New Kicks

My Gotcha shoes just arrived and they are so rad! I've been wearing them everywhere. A lot of people have asked me where they sell them. They are among my favorite things Gotcha has ever made.

Big Tuesday

I arrived in Pisa, Italy for my first time ever. My older brother had been there years before and I remember him always talking about it and how much he enjoyed Italy. When I arrived at the airport everyone was giving me funny looks, curious as to what my board bag was. A couple people even asked me what it was, some even in Italian. It wasn't long before Alessandro Dini came to pick me up. I knew right away it was him when I noticed his Gotcha T-shirt. We drove to Viareggio first and had my first taste of amazing Italian food. It was a mixed plate of fine ham, cheese, and bread. An Italian beer to top it off. He took me around town and showed me the spots he surfs on a regular basis. Beach breaks for some fun Loggin'. With an awesome forecast of a nice northwest swell coming to the island of Sardinia, we drove to the ferry that night.
We arrived in Sardinia after a nice overnight sleep on the ferry. Our group consisted of European team rider Giovanni, Alessandro, a camera man nick named Yeahyah, and myself. Fortunately, Alessandro had really good local friends there. One in particular was named Marco and he surfed with us the entire time. We had our best session with him the next day on "Big Tuesday". The waves were offshore, big and blue. Not what I expected in the Mediterranean Sea! We surfed a couple spots but our second session was by far the best. Only three of us out, and some epic waves! What more could we ask for?

Now, I am back in Viareggio and the waves are very small. Luckily, there is a new swell on the horizon for this weekend. Tomorrow Richard Dog Marsh and Glen Hall will join us and we will head back to Sardinia for more action.

Check back for more updates!
Ciao
Cwach

photos courtesy of Alessandro Dini

ASR SURF SHOW BOARDS

As promised, here are some pics of me painting the boards at the Gotcha booth from the 1st day of the ASR tradeshow. I think they're looking pretty cool so far. I should finish them off tomorrow.

Fun New Stix

Swung by Gotcha HQ to drop off these shortboards I painted for them. I'm sure if you keep watching the site they will be having a contest to win 'em sooner or later! These pics were taken in a hallway lined with my art - stoked.

Even More Norway Pics

More Norway Pics

NORWAY - Part 3!

Well, we've reached the end of our journey here in Norway. Ahhhh man, it's been so awesome too! Everything from hiking, to fishing, to snowboarding on our surfboards, to camping.... it's really been an awesome trip! I've eaten so many waffles and so much cod I'm starting
to almost get sick of it, but not quite! Haha... We got some really sick water shots yesterday evening on my longboard too. They're really nice. The surf was kinda crappy and then I paddled out and then it all of the sudden turned on and became glassy.

Tomorrow we're headed on a flight to Russia. I'm a little uncertain because of all the things we've heard about Russia but I think it should be a rad experience. I don't know when the next time in my life I'll have the opportunity, so I'm going to take my chances. We don't even know if we can surf there yet but, hey, it's worth a shot. I just hope the water is cleaner than I've been hearing. I guess radio activity is pretty prevalent in the ocean up there. It's supposed to be a heck of a lot colder as well.

Here are some pics I took.

UHH SO CROO!

If you're Japanese, you've never surfed before, or, you just straight up enjoy watching tandem, you might just like this! Otherwise, I suggest telling a Japanese person, someone who's never surfed before, or someone who likes tandem to watch it.

Japanese accents are rad.

NORWAY - Part 2!

The days are never-ending here in The Lofotons. November through January it's dark all day long and all night. Then this part of the year every day is getting 20 minutes longer day by day until the midnight sun occurs in June, July, and sometimes August. You can surf all day and all night if you want. The sun pretty much goes around the sky in a big circle. It's never straight overhead. We havn't seen the Northern Lights yet though unfortunately. I feel like I've been here for two weeks already.

A couple of days ago we went out on a Viking ship! Dude, it was an experience. Full remake of an old Viking ship that they used to sail from Norway to Iceland, Sweden, and all over the arctic circle to pick up the hottest chicks. Then, they exported them back to Norway. That's why there are so many gorgeous girls here. And yeah, it's no rumor. Women here are extremely beautiful. You should have seen in the airport man... Pat Millin and I were staring every two seconds.

You should see how beautiful the mountains are here. They are HUGE. We're staying at this killer place called the Kraemmervika Rorbuer. They have really good food and nice people own it named Ingvar and Torgun. They have really nice kids, ages 8 and 9 that have been hanging out with us around the place. I became pretty good buddies with one of the sons named Andreas. They have music equipment here like a drum set, some speakers and an EQ system. The reason they have all this is so that local bands can come and play without having to bring their equipment and also so that traveling musicians can perform as well. Today I taught Andreas how to play the drums and we have a little song we're going to jam tonight for "Open Mic Night." I'm also going to perform some of my songs. Yazzy, Pat, James, the writer who is writing our story for Outside Magazine, (who is by the way, one of the funniest people I've ever met) and I are going to perform a couple songs we came up with yesterday. Pat and I are the rastafarian vocalists, Yazzy's on reggae strum, and James is on the Balstad beats. We're called the Fish Heads apparently after the vintage fish head bags hanging on the wall behind the drum set where we practiced.

Andreas.

We took the Kraemmervika speedboats out today and went fishing! SO ZINE dude... I caught the biggest fish I've ever caught in my life. A huge Cod! I only caught two fish but they were both pretty big. Probably about two or three feet long. Cod is the number one export in Norway. It's interesting. You see thousands of them hanging from wooden stilts in uniform lines. The Cod dries for 2-3 months. There are 17 catagories of Cod. The highest quality goes to Italy and lowest quality, the fish heads, go to Africa for Cod stew. Pretty weird how the world works like that. Anyways, the bay where we fished today was incredible. Huge sheer mountains come down into the ocean and create an insane fjord which is like a huge bay.

Fish swarm.

As far as the surf goes, it's been pretty flat but really nice weather. We surfed once and it wasn't even that cold. I thought it would be colder, but then again, the sun was out, and it was keeping us fairly warm. The waves were fun too. Fun little lefts for the CJ Nelson Aviso model I brought.

That's pretty much what we're up to. Soon we will be camping about an hour away on some deserted beach where we have to take a boat to. Then we have to hike about an hour to the beach where will then post up and really live it rugged because at the moment we're living like kings eating waffles and Cod all day. The outdoors will be a great angle for the Outside Magazine article. After camping for as long as we can bear without getting frost bite, we're heading North to Russia to camp some more. We've heard there's a lot of radio activity along the coastal waters so I'm a little nervous about that but what's an adventure without a little fear? I'm looking forward to it. After that we are flying over to the Faroe Islands. That's an entirely different adventure we'll be tapping into. I'll try and send out more updates as soon as I have more to write about because that's pretty much all of it. Thanks for reading!

NORWAY!

Hey mates!

I'm havin' a blast here. I'm in Balstad Norway in the Lofoten Islands off the Northeast coast of Norway! It only took four flights to get here and $450 later for my boards to make it. I met up with Pat Millin, Cyrus Sutton, this Aussie bloke named Matt, and Yazzy a photographer from Canada, in Oslo, Norway, kinda accidentally. Pat and I were just walking through the airport when we ran into the others. SO stoked we did because Yazzy greased it sooooo hard with the board bags. We actually checked in twice somehow! The reason we did that was because we each had too many bags and we didn't want to pay again for the boards or any of our other luggage... Ok, so first we hid the board bags and got our baggage tags. Then we went and put the tags we received on the boardbags where we hid them. After that, we dropped them off at the oversize baggage drop. Then we went back and waited in a separate Scandinavian Airlines line and checked in again at a different counter and got more baggage tags. The lady was like... "You already checked in, where are your baggage tags?" We told her we never got any. She was sorta confused and suspicious but after a little greasin' she just put the tags on there. We were on our merry way! How sly is that?!

We've climbed about five mountains already and it's only the fourth day. One of the climbs was seriously INTENSE. We were literally hanging off the side of this sheer face at one point wayyy up there. I was shaking because I am SO immensely scared of heights. Maybe that's why I am a logger and don't surf Jaws. I was almost crying to Yazzy telling him I wanted to go down and he totally agreed. He felt the same way. He didn't have the 500 dollar Vasque boots people use to climb Mount Everest that we got sponsored with for the trip. We definitely took the wrong route up the mountain for sure. SO freakin scary. Pat and this crazy Aussie guy Matt made it to the summit but they're derelicts. I imagine it was a killer view from up there. I'm going to try and conquer it eventually, but definitely not taking the goat trail again. We've also made friends with another ridge where Yazzy has been eager to get the "covershot." We've hiked it about four times now. By the end of the trip we're going to hate that ridge. It's pretty rad though. There's a huge lake at the top of this hill where when you get to the top, you can see down into the cauldron. You'd have no idea it's there until you hike it. It looks like the top of a volcano but instead of magma there is a massive frozen-over lake. A stream flows down the side of the ridge where we drank fresh water from. Something about the water here is amazing. It's so fresh and replenishing. Everything about this place is kinda like that though. There's something very special about it. They say it's closer here to heaven so it's easier to be touched by and angel. I dunno. I feel like it's a very spiritual place.

Noosa Festival of Surfing 2009

Hey guess what?! I made the finals!!!!

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwww !

I schooled 'em man. I'm in the Men's Open Pro Finals! Never made it in this contest before. The Noseriding Division hasn't even started yet so I'm looking forward to that as well :)

I've been gettin all sorts of media coverage in my Gotcha boardies and I did an episode for an Aussie TV show called "The Shak" hahah... so anyways, everything is goin good! Goin' to see the premiere of "Picaresque" tonight, pretty excited. :)

I'll keep you updated... oh yeah, AND I got the only 10.00 ride they've ever had in the event in my first heat ! :) That's 18 years and no ones ever done it, except me! :) I'll write a lil blog about that later...hahaha.

Australia

What's up mate!!! :)

We're havin' so much fun in Australia... the waves have been pretty sick too. First couple days were firing and now it's a little smaller. But other than that the weather is super nice and everything went really smoothly except when we went to weigh our board bags, they were pretty @#$%* heavy ... hahaha. Kameron's was WAYYY over and when the lady walked in the back he put my bag under the tail to make it weigh less... sooo classic. Totally got away with it hahaha. Mine on the other hand, I had to unload a buncha @#$%* out of it like 5 times. But the good news is we didnt have to pay for our board bags at all so that was radical.

I also have some sick pics and footy so far. Harrison and I have a plan to tandem on my noserider and he's going to hang heels and look back at me with the head cam on. :) We already did it without the cam so we know it's possible and never been done on film.

(Aussie Quote of the Day: "As black as a bat's kaiba hole!")

Hahahhaha weird hey?

Green Tea

Something that clearly struck me as amazing was the food in Japan! We ate like kings. Every time we ate anywhere it was an experience and a half. Everything from Moss Burger to Korean BBQ was absolutely delicious. Even McDonalds tasted better for some reason!

I went to sushi one evening with Ryo from Reunion wetsuits, my wetsuit sponsor, and my good friends Yama and Tsun. I really didn’t know what to expect other than amazing food. Although I love sushi in the U.S., it was quite different in Japan. The presentation was wonderful and it always tasted fresh. I mean, where else in the world do you go to sushi and the sushi chef does magic for you? I mean, come on! That’s exactly what happened that night. We were about half way through with our meal and all of the sudden the sushi chef started busting out magic tricks. At first, he mesmerized us with a couple card tricks that you’d figure any magician would be capable of doing. Then he got really crafty with the big finale at the end. By the looks on their faces, I had a feeling Ryo, Yama, and Tsun were exalting me in Japanese as he did wherever we went. The chef had me pull out a card and it was the ace of spades. Then he asked me to sign it. I concluded he was just asking for an autograph assuming Ryo had been telling him about the upcoming event in Taito, but little did I know he was contriving the finale of all finales. He slid the card back in the deck and set the stack of playing cards back on the table in front of me. I watched him carefully, not knowing what was coming next. He slowly pulled out a brand new, unopened bottle of green tea from a little cardboard box behind the sushi bar. Then he began signing something in Japanese on the top of the bottle; most likely his signature, but for all I know, it could decode the magic trick. I may never know. My eyes scoured it, watching his every move. He slowly ripped away the green wrapper from the little plastic bottle, and right away, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The ace of spades playing card I had just signed was now inside the unopened bottle of green tea! Even my Japanese friends that brought me there were in just as much shock (or more than) I was. We were astonished. None of us could believe our eyes. We thought of every way possible he could’ve done it, however, to this day, I still can’t make logical sense of it. I kept the souvenir and it still sits on a shelf in my room. Everybody asks what it is, and I always have an interesting story to reminisce upon. They always have the same reaction, “That’s not possible!” I tell them . . . “Only in Japan.”

Here’s what I’m listening to right now...

“Nantes” – Beruit

“Leyendecker” - Battles

“Gobbledigook” - Sigur Ros

“Better Things” - Passion Pit

“Build Me Up Buttercup” - Temptations

“Falling Away” - Benjamin Pacheco

“Changes” - Van She

“Gravity Rides Everything” - Modest Mouse

“Gone Again” - Tommy Guerrero

“Close To Me” - The Cure

“Get Up” - James Brown

“Ooh La La” - The Faces

“Crosses” - Jose Gonzales

“Paralyzed” - Japanese Motors

“Taper Jean Girl” - Kings of Leon

“Seaside” - The Kooks

“20 Dollar” - M.I.A.

“T.E.N.N.I.S.” - Dubious

“Non Photo-Blue” - Pinback

“RJD2” - Bus Stop Bities

Magic Carpet Ride

“Where’s your board?” a friend asks me as I’m submerged up to my chin in saltwater.

“Its right here,” I answer, as I shoot the board up out of submission, holding up what looks like an oversized longboard skateboard deck.

“What the hell is that? A plank of wood?” the curious friend asks, amazed at the capability of even paddling out on such a thing. “You’re joking right? How do you even paddle that thing; it just sinks?” he immediately hypothesizes.

“I dunno . . . I’m used to it. A little extra effort never hurt anyone right?” I smile.

“It looks like my grandma’s ironing board if you ask me. Is it some sort of piece of furniture?” he asks sincerely.

“No, it’s actually made for surfing and it’s called an Alaia. It’s a type of surfboard made of Paulownia wood, usually around six feet in length, used by the ancient Hawaiians in the early 19th century. I’ll bet you could iron some clothes on it if you had to though, it’s pretty flat,” I laugh.

“Do you use your foot as rudder?” he responds.

“No it turns because the rails act as a makeshift fin, slicing into the face of the wave.” I try to explain.

“Wow. That’s interesting,” he softly says to himself, mesmerized by the anorexic feeling of the overall plan of the board within his grip. “I couldn’t catch a wave on this thing to save my life but it sure would look cool in my living room,” he laughs and goes on his merry way paddling back out to join the pack of geezers conversing amongst one another on the outside. I can see discussion of the new phenomenon turning everyone’s heads.

I had my first glimpse of this new craze when I visited Australia for the Noosa Festival in March of 2007. My first interpretation wasn’t far off from the responses I’ve recently been intercepting from surfers when they first catch sight of the ride. The first guy I noticed riding Alaias was Jacob Stuth, a native Noosa shredder and Alaia expert. I asked similar questions at first like, where did you find that table top shaped like a surfboard? Or why are you riding that weird thing? From the moment I hopped on the thing I automatically judged it because I couldn’t accomplish a successful ride for the life of me. I had no idea of the fun that could be derived from the speed generated through such an avant garde yet ancient form of wave-riding.

Today, I ride my Alaia on a regular basis. People still look at me like I’m crazy for running down to the waters edge with such a thing but when they see what the board actually does on a wave, they’re usually quite surprised. The little piece of driftwood they once noticed you paddling is now going 100 miles an hour down the line like a little magic carpet ride.

Herbie

Lower Trestles displays the talents of international surfers on regular basis. The world’s best sufers flock there annually and you can spot the best surfers of today exemplifying the highest performance in the evolution of the sport. It also inhabits the likes of legends brought up in the area, such as Herbie Fletcher. Herbie and I became close friends through surfing, our interest in art, and together and we’ve been making it happen since day one.

To take off on a wave with Herbie Fletcher is incredible. The intensity he drills into the ride while sharing the flow of water behind you, becomes tremendously apparent when you take into account the speed he maintains while noseriding through un-makeable sections. I’ve had the privilege to ride numerous waves with Herbie now, and ever since then, I’ve overcome any fear of riding a wave beside someone flying through sections on the nose. The best feeling in the world is to get a good clean hang ten, but when accompanied by one of your life-long mentors on the nose beside you, it makes for an even better ride. Some of my all-time most memorable waves are stored away in my mental files and I’ll never forget the rush that was involved in them.