....

I think Doheny is probably the spot that ive surfed most in California, mainly through it's convnience to the a couple of the condos we've stayed in. It kind of gets a bad rep amongst the wider surf world for being fat, slow and busy but its a fun wave with a mellow crowd and some really good longboarders across several generations. This particular sunday it was baking on the beach and busy in the water with glassy head high sets rolling through in boardshort temperature water. A classic californian beach day shared with the three G's (thats you Threadills! :-))

cruisers

How smooth?

ONE SESSION WITH: DANE PETERSON from travis kuhlman on Vimeo.

Turns out i cant embed this video here but it's worth clicking the link. Sure malibu is a perfect logging wave but DP makes it look so easy. I love his understated style and catlike movements. He's definately a big influence on my own surfing. His  board in the clip is very similar to my if6was9 log, piggy shape, greenough fin, not too much foam and i personally think its where a good modern log should be right now. Still noserides great in the pocket but turns smoothly too.

wowzers.......

What a great run of autumn swell we've had! Definately been keping the stokeometer up and most of the quiver in heavy rotation. Curent boards in the van are the if6was9 modlog dane peterson influenced 9'4, the 5'2 TW bar of soap and the gulfstream 5'6 twin keel which absolutely flies and i cant believe i allowed it to languish un-loved in the board store for such a long time!

surly

Big sur is stunning

alpine traffic jam

Waiting out the traffic at the start of a 15km alpine descent a couple of weeks back in France. Epic weekend trip, 4 days, 233 miles and 30,000 plus feet of climbing.

wait for the hook....

The next installment of views from california. This is a glassy set wave peaking up at The Hook, just south of Pleasure point in Santa Cruz. Lovely short paddle out in giant lulls through kelp beds then slightly overhead reeling right handers section chasing down the point. This particular morning was unusually quiet compared to other times i checked it. The kelp was so thick in places you could feel it pulling at your fins and leash, alomost enough to pull you out of the wave at times. It sounds weird but you could almost imagine getting tied up in the fronds underwater when you duck dived or wiped out. It was too fast for a log, i rode the seapea but even that had a little bit too much foam. My friend Matt from SF loves this wave on a fish and i can really see it being a great board selection.

a devon terrier.....

George with all the beach essentials! Thats my old Dano Old pleasure which has found an appreciative new home with Mr Barrett. I loved the shape but always found it had a little bit too much heft for my diminutive size to man handle in our beach break waves. It suits George to a tee and i always enjoy watching him pilot it through a busy saunton line-up

film still rules / love c street!

Much a i like the immediacy and convenience of having a camera and editing software in my iphone shaped trouser pocket, shooting film is still the best. Manipulating an instagram picture this much might seem contrived and yet this is just a straight 120 film scan from my holga complete with light bleed and weird colout cast from the cross processing. I love the fact that you never know exactly how the picture is going to turn out until you scan the negative.

I'm pretty stoked on this one. It's from the county fairground parking lot in Ventura at the top of the C street point, somewhere i surfed quite a few times on this trip. Although the Santa Barabara/ Rincon area is littered with right hand points, most of them only properly wake up in winter when the swells come from the north. In summer, C street is the go for many locals and it is a really fun wave on a log when its small or a fish when its bigger. Despite the crowd, it's pretty mellow in the water and usually has multiple sections / take off spots to thin the pressure on the sets.

As with most of the waves i surfed, even on days that the locals considered sub-par, it was better than 99% of the waves i surf at home.