surf: karmic voyager

the north shore brah!!

2012-01-31T12:59:00.000-08:00

As any surfer should, I have made the voyage to Mecca. Not to surf, but to partake in the spectacle, to ogle the scene and be awed by the courage and skill of those who aren't afraid of surfing waves taller than themselves.

A few days ago I went out to see part of the Volcom Pro at Pipeline. It was my first time there and I have to admit that there was a strange anticipation in my limbs as I rode the rusty mountain bike along the shady bike path that parallels Kam Hwy. I passed Ken Bradshaw and he gave me a smile, but because I am dumb about these things, and it wasn't until my friend Andy pointed it out to me that I realized I was in the midst of surf celebrity. Next we walked right by Kelly Slater who was sitting in a truck talking to some or another surfer.

The Volcom Pipe Pro was being held, at least for a few hours that day. The holding period is until Feb 4th... But on Saturday the waves were too big, too chaotic and to unruly to safely hold a contest, so they called it off after a handful of heats. We watched a few heats and marveled at the gutsy surfers who took off on wonky, big Pipeline... the swell that day was supposed to be around 8 feet, but ended up getting to 23 feet by the end of the day.

The amazing thing about Pipeline is that you can stand close to the action, even when it is huge.

Today I ventured out to Waimea Bay and watched the scene. It's a classic Hawaiian set up: white sand, huge waves, lava rock cliffs, beautiful palm tress, doves in the sky, rainbows in the clouds, and the sun cresting the mountains behind you as you take in the power of the sea. It's hard to get perspective at Waimea because the whole thing is happening farther away from you, but in case you need a reminder of what kind of intensity the ocean promises, the shore break there is probably 10 to 12 feet tall and shakes the beach as it thunders in. By 7 am there were close to 25 people in the water with more filing onto the beach with 10 foot guns. Some stand and watch with what I imagine is trepidation. Others just leash up, wait for a pause in the neck-breaking shore-pound and then charge out there. You don't realize how big the waves are until you see someone drop in and then imagine stacking that person's height again and again until you get to the top of the wave. Three or four persons tall, is what I imagined the wave to be... Somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 to 24 foot faces. Yeah!

I am impressed and humbled. This doesn't even feel like the same pass time that I love. In fact, it is not. I am a small wave lover. I will return to Oregon next week and surf my cold, 4-7 foot waves with a new respect for the birthplace of surfing, and a renewed love for my simple life on the Pacific Ocean.

shred it for real

2012-01-18T20:26:00.000-08:00

photo by Terry Dillman

This is a real photo, taken a few days ago in Newport, Oregon. Keep the dream alive.

high pressure

2012-01-13T21:23:00.001-08:00

all the pretty horses i can't ride because work has me fenced in this week.

free to good home

2011-12-31T16:23:00.000-08:00

well-behaved oak book shelf seeking forever home. basic obedience training, house trained,
loves children and cats. we'd love to keep him, but life is just too crazy right now.

wave-improver

2011-12-30T21:47:00.000-08:00

... we didn't like what we saw, so we grabbed some red wine, paddled the whole bottle out into the sea with us, and proceeded to get drunk in the ocean. the waves became "better" almost immediately. laughter, low-angle sun rays and an incoming drunk with friends is a sure way to turn mediocre waves into a world-class good time. this lasted until the brink of hypothermia, at which point we slogged back to the yurt to eat lentils, potatoes and curry: all waiting for us in the crock pot that i had the foresight to start in the morning before we left to check the surf.

after our bellies were full of stew, we crawled into our bunks and slept it off. 3 hours later we woke up to dark skies and light rain. we did a 2 hour night-hike around the cliffs of Cape Arago, amazed at the ocean's beauty-- the way it lit the cliffs and rocks with its whiteness and wave explosions. the day ended at midnight with ryan playing the ukulele in the yurt while faron and i devoured Ritter sport (hint, it's not actually a sport) as the rain and wind began to set in more heavily. i finished a Joan Didion memoir and fell asleep to the sound of an oncoming storm.

concrete for water

2011-12-23T09:54:00.000-08:00

the holidays have brought me to the city, away from my home at the beach.
last night, at a party, more than one person asked me, "what are you doing in Newport?!"
and i didn't really have an answer. What do you do in Portland? Eat? Shop? Look at eachother?

because i don't do
anything
in this world, really.

when i get into my bed at night and listen to the sound
of waves
i could be anywhere, almost
and when i step outside in the dark
look up
and see Orion standing proudly
unobscured by halogen
i could be in Utah or Minnesota
but i am not.

"Your town is so blah."
he said,
and i thought,
look at all of this concrete
and noise:
Portland is like an exotic place
full of well-meaning people
(what are they doing?)
who say the right things to each other
at gatherings
(they aren't parties anymore)
and Newport is that drab
child
who
doesn't have much to say
but who, over the years, as you get
to know her
turns out to be your favorite.

Here in the city i can get
Fourme de Haute Loire
and also
rare olive cultivars
at the grocery store
but i can't pry mussels off of sea rocks
or dive for sea bass
after work,
so i guess it is a trade-off

like starlight for noise
water for concrete.

happy monday

2011-10-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

MON NW SWELL 6 FT AT 13 SECONDS. 

MON NIGHT NE WIND 15 TO 20 KT. WIND WAVES 4 FT.
NW SWELL 7 FT AT 12 SECONDS.   

TUE NW SWELL 7 FT.

huh?

2011-10-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

I don't have a camera or, apparently, a sense of prose.
For recent updates on our Green River epic canoe journey, I defer to Rank Novice and his
wonderful summary of the trip.

In other news, surf is good. October is delivering nice ocean temps, nice swell, clear water, shark encounters, whale sightings, epic storms, sun, mellow crowds. Don't miss it!

Wicked Gnar!

2011-10-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

if you like to laugh, watch the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PvC3bJBLf8&feature=player_embedded&noredirect=1

the snark

2011-08-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

"The whole method of surf-riding and surf-fighting, is one of non-resistance. Dodge the blow that is struck at you. Dive through the wave that is trying to slap you in the face. Sink down, feet first, deep under the surface and let the big smoker that is trying to smash you go by far overhead. Never be rigid. Relax. Yield yourself to the waters that are ripping and tearing at you. "

--Jack London
(from "The Cruise of the Snark, 1908

....sunday....

2011-08-28T14:31:00.000-07:00

what do you want to talk about?
do you want
to talk about how that life then
holds sadness now
as a cup holds anything,
collecting things that can't be discarded:

a room, a time, laying in
the summer night grass stargazing
the pickup truck moving through desert nights
the fourth-of-july fireworks or
your novel, hardbound now
as our past.

remember us minting
gingerbread villages
peopled by happy winter dwellers,
but can you recall
it exactly?

what choice did any of us have
following them
as we now follow you.
the charge is yours--
yours alone because your woman of
thirty-five years ago
is dead and gone,
the pasture has been plowed,
the horses long gone,
the kids' dog buried in the woods.

now we look to you and see
the inevitable,
we talk about how it is
more real
because
the fairy-tale of eternity
has finally been
cross examined.

driftology

2011-07-17T21:59:00.000-07:00

Where does the ocean take you?

I've sent messages in bottles. 2 today, my first two. One note is nestled inside a California pinot grigio bottle, another inside an obscure, cheap (but empty, save for the letter) Spanish red. Italy, California. It's no wonder that wine grapes are grown in coastal parts of continents. All of the best things that I can imagine in this world need the sea's influence to thrive, or so it seems.

It is an act of faith, a curiosity liberated, tossing a bottled note into the ocean. Where do they go? Does anyone respond to these things? If a Japanese glass float can cross the pacific and beach itself on our rocky shores, then certainly there is hope for a wine bottle with a nicely fitted cork, no?

In my quest for ancient modes of communication, I can't believe I haven't stumbled upon this idea before. I've always wanted to find one, but have never sent a message tucked inside of a bottle. I still send plenty of letters over land thanks to the wonders of the postal service, and I make phone calls from my land line, but the ocean's current surely must be the slowest messenger I've used yet.

In other news:

After paddling the Canadian waters around Vancouver Island in a sea kayak I am home once again in Newport Oregon. It is grey and grey here. The ocean is incredibly warm, and tonight, the south winds finally let up for a spell and we were blessed with metalic, perfect waves for the first time in what seems like months. I was nearly ready to hand in my badge. But, alas, the sea always seems to come back to meet me, just in time to prevent some sort of personal collapse or spiral into pessimism that I am susceptible to if I stay dry for too long. Tonight I sit here, 10pm, dogs asleep, dishwasher lulling me in it's domestic rhythm, my hair wet with ocean water still, shoulders tired, mind happy. All pieces are in place.

eli halpin

2011-05-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

here are some beautiful paintings made by an old friend from a decade ago. i recently found her website. she lives in baltimore and makes her living selling her paintings. i like these....

let's go surfboarding

2011-05-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

somewhere along the way the middle of surfing was gutted, knife through belly, guts of normal persons spilling out into the road pulled behind some kind of over done yellow sport utility machine or cherry vintage woody topped with thomas campbell and his heavy quiver of $1400 dollar heavy logs or some 14 year old kid from san clemente living out of his mom's 2 bedroom apartment feigning poverty in the name of surf videos so that yet again they can suck dry the last juices of surfing's soul...
here and now it feels as though the middle of surfing is sandwiched between aging men who have withered beneath the weight of 401k's and keepingupwiththejoneses hauling prisine epoxy takayama 2+1 machine tooled longboards out of double garages onto shiny cars reminiscing about san-o 1963 how it used to be and now it's all so cheesy, fading sunlit backgrounds with bad jazz and hypercontrast in the footage and nostalgia puking on itself like no-one's business...
or else it's those 13 year old towheads from so-cal so broke and stokened that they had to make a movie about it wherein they patronize homelessness and panhandling and the utmost limits of purely incredible naivete under mom's wing, that blessed wing that never stops sheltering, naivete that allows for the belief that surfing in southern california and making silly movies with bruce brownesque narration will somehow redeem all the other self-centered nonsense that surf culture somehow fosters.

the quiet majority sits tonight, this morning, tomorrow, in un-cool cars looking through old binoculars at unknown waves, or overcrowded waves, feeling the frustration of real life creep in from time to time, and yes, still, there is time to surf. there is always time to surf without the bad jazz or the ironic tee shirt or the newest oldest vintage mollusk board. yeah, the oil needs to be changed. the dogs need a walk and the laundry is drying on the rack. there are whales out there tonight, and there is time.

so, you like...

2011-05-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

...the tropics?

you've come to the wrong place, friends. the frigid sand-colored closeout clamshell barrels from hell are neither warm nor welcoming this morning. not the 3 inches of water that the waves were breaking into, nor the stong current pulling through crab holes towards the jetty.

neither the grey sky, nor the chill breeze.

i am reaching for anything. suiting up in the house to avoid the cold. suiting up in the patagonia, the R4, $$$$ , yeah, that suit, wooly goodness, hard on the bank account but 98.6 inside, and yet, even with all of this over-priced luxury comfort, nothing can peel my bootied feet from where i am entrenched, staring into this complete crap hole of a "surf break" wondering how will i ever get my ass into the water? how will i paddle a 9'2" hull through hollow, shallow tubes? and the better question: why? i finally resolve to bag the plan. surfing is for surfers.

empty and cold

2011-05-03T17:35:00.000-07:00

empty and cold.
self help is this thing.
99% chance of participation.
human contact: zero.

dont mind the mammals
the black rocks,
the strong wind
the pull of mortality.

before you know yourself
let it take you.

"a wave that doesnt f@&#$ one over"

2011-05-01T20:53:00.000-07:00

dear god. please give me a wave that wont f#@% with me.

love,

karmic voyager.

p.s....

i mean, can you give us one in oregon please?

thx.

p.p.s...

maybe a good camera too, so my poor blog patrons don't break up with me? a camera that has the features of zoom, and focus??

xoxo

lightness

2011-05-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

i love waking up to bright light, contrasting shadows. (this doesn't happen much in oregon...)

i love being on a wave, looking down the line and realizing, "hey, this waves isn't going to fuck me over!" (this, also, doesn't happen often in oregon).

i love low-budget oregon surf films, their honesty and humility, the accurate portrayal of life

here.

i love longboarding.

i love surfboarding.

i love waveriding.

i love the sea, its perimeter, its inhabitants, its moods.

home

2011-04-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

i love watching people interact with their ocean: the ocean they grew up next to with its moods and colors, smells, attitudes, dangers, pleasures.

the relationship we develop with the sea is one which takes time and patience. localism.... there is no place like home, the slice of ocean known best by proximity, the comfort of familiarity, of family.

the fishermen in their dory pictured above took this boat out on a solid 8-9 foot, long period south swell. amazing.

your excuse?

2011-04-24T16:02:00.000-07:00

there is no excuse for my poor attitude or my slack surfing, or, my lack of motivation, for that matter. there isn't an excuse for yours either.

while traveling in central america, i watched some serious ripping going on.... the above pictured wave, ridden by locals on the above pictured boards: broken, water-logged, heavy, leashless, dinged, often with missing fins.... not in the thomas campbell ailia (however you spell that word) trendy kind of way.... no, not heavy and leashless and finless in that way...

no, these lads were ripping old, heavy beat-up boards because those were the only ones available. they don't make 3000 dollars a month, they make 150. new boards are just out of the question. yet, they were stoked, smiling, happy, friendly and generous. the soul of surfing.

it's not dead (not yet). you might just have to have your helping of humility (as i did) to remember where to find it.

no bad days. (not like that lame tee-shirt. why, oh why is every god-damned thing for sale?!). but just really, no bad days. it's a state of mind, right? one we can choose for ourselves despite the circumstances.

so next time I (or you, or your surfer bros) go through the quiver of amazing boards and cruise out to the surf in the automobile... don't make any excuses for not surfing, or not getting waves, or the crowds or whathaveyou.... I'll try not to.

surf!

2011-03-20T19:13:00.000-07:00

today the winter water beckons,
bringing spring rain to the surface:
i am cold
i am cold

in winter water
and we move these bones
stiff, cold
but i am young
i am young

with the water of winter
and we travel
the surface, the depths
i am near
i am near

grey ghosts,
the winter water
with silent movements beneath the surface
but still, i am listening
i am listening
i am listening.

love your people

2011-03-18T23:02:00.000-07:00

time goes so very fast. find your people. love them. make sure that they know you love them.

mick jaguar

2011-03-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

that's right.

heirarchy of needs

2011-03-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

space. an infinity of space, no walls, no end, no focal point. lost creek, found sea.

warm shoes and firm ground under my feet. the beauty of gods strewn across my path.

air. trees. water. sand. a warm grey, a cool sky, soft light. a nice place to walk. few humans.

tsunami

2011-03-11T16:33:00.000-08:00

This is a still shot from a video of some boats being swept out to sea in Brookings, Oregon.

I can't take credit for this video, as I was at work today while all this was going on.

Just a little update from our safe perch in Lost Creek, just south of Newport Oregon.

Each day as we drive up the hill to our home we pass a little sign that reads, "you are now safely above the tsunami zone: 60 feet above sea level" and there is a little smiley face on the sign.

Last night my phone rang at 1:00 am, a concerned family member calling to check on us, to give us the news. I had been asleep since 9pm, so it was very surreal and it hardly registered. Then, this morning at about 6:15am our neighbor came running (i mean really running) up to our front door in a panic, "we have to evacuate! the tsunami is hitting here in 30 minutes!!"

Next it was my father, my sister and then my boss.

My boss was calling me to tell me to come to work. Really? Yes.

Here in Newport, as with many coastal communities, we have a community disaster plan. Because I am a registered nurse, I am a key part of this plan. Any medical professional who can get herself safely to the hospital during times of anticipated, large-scale emergencies is more or less expected to be there. Today was one of those days for us at the Pacific Communities Hospital.

At 7:15am our Surgery Manager huddled us together and debriefed us about what our plan would be in case a large number of patients needed to be seen in our very small hospital. We were ready for the unimaginable. Our department had cancelled elective surgeries for the day to allow room for emergency surgeries, should they be necessary. As it turned out, we have been lucky in Newport. As of 4:30 pm today, no major damage has been reported here.

However, just north of us in Depoe Bay there has been some damage to the harbor due to surges from the tsunami. The Port of Brookings has sustained the greatest damage in Oregon, as far as we know right now.

I did venture down to the beach this afternoon to have a look at these reported surges. Indeed it is a strange thing to essentially see the beach covered, as in a very high tide, then see the water receed as far back down the beach as with the lowest tides, all in a matter of about 10 to 15 minutes. Incredible, and creepy.

We are lucky to live in a place that has had the fortune (this time) of being prepared and having the resources to alert people and evacuate areas that may have been in danger.

My sadness about what has happened to the people in Japan cannot be expressed properly in words.

do what your mother told you

2011-03-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

in your dreams now you go looking for her and she finds you
asleep but entirely yourself:
your dreams are your life, just as your waking self
is also your life
everything in the night-mind is entirely your own--
no interruptions, no influence, no noise.
this is your life. granite, rivers.

you go on looking and looking
maybe hoping to find the beginning of time
or the end
wondering where you placed your innocence
wondering when you last knew yourself as a child
seeking an infinity of love.

and what if you find it? what then?

with just enough courage
anything could be.

i found it!

2011-02-08T09:24:00.000-08:00

call Him up and tell Him what for.

H Owwwooo!!

2011-01-15T14:48:00.000-08:00

i WISH i wrote this: (a user review from amazon.com)

"This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that's when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to 'howl at the moon' from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn't have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn't settle for the first thing that comes to him. I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt. Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the 'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark."

for more hilarity check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Wolf-Short-Sleeve/dp/B002HJ377A

thanks to Rank Novice for giving me the gift of three-moon-wolf shirt. xoxo

2011-01-10T19:48:00.000-08:00

the ocean has been behaving herself nicely this week. here are a few blurry views as seen through my very cheap camera, complete with foggy/greasy lens, poor focus, slanted horizons and bad timing.

the water is cold, but the real struggle is psychological:

arriving at the beach in your warm car with sun streaming in through the windows is one thing, but exiting said automobile to find the sand frozen solid with frost and a 28 degree windchill in the clear air and then finding the motivation to strip off woolens and denim to don soggy cold neoprene is quite another.

whether or not one actually surfs in oregon during the winter months is almost exclusively a matter of motivation.

it looks good...

2011-01-07T18:58:00.000-08:00

she was the kind of girl who put her coffee in a tea pot
used whole cream instead of half
traded her kisses for hand-made wool socks
taught her friends how to pickle radishes

she was the woman who woke her kids at night
brought them to the barn by oil lamp
to watch the baby goats being born
to watch mama goats licking their babies clean

she was the kind of girl who left home to defy her parents
started drinking wine from big bottles, smoking, dancing, laughing
hitchhiking with baby girls
saving dimes in canning jars for once-yearly vacations

she was the woman who drew you to the ocean
picnicked with boyfriends in the sand, cuddling up against driftwood
walked the beach bare foot
showed you how to pry mussels off rocks at low tide

because of her you breathe sea air,
sit high in a mermaid's throne:
she was the woman who led you here, unafraid of consequences
she was the kind of girl you love.

2011-01-05T19:16:00.000-08:00

just over the next rise
you can see potential
just one last climb
one fleet movement forward

even if the turquoise-grey pulse
or the feather white horses
can't pull you
you can still place your bets with
the gold of waving dune grasses

coldness is a feeling
and also a way of being
warmth can be brewed, steeped,
pretended, made in 3 dimensions with hands

and if all else fails
(remember) water doesn't harm
it only warns, and
if not today then when?

stormy seas

2010-11-30T14:29:00.000-08:00

be kind: everyone you'll ever meet is fighting a hard battle.

the world is round...

2010-11-27T13:26:00.000-08:00

what at first seems like the end may actually be the beginning.

when the time comes...

2010-10-30T18:59:00.000-07:00

when the time comes just walk away quietly and don't make a fuss...

winter love

2010-10-27T20:58:00.001-07:00

after 5 days of 20ft-30ft seas, 50mph winds. lightening, rain, thunder...

i woke today to a friend calling with reports of 8ft waves, offshore winds, lines.....

crawled out of bed and looked out the bedroom window to see peeling lines and offshore

silver spray.

2 hours of great waves, 4 people out (+ 3 sea lions, one actually catching waves)

home to a warm bed, down comforter, veggie burrito coma, hot tea, a good novel, a 3 hour nap...

woke to the same friend calling me back for another session just before dark. perfect day.

to a god unknown

2010-10-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

i found this cross on the beach today. someone had clearly put some effort into making it, lashing the two pieces together with twine, and whittling the bottom of it so that it could be stuck into the earth. i think the ocean unleashed it, who knows where from, and washed it up to greet me amidst an awe-inspiring storm. something to make the gods stop and think...

i climbed up on a cliff, found a spot for the cross, overlooking the ocean, hoping that this new view will be worthy of whomever it was intended for. blessings to all who live and die here, this powerful place we call home.

the driftwood shack enthusiast

2010-10-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

Known in Lost Creek as the "Solstice" style of architecture, this first example of a driftwood shack demonstrates how careful construction can create both a wind block as well as a back rest for beach dwellers. By building a fire in the lee of the shack, the inhabitants can relax, drink beer and watch a sunset without sand or smoke getting in their eyes. Scientists are still unsure if the skill of driftwood shack construction is an acquired trait, or an inherited one. There is evidence that this skill is passed on in gene # dv-0956237-r, although recent genetic tests have shown that this gene may simply predispose humans to build shacks, rather than impart them with the skill to do so.

Observation of young humans with their parents along the north coast of Oregon reveals that the ability to stack logs on the sand may be a learned trait.

Here we see an example of log-towel construction, a style unique to coastal areas that have been deprived of heavy storms and heavy drift log accumulation. Again, blocking the north wind is key in this style of construction, but, unlike drift shacks found in Oregon, this Bolinas California shack has the primary intention of blocking the sun so that the pasty white Northern California inhabitants do not get sunburned. You can see that several of the inhabitants have decided to brave the sun despite government warnings of ultra-violet radiation.

One of the foremost architectural features of driftwood shacks in the North Pacific is their purposeful use of found logs to block wind. Summer shacks are constructed to block the prevailing north winds, created as high pressure systems move into the coastal waters of the west coast of North America. In this example, the residents have made themselves comfortable in a modest dwelling using a basic log-stacking technique to construct their shelter.

Please note the use of sticks and dried kelp as decorative features along the north wall. Even modest shelters will show signs of the inhabitants' taste and style. Also take note of the purple chenille throw, carefully placed on the sand to prevent ass-crack sand accumulation by naked residents of this particular structure. Scientists are perplexed by chenille and its use in the coastal setting.

IF FOUND: PLEASE RETURN

2010-10-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

"I live in the driftwood, a true local. I will eat anyone who comes from anywhere but here.... I eat people like you for breakfast....

If you don't live in the sand like a crab, collect shellfish, bathe in salt, breathe water and dress in kelp, i will never know you. I am a true local-- I will localize you; smash your sand castle and drink your last beer. I will make pajamas out of your favorite board sock. Don't mess with me!"

Rawwwr!!!!

attention all beach wanderers: big, mean, scary surf girl on the loose! look out. if you see this person, please give her some clothes, a razor to shave her legs, some sunscreen, a bra, some table manners, some etiquette. she is out of control, alienating her brothers and sisters, pissing off surfers from all walks of life...

what happened?? she used to be so NICE! so predictably peaceful and loving. and now, look at her! she's lost her way, discriminating against surfers based on where they live and how they treat one another in the water.

please, please, bring this girl home. she needs her sleep, her love, her vegetables, her egyptian 600-thread-count sheets....

IF FOUND: PLEASE RETURN

bon voyage

2010-10-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

october: delivering.

day, after day, after day.

my arms are sore,

my face is sunburned,

my spring suit is back in the rotation, currently drying on the fence

from a 2 hour sunset surf

in balmy water.

the usual suspects are here to stay:

pods of sea lions,

myths of 18 foot sharks roaming neaby jetties,

rare sightings of valley kooks

plying 8 to 10 foot swells with soggy arms

eager aggression, completely out-of-place

(now that the ocean is showing real power)

funny, last night, a proto-typical male, 20-something,

short white surfboard with 3 fins,

all of the obvious markings

chest lifted (just high enough) off of his board to prove

that he surfs infrequently... arms, ineffective as paddles, pawing at water--

clearly, this male human was struggling with the intense inner sand bar beating

that makes and breaks days like these...

he arrives at my peak, finally, wobbly, uncertain.

this wave i love, a shifty right with a small takeoff zone

takes its own prisoners, has no mercy on this particular day

and of course, there is no room for error: things are moving fast and heavy, lots of water

but, alas a wave comes and i am in position, deep, just deep enough and my

new valley friend is sitting to my right, so i take off and call him off the wave as he starts to

flail in the direction of the shoulder...

he proceeds to purposefully drop in on me, then wave me on,

"bring it!" he waved at me... and all the while i am thinking,

"i would love to send this 30 pound single fin volan log your way, my friend, at your face, or

how i would love to send it right at your made-in-taiwan predictably

unoriginal foam and epoxy floatation device..."

but instead, i get my waves, sit back, laugh with friends in the line up and watch as

he sulks, then paddles deeper than me, to a totally unmakeable spot...

... a spot where he takes beating after beating, going over the falls, getting axed by

heavy lips of cold water... a spot that only a foreigner would mistake as a possibility.

perfect karma. i am happy. i get my overhead walls, steep and fast, crouched on the nose waiting for all hell to break loose as the velocity of all this water catches up with the inside

sand bar, all energy hitting the breaks as water flies overhead...

engulfed, swallowed, spit out. i go back for more, laughing, smiling. i am home.

this is my wave. i surf it every day. how dare you drop in on someone here?

bring it, is what he said to me... interesting.

sit on the peaks,

channel the karma.

hey sailor

2010-10-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

nothing can bind you to the land,

wanderer of vast oceans.

[what wakes you at night,

invading your dreams

of the sea?

what sorrow awaits you

in your waking hours on land?

what burdens of man

do you steer away from,

plying the seas

beneath the stars?]

beware the jetty

the sand collecting at the entrance

the breakers in the mouth

the small window.

--from shore

we can just imagine.

the extension of the human

2010-09-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

here's the voyager after about 1 solid year of use and abuse. she's brought me incredible amounts of joy, glide, trim, a few barrels, lots of close-outs, turns, speed, smiles.

7'1" x 21 1/2" x 2 3/4" the widest part of this board is about 6 inches north of center... heavy glass, double 6 oz volan on the deck, extra weight for extra speed... just right for making some almost unmakeable oregon beach break sections, the miracle of momentum... she's the perfect oregon board.

nothing can equal the immense satisfaction of riding your very own hand-made surf craft. since the creation of the karmic voyager, my first board, i have grown to love surfing even more than i could have previously imagined. every moment on a wave when riding one's own creation is incredibly intimate... somehow the connection to the ocean's energy is strengthened by the ongoing interactions between the curves of board, curves of water, shape of rails brought forth by the same hands that paddle, that touch water every day, that are cold and water logged as dusk becomes night-- these hands that hold rails, that know exactly where to go when it's time to tuck into a tight spot on a wave, these fingers that skim along the face of a perfect left when going backside, down the line, against a wall of water, ever moving, always rising up off the sand, reeling out in front-- these hands know what this is... the board beneath the human is an extension of the human... the mind, the desires, the abilities, the shortcomings... the imagination, the patience, the frustration, the ever-present need to get into the pacific, the keeper of peace.

fix yr stick part II

2010-09-13T18:14:00.000-07:00

the long-awaited part II: glassing and sanding the surfboard repair job, do-it-yrself...

1) after sanding down the area the repair (or newly Q-celled ding) you will want to tape the area off with painter's tape, and maybe even use some newspaper to cover the parts of the board you don't want resin drips to fall on...

2) cut your glass a little bigger than the taped off area. you will be cutting the glass after the resin "kicks" (starts to harden). lay all of your glass down and make sure you are ready to go before mixing your resin batch.

you will want to mix up your polyester resin and MEKP at a ratio that works in the amount of ambient heat you are dealing with. here in newport i mix up a pretty "hot" batch, that is to say, more catalyst than one would use in hawaii or san clemente. i use 56 drops of MEKP per 4 ounces of polyester resin. there are charts all over the internet. you can and should get familiar with the different ratios. if i am using surfacing agent, which is crucial for any layer one plans to sand, i use about the same amount of surfacing agent as i do MEKP. remember, if you don't add surfacing agent, you cant really sand your glass down: it will just turn into a gummy mess. but if you plan on laminating several layers of glass, then don't use surfacing agent in your mix, just use catalyst (MEKP) and resin... blah, blah, blah...

3) mix up your hot batch and spread it over the glass making sure to saturate the glass fibers completely, and to avoid letting air bubbles get under the fiberglass. air bubbles = weak places that you will have to repair again. use a rubber squeegee or spreader, or a cheap paintbrush with natural bristles works well too. scrape off excess resin so you don't have to sand forever

4) as soon as your resin kicks you will want to cut the tape line, removing excess glass from the perimeter of your repair and making a nice clean area to deal with. you want the newly gelled resin to be hard enough that you can touch it with your finger and not get a sticky goo on your skin. (ewwww... that sounds... weird). but you don't want it so hard that you cant easily get a razor blade through the glass...

5) the tape and excess glass should come off in a nice clean line when you pull up the painters tape, leaving you with a clean-looking repair...

6) now you have a lot of sanding to do. use a sanding block to avoid pressing into the board and creating dimples in your deck. you will want to start with a coarse sand paper, like 80 grit.... then work your way down... 200 grit, then 400 and finally 600 grit wetsand paper with water... by the time you are down to the 400 and 600 you should have a smooth transition between the old glass job on your board and your new repair. the 600 will take out the scratches from the heavy duty sand paper... if you really want your repair to look pro, you will want to polish your repair... but if you are like me, once it's waterproof and smooth, i am on my way to the ocean to get some waves.....

you can't do that in california

2010-09-04T08:03:00.000-07:00

at the end of your rope

just drop off:

wander out to the edge of your land

and make shelter.

the storm in your mind

is not real-- the endless

clanging of humanity

is nothing compared to what

2000 miles of ocean can

add to your humility.

out here you can friend

an emotional mammal, bear or sea lion,

update your journal page (paper, pencil)

post your status

on a log (pocket knife, wood)

and no one will see you getting naked, getting scared,

shouting to the stars, crying for no reason:

then, (why not) drown in the surf

fall alseep in the cold,

wake up.

all the while, remember that

(aloneness is not a void , nor is it empty)

being lonely has nothing to do with being alone,

and they say you can never go home.

namesake

2010-09-01T11:52:00.000-07:00

my logo...
surfers eye view, sitting atop board, waiting for set waves...

to the serene, the obvious and the beautiful
i am faithful.

local color

2010-08-31T20:25:00.000-07:00

..... their eyes were crystal clear, faded blue from gazing out to sea, sunbleached and salty......

this is why....

2010-08-28T10:52:00.000-07:00

this is why i love it here.

where life happens

2010-08-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

someone asked me recently if newport was home. i thought about it for a minute or two, then replied 'yes...'

home is where your life happens. for many of the last 8 years (since i started surfing) i would sit around my portland home, always with a sense of anxiety... what was happening at the beach? was i missing something? i had projects to do: food to grow, boards to fix, paintings to paint... but somehow i was always having to divide my life between gardening, art, work, surfing.... and much of this divide involved driving my car for hours at a time, always going to and from the beaches, trying to find a balance between city life and beach life.

i wanted to move to the ocean, but was fraught with indecision-- the oregon coast seemed too rainy and cold, and why move, i thought, if not to a "perfect" location. i spent years searching for the ideal location. california is great, but insanely crowded, trafficky and expensive. hawaii is beautiful, but after 5 months there i had island fever so bad i thought i would crawl out of my own skin. i dreamed of central america, new zealand, etc, etc.

then, by chance, i was forced to move to the oregon coast this year. initially i resisted, my inner child kicking and screaming. i had two mortgages to pay in portland... i didn't have work at the coast... it was november and it was dark, cold, grey...

but there was surf! alot of it, and empty. the surfers, men and women, became my friends, and soon i realized that this was what i always wanted: good surf, good friends to share it with, and a wild environment relatively untouched by the masses. it was so obvious, i couldn't believe that i hadn't seen it before. in time, life works itself out. i still pay for my two portland homes, and now rent a tiny little hovel 1 block from the beach. i happily gave up my hardwood floors, old pdx architecture, late night sushi spots, wine bars, brewpubs, and other urban comforts for this simpler version of life. now i can surf every day. my New Yorker subscription was forwarded here... i still have a great coffee shop and good thai food. what else do i need? i keep up with the world on my own terms. everything else is just bonus time.

now, summer is ending, and fall is coming. the days are warm, sunny and lovely. we find each other here feeling autumn in the breeze: on the beaches and in the water we are making plans for winter. dinner parties, movie nights, surf trips.... the darkness is surely on the way, and we know that oregon winters are not for the weak. somehow, this adds to the appeal. we become galvanized. folks come, visit, then leave when the going gets rough. those of us who stay here know this. we are rewarded for our tenacity with all of this raw beauty, deep ocean, cold nights, clear mornings, fullness and emptiness... the crucible of our coastal lives.

the blue terror

2010-08-23T17:44:00.000-07:00

about 5 years ago i bought this board in morro bay for 130 dollars. its a hull, very heavy, very fast, and very difficult to surf. 1960's era 9'8" with 2 redwood stringers and a wooden fin. those of you who know me know that this board inspired the creation of the north pacific log club and TRIM magazine, as well as numerous "log jams" over the years. faron excels on this board. i gave it to him a few years ago and he recently spent some time restoring it. now its back in the water.

today was a perfect day for it: fast, steep, lined up. too bad my crappy camera and poor photography skills can't do it justice.

the blue terror lives... i dare you to come surf it. this board is, was and always will be the patron of our newport board collective. like old boards? want to surf lots of interesting shapes? join in the fun. any time, as long as there are waves.

fix your board. you can do it.

2010-08-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

fixing surfboards is relatively easy. you need a few basic supplies including: polyester resin, catalyst (MEKP), surfacing agent (a type of wax that makes sanding easier and provides a smooth finish), measuring cups, tape, some sanding blocks (made with sandpaper stapled to pieces of 2x4) old scissors for cutting fiberglass (fiberglass cloth will ruin scissors, so don't use your mom's favorite sewing scissors) and a few cheap paint brushes and popsicle sticks. some rubber gloves and acetone help keep the resin from following you around for the rest of the day. if you have an epoxy board, the supplies are basically the same, except you will use epoxy resin and it's own type of catalyst.

if there are major soft spots in the foam or glass, you will have to sand away all of the shoddy stuff until you get to a point where the glass and foam are strong and well bonded. this is difficult for people (emotionally) because it involves making the ding bigger before finally getting to the point where you can do a good, solid repair. don't worry: you can fix it. but first, you have to get rid of all the bad stuff... brown foam, cracked glass, any place on the surfboard that you can "squish" by pressing into the glass... all this crap needs to be gone.

this is a repair of another repair gone wrong. the initial repair didn't get all the old foam and delaminated fiberglass out of the way, and eventually the nose of this board went bad.

at this stage, where everything is sanded away, you can start to build a tape wall around the part that you want to rebuild. once you have a tape wall up, you can fill in the old repair with a mixture of resin and microspheres, also knows as "Q-cell" which will take the place of foam and give you a solid mass that you can then re-shape.

this is a birds-eye view of the tape wall, or tape dam. you want to build it up high enough to hold in all the goo that you are going to put on the damaged places. remember, you want it at least as high and as wide as the rest of the rail shape. bigger is better. you will re-shape this after it hardens.

after the resin "kicks" you can pull off the tape dam and then wait for it to harden a bit more. once it is hard, you can sand it down to the original shape of the board.

the next step will be glassing.... or for people who really like their original aesthetics intact, you can either paint the repair now with acrylic paints, or else tint the glass. but before you glass, you want to sand down the area around your repair so your glass will sit flush with the rest of the board once its all done. then, tape off the area, remembering to leave about 1 inch or so around the repair so that the new glass you are about to lay down can overlap onto the board and make a nice strong repair. rails should get at least 2 layers of glass. decks should have 2 layers as well, and bottoms can probably get away with 1 layer, if the repair isn't too big.

...... coming next at the nye beach center for discovery ...... glassing and sanding....

.....the final stages! you can do it!

bounty hunter

2010-08-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

putting roots down means letting yourself grow deeper into a place
which is a different kind of growth, not the spreading wide of branches or
rambling of tumbleweeds, but settling in,
growing in literal and figurative ways: growing one's own food
growing closer to the local people
taking care of your community, late night hospital shifts,
fixing the broken people
watching the new babies of newport be born into the world,
holding the hands of those who are dying.

each day the ocean schools us, bodily and mentally,
today: head high + glassy walls,
the usual suspects in the line up
friends, these once-strangers-now-smiling-faces
yelling each other into silvery walls
gliding across zipping lines.
patience, the secret rhythm of the sea
short bursts, then lulls, then ferocity
more waiting-- this is just like life
life-like
life.
shedding water in the parking lot
our brothers are laughing,
planning another dinner, another bonfire
another day, another year, another week
together.

at dusk, i go to the garden,
harvest some recent cold-weather vegetables
thank god that i dont live in a place
where the sun shines constantly
and where millions of people would want to share
the land with me.

now as night falls, quiet descends.
only the continuous pulse of waves
pounding the sand outside my window
filters in through the salt air.
the ocean brings gifts,
and the almost indiscernible sound
of relief.

graffiti

2010-08-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

daily surf checks, the smell of salt water wafting in through bedroom windows,
bouys and fog, fishing boats fighting the out-going tide,
wave sounds filtering into dreams....
these things can't be bought, or bargained for...
life by the sea is a complete experience, the essence of surf.
each day my car gets a little rustier,
the surfboards get a little yellower
the walk to the beach feels more like home
the city life becomes more remote
... no more commuting
... no more time wasted on dreams unfulfilled
thread by thread i am woven into the nye beach tapestry:
ocean whales storms wind sun sand family tides agates nellyda

alaska

2010-08-12T20:41:00.000-07:00

did i tell you about my time with the bears,

sleeping under trees

listening for wolves?

waiting through the night

for fear to mine

the quarry of my heart

morning, dusk eternal, grey

quiet awe

wolf teeth

salmon

the solitude of alaska

this is your life

2010-08-10T10:18:00.000-07:00

have you accepted your mortality?

hydrogen/oxygen

2010-08-08T09:41:00.000-07:00

low pressure

2010-08-08T00:16:00.000-07:00

sleep. eat. surf. repeat. wake up in the sand. surf where you live. be good to your friends. xo

the edge of the world

2010-08-06T20:45:00.000-07:00

what are the newport kids up to tonight? i don't know.

i passed him on the way out of the ocean, going surfing

coming and going from the sea,

(this is how we meet)

the hamlet, the hovel, the neighborhood path--

"how are you doing?"

"i am sad"

"me too"

"maybe later we can walk on the beach, drink tea, talk"

"sounds good"

and so the the rhythm of days moves us forward, brothers

we are travellers on earth, together

few of us, hunkering down together in this little village

fishing, surfing, dying on the shore

holding one another when the days begin to shorten

drivers, passengers, walkers, fire builders

you, going into the salal brush at 1:00 am

looking for her dog, chased away by fireworks

he, barefoot, legs bleeding from scratches

she, angry in a small cabin, jealously driving friends away

mother, closing doors, wishing for more dreams

a heart attack, a fight, deep night,

asleep on the beach, waking up to candles still burning,

early morning surfers already getting out of the ocean, going to work

fog, heavy now for days,

ocean glass, oily soft, perfect waves,

ever-giving, every day sacraments

the saline, the smell of starfish in our nostrils,

the reasons we live here, at the edge of the continent:

the edge of the world.

when the surf doesn't cooperate...

2010-07-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

... go north. go flat. find the sun, escape the wind, escape the crowds. stay with the ocean.

northern latitude adjustment

2010-07-28T22:36:00.000-07:00

another way of taking a self-portrait, courtesy of george greenough.... looking up through the pacific ocean through water, past floating sea weed, back at my sun-burned face after paddling a sea kayak 10 miles...

tiny little white sand islet in the san juan islands. this little speck of land was just a pee stop, really, but one of the prettiest places i've ever stopped to get out and pee...

here we are after our first day of paddling. it was a quick 6 miles from fisherman's bay on lopez island to a little tiny island called blind island. we were basically alone with our guitar, boxed wine, hot dogs and plenty of time to swim in the clearest, prettiest ocean water i've seen in months. this was our first sea kayaking trip and we kept on saying, "i love this sport..." maybe it was the wine, maybe the 80 degree days, the glassy ocean... i think it was all of it these things, combined with a love of the ocean that is always making these new adventures come my way.

i thought i was pretty cool until...

2010-07-22T21:01:00.001-07:00

so, you know, living in a fishing town i figured i had better get with the program.

i've been riding my bicycle along the bay lately (the surf has been pretty crappy so i found a part time summer hobby) and a few days ago i noticed hand written signs for fresh tuna. i called a commericial fisherwoman friend and confirmed that indeed, tuna are in. so last night i went down to port dock 7 and scored a 25 pound tuna for 25 bucks. fuck yeah. i made my way home, a bag full of tuna loins, feeling pretty proud of myself for being so smart, so in tune with my local economy, so savvy.... i put some rice in the rice cooker and picked a huge salad out of my garden: lettuce, peas, radishes, nasturtiums. i fired up the grill and got a fire started in our back yard fire pit. i was expecting about 10 people for dinner, so i cut up 10 tuna steaks and then filled a gallon freezer bag with the rest of the tuna and froze it for later in the week.

right as i was cutting the last of the tuna loins, meira showed up with scuba tanks, spear gun and loads of fresh sea bass that she and her boyfriend had just speared. the fish were still flopping as they emptied the bag on the lawn. i thought i was pretty cool until they showed me up. even fresher, even more sustainable.... i love it. dinner was incredible. after lots of beer, wine, food and fire, we got yasmina's dog mojave to play the guitar. a perfect night in newport. xoxoxo

this week in newport...

2010-07-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

the surf hovel ocean collective has been doing underwater research with the help of some giant jelly fish and underwater breathing machines. as of today we have found 4 pairs of high-waisted jeans otherwise known as "mom" jeans.

the channel between the jetties in newport is being dredged this week. sand movement always welcome in the surf world. where, oh where will our next great sand bar appear? stay tuned.

metallic-ahhh

2010-07-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

surfer's eye view of last weeks final glass-off before july high pressure and wind turned the

ocean to a frenzied mush of weekend warriors and victory-at-sea style waves. fog:love:silver

nye beach center for discovery

2010-07-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

this evening at the nye beach center for discovery faron will be giving talks on global warming,

sourdough bread and cycling through newport with a surfboard in tow. faron is a renowned fermenter and scientist and we are proud to have him come to nye beach to share his knowledge.

later this week max will be leading a hands-on workshop about chainsaw operations, trail building, and fire prevention in the wilderness. max is an urban cabin dweller currently living in oakland california. he is known in the bay area for shredding and most notably for dune tour 2010.

next week nellyda will hold a conference for driftwood shack enthusiasts with a special focus on driftwood architecture in the northwest. featured driftwood shack artist captain backelton will present a slide show of recent driftwood shack findings in northern california and the central oregon coast.

check in for our late summer discovery center activities:

*diving apparati in the 18th century

*wrestling giant squid

*bear charming in the jedediah smith redwoods

*nudity

thank you for your continuing interest in the nye beach discovery center

please contact captain backelton with inquiries, workshop sign-up or complaints.

keep it simple

2010-07-08T18:43:00.000-07:00

whales

2010-07-07T16:02:00.000-07:00

by nellyda anslow

take a moment and consider whales....one of the wonders of the world, really. i just wanted to remind you today, about the existence of these giant mammals-- beings that swim in the oceans, give birth underwater, nurse their young, travel thousands of miles around the world, and sing songs to the depths of the sea.

amazing. i love them.

this must be the place

2010-07-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

home... is where i want to be, but i guess i'm already there,

i come home, she lifted up her wings, i guess that this must be the place...

i cant tell one from another: did i find you, or you find me?

there was a time before we were born, someone else said "this is where i'll be."

-the talking heads

surf contest training

2010-06-08T21:33:00.000-07:00

yeah, now that i live at the coast, i thought i better take surfing more seriously. here i am with my friends, training for the rogue contest in newport. gotta represent... local style.

art show

2010-05-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

this is some Banksy art i saw in the Mission, just off Valencia in San Francisco a few weeks ago.
hell yes! love this guy, so stoked to see some of his graffiti live and in person. amazing.

as for other art news. my own crappy paintings will be hanging at the Lizard Lounge in Portland for the month of June. first thursday... opens June 3rd. The LL does it right, some free drinks, etc for the First Thursday crowd. go check out my recent water colors, which i won't bore you with here on this blog of mine. half of all the proceeds from the art sold will go to Surfrider. keep our oceans free and clean and happy.... you know the drill. there will be several surf-related artists featured there in June along with yours truly.

1323 NW Irving
Portland Oregon

now get out there and get some sunny golden waves... the water is warm. the whales are in town. the birds are singing their songs and the waves... oh yes: wet caves of water, green and foamy and plenty of smack-down these last few days.

2010-04-27T00:46:00.000-07:00

a little poem about how i moved to newport

new spring night
damp and warm
all around descending
upon me in my exhaustion--
i am finally home.

i go through the motions:
cast iron skillet,
garden ravaged
a phone call to mother
drying hands on a dish towel
a moment of pause

then another, another
before remembering
how it is i came to be in this place

some strange attraction,
a driftwood fire,
salt collecting in a jar,
smoke in my hair fading into a pillow case,
the roar of the ocean finally
loud enough to get me there

sweet dreams are made of these

2010-04-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

the call of the sea, glaring sun, perfect wind-groomed lines, low tide sand bars showing for the first time since autumn, getting off work, a 5 minute drive to the favorite spot, friends in the lineup, the warble we've come to know and love, the perfection, the imperfection, the cold, the sound of cormorants whining in the setting sun, the smell of decaying seaweed, fresh mussles clinging to rocks, foam, mist, gravity, flight, the overcoming of inertia, perpetual motion.

the rioting of gulls, the violent greens and blacks on the cliff, how does nature get away with it?

surf report # 692

2010-04-05T23:38:00.000-07:00

Here it is, the best surf report of the year:

"See, I'm a pioneer. And I'm also doing a public service. I'm resetting the margins, I'm re-calibrating the scale. I'm redefining the language... just what is a "wave" anyway?People talk about conditions, they paint with broad strokes. Is there a ceiling, how good can it get? Is there a zero point? Can it get any worse? I'm here to help define the construct of surfing. Is it skilled activity in a challenging environment? Is it experiential? How much is internal, how much is external?In the wind, in the rain, in the cold... symbols lose their value. What is swell, what is a wind-wave, what is fetch? My focus is on not aspirating the untreated water. We're just splitting hairs, after all. When the wind flips your board up into your frozen lips and chin, does it really matter if it's a Surftech? The aqueous environment will dictate the move. This where surfing becomes reactive, not proactive. Words like "left" and "right" lose their meaning. The surfer closest to the peak is the one buried in whitewater. Wooden hands scratch without purchase, the wind moves us sideways, the current carries us where it will. The Tao, flowing, fight not the current, re-align your chi flow. A pit drops, there is a respite, "from chaos comes order". If William S Burroughs could script your surf session, this is what it would be. How many hollow oaths will you swear? "I'll never drink again". Of course you will. Like I told the other garbage men in the water... if nothing else we have proven something to ourselves: we'll surf anything. There is no wave beyond salvation, the right hands will create art from refuse.What was I doing out there? Redefining the scope of my surfing experience.did the waves suck? sure, but having a few laughs with friends can't be beat." --C. Murk, Waldport Oregon, April 4 2010

waves of yesteryear

2010-04-01T18:02:00.000-07:00

this blog's author on a little wave just north of cascade head. and no, these pictures are NOT from this week... not even this year. this was a january day in 2005. that was a good winter for surfing here in oregon.

more pics of this blog's author on my favorite oregon coast wave. if you know me, you know where this photo was taken. for those of you who do not know, i'm a secret ninja (as you can see by the photos) and i would have to threaten you with numchucks if you had access to my secrets.

nothing going on in the ocean right now except lots of hell, handbaskets, cats, dogs, tridents, neptunes, madness. where, oh where are our lovely spring waves?

archeology

2010-03-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

here we have the beginning phases of unearthing/resurrecting 2 old boards given to me by a good friend. many waves, many stories already embedded in the sun-aged glass. sea tramps. hags. salty dogs. i've surfed the yellow one despite its need for some basic repairs. it loves point breaks (steamer lane's perfect sand bars this winter). the blue fish needs lots of therapy. i've replaced the tail (both sides) and done loads of glass work and sanding. she still needs a hot coat and some more sanding... these are acts of love for boards otherwise destined to collect dust and go forgotten. today; a little break in the craziness, able to surf the favorite home break with some favorite people. sun, waves, happiness. cant wait to introduce these 2 new boards of mine to the central coast of oregon.

one person at a time...

2010-03-24T16:59:00.001-07:00

tent camping ala haiti field hospital. this is where staff sleep, and also where tuberculosis isolation patients are housed. lots of people in a small space. 105 degrees f. during the day. sticky...

this is a self-portrait of myself and Kensy, one of the haitians employeed by project medishare. the haitian workers worked 12 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week. Kensy's home was destroyed in the earthquake so now, like many haitians, he is homeless. several of his friends were killed when the earthquake hit. before the earthquake he had been going to school, so he spoke english quite well. he translated for me and helped us do all kinds of things from moving patients on stretchers to circulating in the OR. he worked night shift (with me) and told me that he had to try to find a quiet place to sleep during the day and hope not to get mugged or killed while sleeping. He averaged about 3 hours of sleep per day. amazing.

late night emergency splenectomy. this patient was run over by a bulldozer while trying to help his neighbors rebuild their homes. OR in a tent. also amazing.

this is another view of the operating room. very rustic: plywood floors, flies in the air, lots of noise, bad lighting. probably a surgeon's worst nightmare. the surgeons were so great-- smart, flexible, hard-working, tireless. almost no one slept during the whole week, but the general surgeon, a young resident from Johns Hopkin's was there for every case. he probably only slept about 3 hours a day. catch as catch can...

this is the adult ward. each nurse had 20 to 25 patients. no privacy. no room for anything, just army cots lined up bumper to bumper with about 3 inches of space between each person. no blankets, no sheets, family sleeping on the plywood floors next to their sick loved ones. i gave everything i had to these patients before i left: clothes, blanket, sheets, pillowcases, even my shoes and, of course, all of my food. if i could go back, i would bring cases and cases of shoes and bedsheets and lots of canned tuna and sardines. everyone is protein deficient, totally malnourished and trying to heal from major trauma. sometimes it is way too overwhelming to think about...

the best thing i heard while i was there was from another nurse. she said, "you showed up. sometimes that is the most important thing: they know that someone cared enough to show up." all we can do is help one person at a time. here, there, everywhere we go.

peace.

haiti: gone and gone

2010-03-20T19:21:00.000-07:00

this is a view of the cathedral in downtown port-au-prince. it's hard to capture the essence of a natural disaster --the feeling of desperation that is in the air around you, all of the time. haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, plagued by decades of corruption, violence, genocide, disease and deforestation to the point of desertification. there are few viable pieces of farmland left after the 'papa doc' and 'bebe doc' regimes feom the 1960's through 1980's. this hereditary dictatorship bankrupted the country leaving no money for basics such as fuel, electricity, water. the citizens of haiti cut down all of the forests in the country for light and cooking fuel. within 15 years, the entire country was deforested. during the monsoon cycles, all of the topsoil is washed away. almost nothing grows in haiti anymore; their past cash crops of sugar, tobacco and coffee can no longer thrive in the nutrient-poor soil. the border between haiti and the dominican republic is the only geopolitical border that can be viewed from space. haiti is brown. the dominical republic is lush and green. it's quite tragic.

this is the context within which the earthquake happened. it is estimated that 230,000 people died; however, there are many hundreds of building that have not been entered. undoubtably, there are many more bodies yet to be found.

this is a view of one of the tent cities that populate the immediate area outside port-au-prince. the slum of this city is considered the most dangerous place in the world. currently 99% of haitians are unemployed. there is no official military in haiti, so the UN and the United States are there en masse to help keep things in check. every day there are riots. people are desperate and hungry. most of these tent cities have no running water, no sanitation, no toilets, no law enforcement. we treated gun shot wounds on a daily basis at our field hospital.

honestly, we couldn't tell if this was a new tent village or one of the existing slums that has been part of port-au-prince since before the earthquake. living conditions in haiti are really, really bad. from what we could tell, this was a permanent encampment, and this exemplifies what life looks like in the city.

this is a line of people coming back from a UN food drop. there were lines for miles through port-au-prince. traffic was stopped for hours. there is no telling where this food goes or how it remains in the hands of those who need it. most of the people we helped in the hospital were extremely malnourished and dehydrated. many people have malaria, tuberculosis, dyptheria, typhoid... things we only hear about in the United States.

there are many more things to show and tell. i have only just begun to process this trip. it will take me many moons to get it sorted out in my head. i have gained a perspective i will never lose... i have been humbled by the haitian people, their strength, their will.

i will post more in the coming days, as i am able to make some sense of it. as for these first few days back in Oregon, i am thankful for things that i never even knew i had.

2 women fishing

2010-03-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

you never see two women fishing

it makes no difference where you go

in this world,

the job of fishing

is a man's.

you might see three men fishing;

or two men and one woman

--maybe even a man, a woman and one gull

stretching out its wings, sitting one-legged,

patiently watching for signs of life

on the igneous rock at Depoe Bay.

tonight at dusk i saw a woman

casting out her line into a tumultuous sea

steely grey and frothy white with winter horses.

upon glimpsing her

my heart began singing with possibility:

stereotypes crashing hard, broken.

the gull took to the air

with its usual cry of mourning,

fighting a salty gust from the spitting clap of a breaking wave.

the fisherwoman staggered in her boots

then leaned back, reeling in her line

just as another form appeared

from behind the frozen lava:

the (unexpected, disappointing) boyfriend figure

fully outfitted beyond reach of imagination,

head down-turned, ready to call it a night.

meanwhile the woman and the gull

finished the story

together in the disappearing sky.

home. death. love. (3 haiku poems)

2010-03-01T12:40:00.000-08:00

what pulls you southward
towards the sun like a goose?

is it lack of home?

all night i pondered:
nothing can touch loneliness

(the truth about death)

told her loving was
something made. tactile. earthly.

a dream in three parts

to sing oneself alive again...

2010-02-28T21:15:00.000-08:00

bolinas california. tsunami warning. we suited up and walked into the ocean to the horror of observers and do-gooders on the beach. it was my birthday, and i was prepared to die. there was not the option of missing my single-most important birthday ritual, the baptismal, the communion with my favorite friend, the sea. no fucking way.

thanks to mother nature, a full moon, swinging tides, all of earths great forces pulling the tektonics hither and yon... the coast of chile dished up a monster wave that kept all of san francisco at home on an otherwise lovely day. the ocean was all ours. what an awesome birthday present: i was in marin county on a sunny saturday and there were no surfers to contend with other than my die-hard friends (whom, after a breakfast of beef grits, muenster eggs and sauerkraut potatoes ala nellyda had no choice but to follow me out into the ocean, taking life and limb in hand, and why not?).

celebrate what you will. it's all there for the taking.

lonesome heroes

2010-02-28T21:04:00.001-08:00

birthday weekend: good times served up Bay Area style. lots of good waves, good music and dancing.

Rich and Landry are awesome! their band, The Lonesome Heroes played a few different venues in the area, including their van, in the Cowells parking lot. Yeah! this is really lovely psychadelic country music, straight outta Austin Texas. xoxo.

family style, we all travelled around and slept in our cars. they play music. i hold down the dance floor. VanFam.

VanFam warming up on a chilly winter day. Home sweet home.

Going to Haiti

2010-02-25T10:35:00.001-08:00

Hello friends. I am going to haiti to volunteer as a nurse with project medishare. I am trying to raise the money required by the University of Miami to cover the cost of my plane ticket and some medical supplies. I will be leaving March 8 and returning March 16th. It should be an amazing experience. You can help me by donating to Kickstarter, my own Haiti travel fund.

Here is the link. Thanks in advance. Any donation amount will help!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1017569045/send-nellyda-to-haiti-to-volunteer-as-a-nurse

no one said it would be easy

2010-02-24T20:16:00.000-08:00

central california. lots of rain, green hills, chewy waves, art, danger. it isn't for everyone. maybe not even for me. sometimes you have to leave home to remember why you live there. the grass isn't always greener on the other side, they say. i think i finally got it out of my system.

today i was confirmed on a flight to haiti. i will be doing volunteer work with the university of miami medical teams for a week in a medic camp in port au prince. this opportunity seems much greater than anything california could serve up for me right now. i leave next week. karmic voyage.

worlds unknown

2010-02-22T16:01:00.000-08:00

what is it you search for, sea dreamer?
what dreams awake you?
on what shores do you dry your wings
(or do you even fly)?

people: i am not kidding about living in my car. here i am, in crescent city parked behind a rowdy bar. no one notices vagrants like me.

i hunker down like a rat or a fox or a raccoon
keen to the movements of man,
i remain nocturnal, unseen.
i have my silence, my solitude, the voice of a rabbit.

laying low i listen to the grumblings of cooks and diners,
dinner plates clattering, announcing their greasy roundness.
noisily, clumsily the humans finish the work of the day.

food scraps tossed into the pig sty.
beers deftly smuggled out the back door.
waitresses light their cigarettes outside
by the dumpsters in the darkness
and discuss their plans for tonight--Saturday night

--time to make it come true.

then, i wake to gleaming day light, the gift of sunbeams piercing the redwood depths

finally to monterey bay, home of robinson jeffers and john steinbeck. the beauty drips off of every surface. incredible. even sleeping in my car, i feel like a queen. what privelege to be here!

hope springs eternal. sometimes it all just makes me want to cry. (yeah, you know, like a girl).

west of eden

2010-02-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

"IT IS THE DULL EVENTLESS TIMES THAT HAVE NO DURATION WHATEVER. A TIME SPLASHED WITH INTEREST, WOUNDED WITH TRAGEDY, CREVASSED WITH JOY-- THATS THE TIME THAT SEEMS LONG IN THE MEMORY. AND THIS IS RIGHT WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT. EVENTLESSNESS HAS NO POSTS TO DRAPE DURATION ON. FROM NOTHING TO NOTHING IS NO TIME AT ALL." -Steinbeck

photos by Nellyda Anslow

home is whenever i'm with you

2010-02-12T20:34:00.000-08:00

ART BY-PRODUCT: the peripheral experiences that happen to you as a result you your doing art in public places. often, this involves many strange people, surreal experiences and beer.

NEIGHBOR: those who live close to you; those whom you can rely on; a familiar face. this cute little orange fuzzy creature (ox? cow? bovine wonder?) smiles at me every day when i drive by. reliable. familiar. close.

search ranch

2010-02-02T18:59:00.001-08:00

just up the road from Carmel-by-the-sea is a little old ranch called Search Ranch, which used to be a stagecoach stop in the 1830's for rich folks coming from San Francisco on their way to Tassajara Hot Springs. These days, the ranch is a cool farm inhabited by some lovely, eccentrics whom I have grown to love. The hills in Carmel Valley are dotted with live oak, california poppies and grazing cattle. Search Ranch is a sweet little place, 40 acres of land with a bubbling creek running through it, a lovely garden which we ate from each night, and a wood burning hot tub hiding in the willows beneath the starry night. 24 miles away is Carmel beach, Point Lobos, and then Big Sur a little further south. I am convinced that this is the most beautiful place on earth. I feel like i have found the home I have been searching for.

The growing season starts in February. All week was devoted to getting seeds into the ground.
After long sunny days, we partied with some local farmers... real farmers who live and die by what happens on their land. You've never partied until you've partied with people who work 14 hour days, 7 days a week, 8 months a year. When winter is here, they get to cut loose... and they really do. There are a lot of winemakers in the area too, so Search Ranch had recently inherited a keg (that's right, a KEG) of chardonay. Last night, we tapped into this keg. Memories of what happened next are a little foggy, but by the end of the night everyone was completely naked, someone was riding a motorcycle, people were creeping down to the hen house to spy on the guinea hen, and we were dancing to the Talking Heads, the Cure, The Cars, Guided by Voices, and maybe some Velvet Underground. I watched the sun come up. Yikes.

Anyway, not a bad thing to wake up to, or to not fall asleep to. Damn those crazy farmers!

We had to make the best of the day. Emily and I took the matching wooden boards to Carmel and scored some fun little peelers. Turquoise water. White sand. Warm sun. There are worse ways to recover from a hard night of partying at Search Ranch.

Oh yeah... I love this place. I will never understand how people come to dislike California...... I for one will always have a special place in my heart for such a sun drenched, happy, diverse place as this. xoxo

i heart cali4nia

2010-01-29T16:45:00.000-08:00

i love california. i love road trips. i love my wooden fish. i love right point breaks. yeah!!!!

cabin pressure

2010-01-17T14:48:00.000-08:00

maybe being left to my own devices for days on end is bad? the cabin gives me lots of time to go crazy in my own head. i don't know. yesterday i got bored and decided to start painting with my left hand (i am right handed). i sort of enjoy the challenge, and the abstraction is pretty cool....

top turns... i've been having magical moments on Lars' wooden 6'2" fish. i can't say enough about those wooden boards, or about fishes in general, especially when you have to make really fast, crappy sections on sketchy waves. i am in love.

this is supposed to be dane perlee, somewhere in west oz. can't you tell? yeah....

the road to nowhere

2010-01-12T10:55:00.001-08:00

this is a total sell out. someone told me once that blogs with girls in bikinis are popular. well, here is my ass on a sloping shoulder. could be any ass, any wave, any person.

this is totally unsexy, but coffee is like crack: must have it at all times no matter what. it is the key ingredient in getting the aformentioned ass out of the soggy tropical tent and into aformentioned bikini, and of course, out to the ocean.

oh yeah.... total sell out shot of girl in bikini in water fall. fresh water is hard to come by when camping for weeks on end. this was the closest we got to showering for many, many days.

gourmet camping! yeah... canned beans, canned jalapenos, sweaty cheese and boxed vino. mmmm. delicious.

who put that wig on my head? oh wait...that is my own hair. what the f@#%!? disgusting. i am a total hippie feral mountain pony. this should easily balance out the bikini shots. i think this was taken before we started camping. god help me.

girls. surf. camp.

2010-01-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

reason # 1 to avoid ye olde surf lodge aka mr shred's central american surf hostel, etc, etc: empty point breaks x 3... no reggae-tone bumping from the beach, no bars, no theives, no bros, nada. just waves, waves, waves... and the occasional parrot flying through the trees.

the walk to the beach includes only this: trees, sand, hermit crabs, and the sound of empty waves crashing in perfect lines across empty reefs. ahhhhh.

view from the bedroom. we buried our passports in the sand. packed in enough food for the duration of our stay. there weren't stores or any other places to get provisions. a local helped us refill our water jugs with rain water. thank god, because we got thirsty surfing 6 hours a day.

um, yeah. that's just one of thousands of empty spitting barrels. yeee-haw!

i am not kidding. we surfed so much that we couldn't imagine another wave, and still, we had to watch hours of empty perfection go unridden. this is what a surf safari was meant to be.
its out there if you want it badly enough.

how i almost lost my leg to george greenough...

2010-01-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

i accidentally threw a 2 GB SD card into the fireplace a few days ago. in desperation, i went looking though some old electronics crap and found a 1GB card, and was pleasantly surprised by this little trip back through time that i discovered hiding on the card...

ominous looking darkness. i love pics from the surfers perspective. i suck at surf photography (its harder than it looks, taking pics from a surfboard while still trying to score waves). this is the day that i almost cut my leg off in the middle of nowhere, central america. emily and i were surfing alone and i was riding one of her hand-shaped single fin 7'2" boards. cool board: not much rocker and the greenough fin was a fucking champ in all kinds of conditions.

emily rode the 6'1" and probably fared better on this particular day, especially as the tide started to go out and things got more hollow...

towards the end of the day as i was getting cocky, i decided to take a late drop... got hung up in the lip and the board flipped over and situated itself right below me, right in the pit. you know that feeling? the realization about 1 nanosecond before you get worked really bad....

when i felt the impact of leg-on-fin i thought i had cut my leg off. i almost puked. luckily, all parts were still attached. just a lot of blood and a really awesome bruise that gave me some street cred...

most righteous. emily nursed me back to health with a litre of shitty, warm beer and fried plaintains. hell yeah.... i still have the scar. it always makes me smile.

kill yr idols

2009-12-30T16:53:00.001-08:00

it may go without saying, but i have a strong, visceral dislike for modern surf videos. nothing i've seen since the Runman series is an honest portrayal of surfing, although Andrew Kidman gets kudos for trying to capture the dystopia of the average surfer. nothing about perfect waves, perfect boards, empty line-ups and hours of airbrushedtoperfection time in the editting booth speaks to me of what surfing is really about. oh, we should all be so lucky to have our 30lb logs air dropped into Sri Lanka.

here is my simple confession: surf videos make me feel inadequate, especially when there isn't surf to be had within a few hundred miles of home. after about 30 minutes of watching all of that mindless beauty and perfection (complete with annoying [why do they always suck?] soundtracks) so bountifully offered up on digital video discs, i am ready to take off my shoes and walk the outer boarders of Tasmania, subsisting on snake meat and cactus juice, looking for waves, forgetting how to speak english...

when i am in the water, i look for the beginners. nothing stokes me more than the purely innocent...

the barbaric sea

2009-12-28T14:56:00.000-08:00

novice watercolor by Nellyda Anslow

Surfing and painting are all that move me at the present time. Work seems a distant nuissance, though admittedly I will have to engage in the capitalist endeavors that drive the human race sooner than later. I've honed my skills with an axe. Too bad I can't make kindling for a living. All pretentions aside (and to think that living can be done without money is just shy of extreme pretention...) the savings account is running dry.

The "new year," as it is called, is a hoax. Each day is a chance to start over, begin something, take a bite, drop in, bury the hatchet, shed the coat, spray paint the garage door bright neon orange....

As for the thoughts I've been mulling over in this somewhat hungry brain of mine, here is a quote that epitomizes them quite perfectly...

"To what avail the plough or sail, or love, or life -- if freedom fail? Freedom. Freedom to what? Escape, run, wonder turning your back on a cowed society that stutters, staggers, and satnates every man for himself and fuck you Jack I've got mine? To be truly challenging, a voyage, like life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea --"cruising" it is called. Voyaging belongs to the sea men, and to the wonderers of the world who cannot or will not fit in. Little has been said or written about the ways a man may blast himself free. Why? I don't know, unless the answer lies in our diseased values....Men are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security", and in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine--and before we know it our lives are gone.What does a man really need --- really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in ---and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all --- in the material sense. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they like caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Dedication to the sea is the symbol of migration and movement and wondering. It is the barbaric place and it stands opposed to society and it is a constant symbol in all of literature, too. As Thomas Wolfe said, "It is the state of barbaric disorder out of which civilization has emerged and into which it is liable to return."----Stearling Hayden, Wonderer, 1964

Happiest of new days, every day.
xo

the channel

2009-12-25T09:45:00.000-08:00

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium: the world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open."

--Martha Graham

pin the tail on...

2009-12-21T23:01:00.000-08:00

give me a pin tail or give me death. ok, maybe not death... i do love these shapes.. but they could be heavier...

oh, oregon. such a funny place to ride the waves. i've been getting my fair share of curiosity from the old guard, what with my (DANGEROUS!!! I GOT 14 STITCHES IN MY HEAD BLAH blah blah from someone like u...) leashless profile, the rolled bottom 50/50 boards (nary another like it to be found here, a'least not by the local shapers so far as i can tell), single fins, fixed gear, free-heel backcountry vegan biodiesel wool wetsuit bohemia in a bikini and lets not forget i walked from blodgett, oregon to get to the saltwater... (ok, not really but...)

some dude got real cranky with me a few days ago when he noticed that i was without the "safety" of a 10 foot rubber cord attached to my ankle. those that, when stretched at the end of a 9'8" 27 pound bludgeoning device could really do some damage to anything (skulls, as one example) within a 20 foot radius of said ankle. he claims to have been surfing for 40 years.

i laughed (quietly, to myself) and proceeded to tip toe around on my board for a few hours without causing any trouble. i did enjoy watching, from the safety of a nice little shoulder, the collision of several well leashed (well heeled?) and completely unpoised men/boards etc in a lovely little display of what i like to call lackofselfcontrol. goddam i luv it. never dull.

i'm getting a surf mat, and you can be sure i will not be hassling anybody for their danger factors in relation to my soft little underbelly freestyle mushmula.

moss: landing

2009-12-20T15:51:00.000-08:00

the surf has been messy. i've decided to take watercolor painting more seriously. i finally bought some good paint and good paper. here is my favorite painting from this week. i gave it to Mo because she is awesome, loves the ocean, and is a surfer girl like myself.

the cabin is a good, quiet place to hang out and do art. lots of mossy trees and fog and good light coming in through the glass. only chickens around these days to keep me company; plenty of wood in the wood shed. the well has only failed once this week, reminding me just how much i used to take luxuries for granted, such as readily available drinking (and washing) water. living in the city was not good for me. as for my newest discoveries-- i've gotten better at baking bread and sitting still. i like having no cell phone, no internet and no traffic. all of this stillness makes me realize how much noise was in my brain for so many years. i think it's getting quieter now...

swell of a lifetime

2009-12-10T17:24:00.000-08:00

i am thankful for the circumstances that have allowed me the joy of being here for the winter.

before i moved close to the ocean, i would have read the bouy reports, assumed it was too big, and passed on days like these, afraid of the 3 hour car committment that may not have panned out...

the last 8 days have looked like this. i am surfed out. got my first barrel yesterday. i've died and gone to heaven... on the drive home i smiled at the llamas, the chickens, the cows, the horses and all of the peace that surrounds me.

sun spots

2009-12-06T17:46:00.000-08:00

be kind, because everyone you'll ever meet is fighting a hard battle.

does it matter?

2009-12-04T13:53:00.000-08:00

why should one surf report stand out in a world of over indulgence?
isn't it just one long, blurry ride, anyway?

when we are ancient humans, crumbling beneath the weight of gravity, fighting god,
laying at death's door, will it matter which waves were had on
tuesday
sunday
tahiti
oregon?

in the mind's eye we will almost certainly see our own perfect empty walls of glass
holding for infinity
(frontside, of course)
so we can be radical
(if possible)

does it matter how special it was today?
11 ft @ 16 seconds, yet somehow in the lee of a jetty it was just overhead, peeling,
offering perfection to those willing to don 5mm of neoprene and fight the waning tide.

does it matter that as the sun was setting
a trio of sea lions got close enough to make me nervous?
or that, with tired arms,
i paddled into a clam shell of a wave
on a home-made board
and was hooted at by smiling strangers.

does it matter that is was perfect for a few hours or
that 10 people were there to surf it?
this isn't something you will find documented anywhere tangible
except within the water-proof pages of your own imagination
where the story has been continuously written
(in the voice of the sea, the beginning of all creation)
since the dawn of time.

winter surf is...

2009-12-03T12:12:00.000-08:00

i love days like this... the reward for sticking it out, here in oregon, where the earth has tilted her face away from the sun, we find ourselves even more grateful for the beauty of solar energy, the star, the beginning of all weather, translated into waveforms in the water.... the ultimate gift for those who live with open eyes and who are not afraid of cold fingers and 5mm wetsuits.

you could not go wrong these last few days, crystal clear skies, lines to the horizon, smiling famililar faces in the ocean, pods of sea lions barking in the line up (unknown friends beneath the surface of course, but they are always there, watching us...), perfect a-frames and glassy faces, all manor of wave craft flying down the line, smiles on every countenance. this is what it is all about. we know that there are warmer places and that all of these oceans are connected. we are surfing indonesia and india and africa, just one big body of water dotted by continents.

i found a place in the coast range. ken kesey would be jealous. lots of quiet, and only about 30 miles from my favorite break on the central coast. no longer do i have to live out of the back of a toyota station wagon. soon, i can start shaping the next board!

even when the beach breaks are too big, there are hidden gems like this one. i have been logging all kinds of hours on the karmic voyager and any number of single fin boards shaped by the hand of people more expert than myself.

surf to surf, not to be seen.

what girls want...

2009-11-26T19:47:00.000-08:00

it was a total shit show. 30+ days of living in the car, drinking cheap red wine & surfing the better parts of the lost coast... this is what summer is all about.

when we couldn't find waves we communed with trees like the hippies we are not

rope swings are nice too

this is what it looks like when your car smells worse than 2 worn out wet suits

we never, NEVER, pay for a place to sleep. maybe just looking at us, the police/state park rangers/powers that be knew not to bother with us. there was nothing discreet about the scene.

on better days we would dry the wet suits on the Toyota. ahhhh... a dry suit is so nice to put on when everything else is falling apart around you.

when all else fails, grab some coffee & a Surfer's Journal and crawl into the back of the car and watch the world go by. too bad you can't surf 24 hours a day...

xo.... don't forget summer. it's not that far away.

my friend

2009-11-26T19:36:00.000-08:00

my friend:

you
and your laughter
pierce me
always like an arrow

a death, and then
new life.

memory:

we go to bed each
night wishing to
wake
by the sea,
that place of
magic.

tell us
when we are
there.