Gringo Mask, El Salvador 2009

A drawing I did in Las Flores between sessions. Stranger in a strange and wonderful land.

DOUBLE DOWN

Always a good sign when I have two wetsuits hanging on the rail. It means I got two sessions in two days. It's a nice luxury to have two suits, but I have to say that the old O'Neill is losing it's appeal. After wearing a front-zip suit regularly, the back-zip seems totally obsolete. It leaked so much on my first couple duck dives that I had to stop and make sure I'd actually zipped the thing up all the way.

Despite the dropping water temps, it was a fantastic weekend at the beach: Bluebird skies (yesterday), a nice pulse, family time, hot tub and cold Stellas, a big Ducks win, and a growing optimism for a great autumn. Hope you got some too.

9.5 Minutes Well Spent

This is the loop that John Smart recently showed at Tyler Warren's opening at Surf Indian. I must confess I slept on it until today. The Tyler Warren Experiments looks like it's going to be a great movie with some great surfing, some great music, some great art and some great surfboards. There's even a White Pony in the trailer. Great!

Single-Wave Session

Sunday morning was pretty sloppy. Seemed like the ocean was having a hard time simmering down. After scouring the North Coast we settled on the above spot, where we battled a Sisyphean paddle-out only to have to do it all over again when we'd misjudge the line-up and get caught inside. After a couple hours, I finally scratched into a hefty left, at a moment when I was ready to give up, and rode it all the way to the sand. Done and done. Yes it was worth it, and no I wasn't on the Pony.

Backyard Beauty

Staying with this week's surfboard theme, engineer, Kiwi transplant, and witness to my largest wave ever, Mark "Hendo" Henderson completed his wooden fish last month and it's an absolute work of art. But you won't find this hanging on a wall unless it's green and glassy. He's gotten it out into some decent waves and is happy with the results.

I highly recommend visiting his blog for more photos and info. His little "shaping shack" looks more like the control room of the Starship Enterprise. The logo is pretty damn awesome too. Watch out Mr. Hess!

"Innermost Limits of Pure Fun" at Lifeswells

I love the title of the classic surf film "The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun." Those words just pop into my head sometimes when I'm surfing and get stuck there. I've never even seen the movie. All that will change tonight when Lifeswells will be projecting George Greenough's masterpiece, along with Andrew Kidman's new flick "Last Hope."

And there will be some twangy tunes as always, courtesy of DJ Zach Reno. Grab a few cold ones and enjoy one of the last few warm evenings of summer with some good people who love surfing almost as much as you do.

I think it starts around 8pm...

4'11" X 22 1/2" X 2 5/8"

Hey, here's my new board from Larry Mabile. It came in a couple weeks ago and let me tell you — there's nothing more frustrating than having a brand new surfboard that you can't get out and ride. My work situation has been double overhead since I got back from El Salvador. I gotta ride it out.

Anyway, I'd been hearing so many great things about these little Simfish that I pulled the trigger during one of the summer's agonizing flat spells. Larmo sold me on the "White Pony" when he assured me about the versatility of this shape. An email from the man himself:

"The best thing about the White Pony is you can ride it reaaaallly small. The board is very wide and full which allows it to paddle very well in the smaller sizes. I put a small swallow tail (about 4 inches) on it to make it turn better. I also have been putting a lot of effort into redesigning the fins, as the standard half-moon shaped fins which come on many Simmons-style boards, don't have enough drive. I have also added more curve in the outline, as well as belly towards the nose, making a very fun ride which works in punchy beach breaks as well as funky slop........."

Very small. Larry convinced me that these are the right dims for me: 4'11" X 22 1/2" X 2 5/8"

I got the board a couple weeks ago and took it to Shorties. The waves were a little sloppy, but with more punch than I'd seen in Oregon for awhile. It took me a little while to get used to it, but my first ride was pretty amazing. It rides almost exactly like I'd imagined. Paddles into waves really easy and then just squirts down the line once you stand up. I was flying around broken sections on it and just hauling ass, really. It feels almost disc-like under the feet. I'm definitely stoked on it. Skatey is a perfect description.

One of the things that I can tell will take some getting used to (besides not being able to carry it under my arm at it's wide point) is the shortness causing me to pop up with my back foot off the tail. That happened a couple times during the session, which had me doing the "water-splits" as I blew the drop-in on some decent waves. More than anything, I'm just hoping to get out again on it before the conditions dictate more predictable equipment. Fall's around the corner...

Oh yeah. Larry got the board to Seaside Surfshop quick. I think it took less than a month from when I ordered it. Thanks, guys!

Counter Point (Punta Roca, Pt. 2)

As I mentioned before, on our last day of the El Salvador trip we weren't so lucky. Our luck, in this case, had less to do with bodily harm or broken boards than the plain fact that we couldn't get waves. The swell we'd been watching for weeks had finally moved in — and so did every local Salvadorian shredder, as well as a group of traveling American pros we'd been trying to avoid all week. They happened to be traveling through the same tour outfit as ours, but our guides were doing their best to keep us out of each others' way. We'd been assured that the pros were going to surf somewhere else Saturday morning, but the gravitational pull of Punta Roca proved too strong and they paddled out at the point minutes after us under the watchful eyes of their photographer's and videographer's telephoto lenses.

With the six professionals and the 30+ locals and other traveling surfers in the lineup (Saturday draws surfers from around the country), the scene was pretty hectic. The "rules" we'd learned from our guide didn't seem to apply anymore, with the American pros sitting deeper than anyone and taking off on anything. I remember set waves coming through with three guys dropping in, their white wakes trailing like jetstreams behind, threatening to cross as they streaked back up the face and under the lip.

The chief local — the dude in the top picture above — wasn't having it at first. He blatantly dropped in on guys one after another, picking them off like an assassin, forcing them to straighten out and bail with their tiny boards flicked out ahead to keep them away from the maelstrom. But the pros got their waves, as did the locals, who made up for any lack of acrobatic trickery with flowing power turns and critical drops that exhibited years of experience at Punta Roca.

And there were barrels to be had. Plenty. I saw one wave were the same local pictured stood straight up inside the gut of a bomb and dragged his fingers along the roof, smiling and hooting the whole way. To be sitting in such close proximity to these massive, perfectly shaped waves – sometimes just catchting a glimpse over the ledge at a rider speeding under a thick lip — was a rare treat. It was a ringside seat at a world-class sporting event. But I couldn't help but dream about breaks in El Salvador's East, where the waves may have been less perfect, but where it was just me and my two friends alone on an exotic coast.

In the end, we just paddled in after a couple hours, back down along the point to where it turns into a second break called La Paz. Our motel overlooked this break and for the previous four days and it was always mushy — a great option for longboarders, but we had no incentive to try it. This day though, the increase in swell gave it some size and punch. Waves would wrap from the outside rocks (the end of Punta Roca) all the way into the bay to the sand. We rode as many of these shoulder-high peelers as our arms would allow, before the 200 yard paddle became too much. Then we exited on the black sand, negociated the cobblestones, climbed the stairs, and walked back through the village to our motel where we packed our bags for home.


Above: My last wave of the trip, trying to make it all the way to the pier at La Paz. Special thanks to our guide (and friend) Joaquin Aragon for shooting the awesome photos above (and many more of us that won't make his portfolio).

Intermission...

Last night as I was watching this amazing little Horse Feathers show at the Together Gallery in Portland this fact struck my like a ton of bricks: On any given night in this city — or in this world for that matter — some really amazing artists are creating beautiful art. It could be only in front of twenty or thirty people, or it could be in a stadium, or it could be in some kid's basement. It was truly inspiring.

Now let's get back to some surf stories.

Counter Point (Punta Roca, Pt. 1)

Punta Roca is a right-hand point break that can deliver long, spoke-like bombs that explode over a shoreline of cobblestones and jagged lava rocks. Along the 400-yard walk to the point, you pass a wall sprayed with local graffiti (behind which lies an ominous graveyard) and tiptoe through debris scattered among the wobbly stones. When you finally reach the jumpoff spot, you get a court-side view of the wave, which at times seems to be breaking right on the boulders. On a good day, the sight of the swells lining up and falling like dominoes — precisely spaced with razor-sharp edges — is nothing short of "perfecto."

Perfecto. That's what our guide Joaquin called it over the last couple days of our El Salvador trip, when the long-awaited swell finally started filling in. The first time we surfed it was Friday morning. The photo on top is my first wave, on a board I'd never ridden, after having just been thrown backwards across the rocks on my shaky entry. The sun hadn't even risen yet. It was 6am.

The reason we were out so early was because when this place works, it gets crowded fast. As you can imagine, the local surfers and bodyboarders aren't so fond of alien invasions, as is the case with any other world-class wave. Joaquin briefed us the night before, drawing a map on his hand: "The main peak is here," he said, pointing to a spot near his fingertip, "but we'll be sitting here." He tapped a spot closer to his palm. "Anyway, if you sit out there and you don't know this wave at low tide, you won't make the section and you WILL end up on the rocks."

So we followed his directions carefully the next day: how to time the entry (kind of), where to be, where not to be. For the first hour, we were among only 5 other surfers and our trio got quite a few waves. It was only a matter of time before the number of surfers doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled. And the locals did what locals do anywhere: they paddled around the new faces and got any waves they wanted. And we behaved ourselves, sat where we were told, and got some wide-swinging rights that felt as if there were 10,000 horses sprinting shoulder-to-shoulder behind the 8-foot green faces.

One of our boards was snapped like a toothpick, but we all paddled in three hours later with good rides under our belts and smiles on our faces. The next day we weren't so lucky.

GREETINGS FROM EL SALVADOR

We´ve been in Las Flores and La Libertad for the past six days. Lots of fun right point breaks everywhere. Big swell is supposed to arrive tomorrow. Much more to come...

WISH YOU WERE HERE...
(But maybe not in the lineup)

Borrowed from Steve McQueen

Warm Water, Cold Blood

It was a beautiful weekend at the beach, with higher sea temperatures making thick wetsuits, booties and gloves unnecessary. Saturday night I surfed waist-high lefts at low tide until I was the last person out and I couldn't see the waves anymore. It was nice to surf barefoot and wiggle my piggies freely under the water again.

Of course, it seems like the warm currents might have a few drawbacks. Biologists are blaming Sunday's shark sightings at Seaside, OR on those toasty temps, which bring more marine life close to shore. Come to think of it, I wasn't the only one out at 9pm — There was a sea lion messing around on the next peak over. The video above is from Depoe Bay, OR Sunday, where a great white was entangled in a crab pot line 80 miles south of Seaside. Sharks here, sharks there, sharks everywhere. Will somebody tell them that Shark Week ended last week?

Woman: Je T'aime, Wave: Mois Non Plus

Size: 11" X 15"
Medium: Crayons, Water, Graphite, No. 2 Pencil
Price: $300 or trade for 6' Bonzer Egg

Translation of "Je T'aime, Mois Non Plus"
I love you, I love you, Oh yes I love you
Nor do I
Oh my love
Like the wave, irresolute
I go, I go and I come, Inside you my love
I go and I come, Inside you my love
And then I hold on...

I love you, I love you, Oh Yes I love you
Nor do I
You are the wave, And I the naked island
You go, you go and you come, inside me me love
you go and you come inside me my love
and then we are one...

I love you, I love you, Oh yes I love you
Nor do I
Oh my love
Like the wave, irresolute
I go, i go and I come, Inside you my love
I go and I come, Inside you my love
And then I hold on...

I love, I love you my love, Inside me my love
I love you my love, Deep inside me my love
And then we are one...

I love you, I love you, Oh yes I love
Nor do I
Oh my love
Physical love is a dead end
I go, I go and I come, Inside you my love
I go and I come
And I hold on...

No. Now ... Come.
— Serge Gainsbourg/Jane Birkin, 1968

My framed drawing on paper, along with the others pictured below (except for the Nat Russsel, which is now mine) are available for purchase at the Vancouver, BC stop of the Dear & Yonder movie tour August 6. If you're interested, talk to Andrea at the show, or contact me directly on this blog. A percentage of the profits go to financing the movie.

Dear & Yonder Movie, Music, Art and Tacos

Tonight! I'm really stoked to have my artwork included in a couple stops on the Dear & Yonder surf movie tour. Mine's the one on the left side of the flyer above (Nat Russell is on the right). The show takes place at Holocene, where good people will be chowing street tacos, checking out a great surf film, drinking cold beverages, and listening to the sweet sounds of Tara Jane O'neil. Rumor has it that Kassia Meador will be here to give away some stuff. Thanks to Alberto and Jeremy for making it happen and asking me to be involved.

The Details:

Tuesday August 4th

Holocene

1001 SE Morrison St.

Portland, OR 97214

Doors at 7pm

$10.00

21+

And another great poster by Alberto Cuadros...

And the official flyer (where my name is parked in the tube):

South Swell Meet Up

The south swell traveled such a long way to finally arrive in Oregon, I thought it was only fair to meet it a little closer to the source. So early Saturday morning we drove Rye's vegetarian sedan down to Newport (OR), leaving the succulent smell of vintage French fries and tempura in our wake.

It was foggy when we hit the shore, but from what we could see through the pea soup, the waves looked pretty enticing. Every 20 minutes or so, a big set would march in and form powerful peaks, as if the south was combining with the predominant NW swell. We paddled out and it was really much bigger than we thought in the water. I was glad to be riding my 6'6 and I think Rye was happy to have pulled his 6'10 CI single fin out of hiatus. He got some bombs. It was really cold, which made waiting 20 minutes between sets a little harder, but when you'd spin for a big one, drop in late and slingshot off the bottom into pocket where the light north wind was opening up the faces, it was all worth while.

I couldn't get any pictures of the spot we surfed — it was just a little too foggy — but I snapped this one as we drove up the coast and back toward a different kind of wave: a heat wave that continues to swelter the city.

LET'S HAVE SOME FUN

This coming Saturday, July 25 @ 7pm
Miami Specialists Front Room Gallery
(2324 SE Belmont @ 23rd, Portland,Or)

Good Movies:
Beach Blanket Burnout (PDX Premier)
Tubular Swells
Blood Surf

Good Times:
Bring your own brews and meat and something to cook on the BBQ too.

VINTAGE MINI PLANK

Just spotted this amazing wooden surfboard at Astoria's Green Room gallery. It's 3'11" tall and circa 1950. You can buy it HERE for $550...

Cold Bites

After almost a month without surf, the ocean finally showed a faint pulse. It was unorganized, warbly, shifty and colder than a coal miner's crack, but if you feed a starving man a grain of rice, he'll swear it tastes just like caviar.

Thanks to OS for the picture.

Sketchy

This one's called Pulse. I'm not sure if it's really done yet.