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Recently the SF chronical ran a story about violence in surfing. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/07/BAA717FRCT.DTL
The ensuing commentary was outrageous to say the least. Some funny, some stupid and mostly ignorant.
Jerminator: I’ve never understood why people think it is so special to stand on a piece of wood while a wave carries it along. I’m sure it is a good feeling, but so is playing with my nuts. And I don’t punch people in the face over that….
One thing that sticks out in my mind about this article, the comments and the subject itself is that no one can ever explain to non-surfers why people get punched. It always ends up sounding like some over aggressive numb-nuts punching someone for nothing. Which, I am sure is the case sometimes. But I would say that most the time, people who fuck up in the water get away with nothing but a comment under the breath or maybe a finger pointing. I don't think that violence is the answer, but as Chris Rock says about such things, "I understand."
So I was trying to figure out a good analogy. How about this: You spend years of your life training to be the best driver in the world. You travel the world to train and test yourself so that you can enjoy the finest that automobile driving can be.
Then you save money and set yourself up with the best and most hooked up whip you could ever dream of. Some shit that makes Pimp My Ride look stupid.
One day while you are cruising in your supercar in downtown traffic, comfortable in the knowledge that no matter what happens you are prepared to handle it better than anyone else on the road. All of the sudden from between two parked cars to your right a person shoves a occupied baby stroller out into traffic. You must sacrifice your car to avoid hitting the child. By doing so you have now crashed into another vehicle causing more damage.
Are you upset? Are you upset about your car? Are you upset that now you have to deal with all of this? Are you mad at the person who let go of a stroller and let it roll into traffic?
Fuck yeah, your mad. Jebus forbid someone actually got hurt. That enters a whole 'nother area of spew.
Now. What if that person who lost control of the stroller has never walked a baby before and wasn't aware of how dangerous traffic can be to a infant? Lets just say this person is from Papau New Guinea and actually had no idea, and panicked. Would you still be mad. Fuck yes, you would. You know why? Cuz, what kind of fucking idiot pushes a child into traffic?
So when you don't have a fucking idea what you are doing in surfing, stay the fuck away from people who do. If you can't understand why surfers get mad, it is obvious you are a fucking stroller-pushing dipshit. You should go to where there aren't other surfers until enough years go by and experience dictates that, indeed, some people need a punch in the ear to sort them out. When you finally see why people need a Hawaiian donut, then you are ready to go get one.
I pulled up to the dune crossover and saw this:
So Chris Minesinger and I went surfing. It was perfect. I went left, he went right. We got tubed, slotted, pitted, shacked and strobed. It was silly perfect.
found this comment under a youtube video of Ruggles going off.
cubanboy740 (3 weeks ago)
the water is cold there right ?? i live in florida we got great waves too.
Benjiman72391 (3 weeks ago)
no you don't
Jimbaran before the terrorist attacks.
I was on my wedding/honeymoon. So I was trying to contain my surf lust the best I could for the sake of my soon to be wife. We had a few things we needed to accomplish. We needed to find the perfect spot to be married. We also need to find the place to stay and celebrate the marriage. We needed to satisfy our craving for culture and we need to spend a couple days just chilling in post nuptial bliss - or as we referred to it, “Neck deep in the pool bar.” So I concentrated on getting those taken care of so I could just surf the rest of the trip. We were there for a month. So I figured I was safe.
We arrived on the tail end of a good swell. I squeaked a session at Uluwatu in the fading swell and bulbous crowd. I didn’t catch any really good waves. The next day was flat. The marginal conditions only fueled my desire to get pitted off my scone. I was there. I was walking through the cave. I was chilling in the warung swatting the hives of persistent Balos. So close…
Yeah, it looks kinda fun I guess.
But my wife pounced on the chance to search for the best spot to get married. I knew since it was flat, that it was my best shot at getting this done and getting back to the surf. Not that I was bummed to go find the place I was to marry this beautiful woman. It’s just that as a goofy-footer who grew up watching surf videos, I was freaking the fuck out.
We bailed up to Ubud after a couple of flat days and fell in love with the area. Any place that has a monkey forest is good in my book. We hiked, and searched and perused for days until we found our spot. It is called the Alam Inda and it is amazing. We had a crazy beautiful house that seemed like every inch of it was intricately carved. The front door alone was a 12 foot wide and six foot tall pocket door who’s every inch was detailed in a way only the Balinese can do. The bathroom was sort of outside. There isn’t a roof over the shower and the walls are carved stone. This made it seem like you were outside in a rainforest instead of in a bathroom. Upstairs, the bedroom had a beautiful window seat and and a hand carved posted bed with mosquito net draped around it. It looked like a scene out of a really old movie. It was perfect.
My wife before she realized she married an idiot and would have been better off with her admiring monkey for a life partner.
We had our day in the sun and a few more days basking in the warm-fuzzies. Ubud treated us well and we had a great rhythm there. But when the only bar in town that served VB (Victoria Bitter) ran out thanks to us, we decided to head back down the hill to the beach.
While I was love drunk in Ubud, a swell had come. A good one. And I missed it. I wasn’t bummed cuz the commitments were over and the Mrs.. and I were on a mission to chill. I still had almost three weeks left. So things looked good for me. My wife, Kristi, loves nothing better than to be left alone on a hot beach with a book and a drink. I love nothing better than to go surfing. What could go wrong?
Between injuries and illness is knucklehead times.
Some good friends of ours, Jean Pierre and his wife Reagan were in Bali too. I contacted them so JP and I could surf and the girls could do what ever they wanted to do. They were posted at Nusa Dua and the wind was supposed to be light. So I agreed to roll over there early to get some empty waves.
JP and I ended up walking for miles down the beach trying to find a boat to take us out to the reef. It was so hot I was kind of tripping out. We just kept walking. And walking. JP had a hat and rash guard on. I had no shade. After an eternity we finally found some boats and got the ride out to the peak. The waves were a lot larger than it looked from the beach. That was probably because the waves were out in the middle of the freaking ocean. I almost immediately broke my leash and spent the next two hours trying to not lose my board in the top-to-bottom right hand tubes. We got some really good ones, but I was taking it really easy. I didn’t even want to imagine trying to swim for a lost board out there.
The session wore on and it eventually dawned on us that the boat wasn’t coming back. So we agreed that we would just head in. I had reef booties on. I did offer one to JP, but he politely declined. We spent the next hour gingerly tip-toeing across the reef. The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about how frustrated I was and once I had a leash on my board was gonna fucking destroy the next wave that dared to cross paths with me.
We finally made it to the beach but still had the grueling miles-long hike through soft sand in the midday Indonesian sun. When we finally made it to the hotel we found the ladies in the pool. As soon as I got in I new something was wrong. I was freezing. Loosing my mind. Quivering, shivering, chattering-ass frozen. So we moved to the hot tubs. Bad move. I started to really feel weird there. I wasn’t cold anymore, but I was getting dizzy and disoriented.
By dinner I was starting to lose control of my mind and I had almost violent fits of chills. Before dinner even arrived I had to excuse myself. JP walked me back to their plush hotel room. It was a short walk but during it, I fell out. The last thing I remember was entering the room and having convulsions. The air con was set to a ridiculously cold temperature and when I hit that air my body gave out. All I wanted to do was get the fuck out of that room. JP didn’t want me to since I was burning up. I think the convulsions convinced him that I needed to get out. So he wrapped me in blankets and left me on the porch.
I don’t remember much of the next week except for a couple specific incidents. The first was Kristi freaking out and demanding that I get in the pool. My fever was skyrocketing and I was hallucinating and having convulsions. She realized that the only way to get through this was to get me into the cool pool. That was the worst hour of my life. Period. I literally had to put a toe in at a time and then work through the convulsions. Once calm, another toe. And then a calf, another calf, a knee and so on until I was neck deep. The only reason I did it was the fear and worry in her eyes that she tried to hide, but couldn’t. I decided that death would be way better. But her eyes reminded me of what we told each other a few day prior and I pushed myself into the shallow end losing my shit like never before.
I saw this photo before I shot it and was excited to take it. The farmer however was bummed and asked for money. He asked for $1 US. I gave him a couple and called it good.
Another incident I remember was entering a doctor’s office and some homeless looking guy was sleeping on the ratty couch. When we came in and asked for a doctor, the guy on the couch got up and invited into an examining room. He was the doctor.
After a solid week in the fetal position I finally felt like a human. We were near Kuta beach so I decided to have a look at the waves. When I looked, the whole freakin beach from end-to-end was lit up with swell. It was huge. And it was perfect. I decided I would go back to the room, drink lots of water, try to eat something and prepare to surf tomorrow.
While you sleep and vomit, the surf pumps.
The swell dropped a lot and it took me a long time to find the strength to wax up and get to the beach. But I was feeling almost decent and it was still chest to head high, straight offshore and lined up for hundreds of yards. What I didn’t realize was that there would be 7,000 Europeans in the water. I paddled out anyway and after an hour or so I was feeling good. I was catching waves and that familiar comfort was coming back. I started doing some turns, pulling in and all that jazz. I was back! I decided to head in so I picked off a really good one and milked it all the way through for a really long wave. I reo-d the closeout at the bitter end and used that speed coming down from the lip to propel me to the beach. As a sped toward the sand, a tiny touch of backwash headed out to sea, straight at me. I opted for a little ollie off the whitewater. I literally went two inches in the air and when I landed both of my legs split. My back foot slipped off the back, my front foot off the front. Both knees met in the middle of the board despite that not being possible.
I had that immediate floaty feeling in both knees and knew dead-on that I stuffed them. I literally laid on my board face down and broke into tears. If you ever tore ligaments, or even sprained them, you know that it doesn’t really hurt, per se. But still, I was crying like a baby. I hadn’t had a proper Indo surf. Now I was gonna have two sprained knees at the very least.
Kristi helped carry me back to the hotel which was painful and agonizingly long. I spent a whole day in a drunken depressed funk. I think Kristi was getting bummed too. And she pried about how my knees felt and what happens at rehab. She really wanted me to surf. I had given up. But she wanted me to be happy and pressed the issue.
The next day I decided to take a slow and methodical walk around the pool to see what was going on in my knees. Surprisingly I found that my right knee wasn’t all that sore. Just a little swollen and about 80% range of motion. My left knee however was really swollen, black and blue, and it hurt to think about moving it. 50% good news right?
I couldn’t really do anything else, so I did the 15 minute ice routine and went for slow, careful walks. I started getting in the pool and kicking the best I could. After a couple days of this I could walk and I began walking in the pool and adding a touch of gentle stretching. After a week I could walk just about normal and the I would even say the right leg was 90%. I was running in the pool and stretching for hours and hours a day. The bartenders began to refuse me ice cuz I was using it by the bag.
We took a trip to Uluwatu to have a look. I was feeling really good and was focused on feeling better. Then I stepped onto the cliff and saw perfect overhead Uluwatu. I just about wanted to kill myself. All that positive energy out the fucking window. I was pissed. These assholes were scoring the barrels of a lifetime and I was sitting in a pool doing tad-pole kicks all day long.
I decided once again, with gentle prodding from my wife, I was going to focus and get into the water. So the next few days I ate clean, walked, ran and kicked in the pool. I stretched and iced, all day. The swell came up again and I saw Kuta’s bomboras spewing plumes of spray from far away. Kuta looked like Armageddon. There was no discernible waves, just swell. Every-fucking-where.
The sign says it all.
I grabbed my 7’2” and headed to Uluwatu. It was fairly early and we arrived to almost no one about. I watched for a short time and was just fucking blown away at how long and perfect a wave could be. No one was out and I knew it was large, but not how large. After a half hour of almost shitting my pants, I said fuck it and pulled out the board. As I waxed up an Aussie asked if I was going. I said yes so he said he would join me. As we made our way down to the cave we saw a couple Brazileros head out and realized it was fucking giant. For some reason I kept walking anyway. I made the call and headed to the beach instead of straight out of the cave. As I walked along the cave wall headed to the little beach, a gia-normous snake slithered out of one hole in the cave wall and into another. It must have been six feet long and 12” thick. No shit. I freaked out really hard and ran to the beach. The Aussie guy was not worried about the snake, he was worried about the surf. I however, said fuck that snake and jumped in.
I immediately began speeding down the reef in the hell current. I encountered a few waves and had to adjust my duck dives to accommodate the big board. But I got it wired quickly and pressed on. A couple solid ones nailed me but I was scared of the snake so I wasn’t heading back in. By the time a finally got out the back, relatively easily, I was halfway to Padang. And if you have never been there, once you get down current of that headland at the end of Uluwatu, the current is fucked. As in - your fucked. So I put my head down and settled in for the safe but long paddle up the point. I figured it was a half hour before I made it to the take off spot. I was spent. Done. Tired but relieved I sighed and sat up to get my bearings.
Immediately there was whistles. Lots of whistles. I thought, “Fuck, the Brazilians are scrambling. OH FUCK!” Out the back, I mean way the hell out the back, a top-to-bottom steam train of a wave was coming and I was no where near safe. The worst part was that I had about a solid minute to think about how I was about to die. So I considered the options and did what I could. I duck dove the hairy bitch. I managed to hold onto my board and pop up quickly. The next one was twice the size and I was in a worse place.
There should be a sign on the cliffs that reads, “Welcome to the land of 15 waves per set.”
Maybe there should be a sign here that says, "Going Off Daily."
When I surfaced at the end of the set alive, I was past the headland again, halfway to Padang. Now I was pissed off. I calmed myself and settled in again for the long paddle. I realized I hadn’t seen my new Aussie friend the whole time. Just then a voice came from behind me. “Fuck mate you got destroyed.” It was my friend and he had the look of psychosis in his eyes. He was just making it to the lineup for the first time. We had a lovely chat on the way back out and watched in horror as a set rolled through. A brave fella paddled into a peak and I finally saw how big it really was. Jesus-tittie-fucking-christ. These nut bags are riding 9’ guns and getting slotted. I was feeling a little ill, so I decided to not look anymore.
I finally caught a couple and felt better. It was perfection and I was surprised how easy it was to surf. My confidence was climbing slowly out of the basement.
Then “It” came. It being the largest set I have ever had to deal with. The first wave swept wide of me at 100 miles an hour making a horrible metal-grinding noise. The next one was bigger but adrenaline pushed me into the spot, I saw my opportunity, spun and went. The only thing I remember was thinking, “Don’t kick out, ride this thing all the way back to Kuta.” But man does it get shallow towards the end. And the sight of that churning, gurgling shallow reef turmoil made me choose a watery death over a dry, pointy reef one. So I pumped as hard as I could looking for a small break in the never-ending feathering lip. I angled up the face and tossed myself over the back. I managed to not get sucked back and was pleased my leash held.
A nanosecond later I was forced to weigh options again. The rest of the fucking 12 wave set was heading my way. Although it was only half the size of the outside corner, I wasn’t sure if I should try to push through or angle down the reef away from the whitewater. I chose immediate safety and ended up even further down the reef into no man’s land. When I finally popped through the back of the last wave I was surprised to see my Aussie friend. We both hollered at each other, stoked to have survived that set. I told him how amazing and crazy long my wave was. I asked him about his wave and his reply was, “I never caught a wave mate. I got dragged all the way down here.” It seems he saw me snag one of the first waves of the set and tried the same. He took it on the head and basically did the Richard Simmons Underwater Aerobics for about a half mile.
Crazy perfect, stupid big, virtually empty and a completely unforgiving bitch.
We battled the current for a while until we realized we were actually going backwards down the reef. So we gave up and looked for an escape. We saw a very tiny break in the cliffs with a rock/reef beach and some foliage leading up the cliff face. We agreed that was about our best option to get up the cliff. The problem was that head high drainers were landing on exposed reef in front of that little spot. We needed to act fast and my buddy said, “Fuck it,” and paddled in. A wave washed over him and he managed to stay above the impact and floated onto the beach. I tried to time it the same way but the swirlies and boils were pulling my board all over. I looked back to see a wave pitching out. So I sprinted forward with my fingers brushing reef as I reached. The wave landed on my calves and I was propelled violently over the dry reef like Pete Rose. Safe.
When we were both finally standing on the land it all seemed so funny. I had an adrenaline buzz. A couple times I lost focus and ate it climbing up the cliff back to the road. I banged my shin and dinged my board. Then we had to walk a couple miles back to Uluwatu in bare feet. When we finally got back to the warungs above the point it seemed like a dream. I watched what was going on in the water. I watched people go out and come right back with broken boards. I watched people paddle out and get swept away without ever seeing them again. I watched guys pull in, get pitted and paddle back out like it was nothing. A couple times people patted my semi-local Aussie friend on the back and asked how the waves were. He told them how he never caught one but had gone for the ride of his life. “Well mate, pretty farkin brutal out there.”
Who loves perfect overhead barrels? I do, I do…
On that day most people were content to sit on the cliff and drink Bintang and eat nasi goreng. Maybe a good call. A couple fellas made comments about how I should be stoked that I caught a couple. All I could think was, “They have no idea how true that is. No fucking idea at all.”
#2 A Really Really Good Wave in the Northeast Caribbean
The view from the top of the hill. Muy tranquillo.
On one of our many trips to leech off of "Diamond" Jim Veiga and his ever-improving accommodations and modes of transportation, we happened upon a certain world-class right doing its thing. We drove up a small mountain or extremely large hill, depending on your perspective, about 10 miles from the beach to have a look at a series of waves. From there we would usually get bummed out, and force ourselves to make the miles long hike into one of these notoriously fickle waves to ride small, choppy and shallow waves. The consolation is that they are rarely crowded.
On this particular day however we were greeted by favorable winds, decent swell and clear skies. We all marginally freaked out when we saw what looked like small lines wrapping along the (in)famous cocktease of a point. And god what a view. The huge bay was a sheet of glass with swimming pool clear water surrounded in a crescent moon-shaped, pure white sand beach. Each side of the bay was trimmed in palm trees and lush tropical jungle. A funky little tropo bar sat just off the road in the middle of the beach.
We all strained to figure out exactly how good it was. But it is hard from 10 miles away and the consensus was that it looked small and fun. So I pulled out my 500mm lens and held it up to my eye with my bare hands to get a better look.
If you have never put a lens that long up to your eye without the help of a tripod, let me explain. You can't see jack shit. Every minor movement is exaggerated so bad you feel like your eyes are gonna pop out of your head. This is compounded by trying to focus on something half the size of a flea's nut sack. But I gotta tell ya, I just about shit my pants when I finally saw something moving on a wave.
It wasn't small and fun. It was good. Really, really good. Way overhead. Lined up. FUUUUUCK!
The view through the 500mm lens.
After the short, over-accelerated, hyper-fueled, mega-aggressive drive to the beach in Jim's sketchy jeep, we all made the excruciatingly long walk the length of the entire bay. We finally reached the paddle out spot. Which despite the size of the bay, which seems to be three miles wide, the paddle out spot is very concise. We all lined up behind Jim and followed as he weaved through the shallows. He was barking out instructions regarding what we were all about to commit to when a big perfect left reared up in front of us. Being a overzealous goofy footer, I immediately ignored Jim's instructions and paddled straight into the take-off zone and went on the next wave. I barely made the drop and had a minor heart palpitation when it jacked up and threw out. I barely skirted out of the wave and rode off the back. I found myself in position again almost immediately as I noticed Ricky B moving into the zone too. The second wave was much bigger and I realized as I pushed over that maybe Jim was telling us NOT to ride this wave. Despite myself, I got pitted again and rode it out swearing and screaming out loud how, "I gotta get the fuck out of here. This thing is trying to kill me."
As I paddled laterally across the reef in front of the take-off spot, I intentionally paddled way outside the zone and Ricky B who was looking pretty determined to catch one even though I just declared to the crowd it was in our collective best interest to, "Move along. Nothing to see here." As I passed Ricky an even larger set appeared. Ricky and I put our heads down and sprinted. I was headed west towards the channel. Rick headed north, hoping to punch straight through. I managed to pierce through. I looked behind and saw Ricky duck diving right smack-dab in the worst place. I cringed as the lip chucked and you could see the shallow reef under Rick.
Everyone else had followed Jim through the small keyhole west of Millimeters, as we later learned that left is called, and avoided the majority of interaction with any real physical drama. (Although having repeated the process several times after this day, the visual drama is fairly heavy.) Ricky however was the proud owner of a broken surfboard. I felt horrible, but what can you do? He was now a long shitty swim, a even longer shitty walk back to the car to be greeted by no backup boards. Hey at least that cool tropical bar had a good view of what he wasn't surfing.
Ricky B in better times, atop the Broken Windstar
We all paddled across the front of the reef behind Jim like good worker ants until Jim sat up and looked out to sea. I looked around to try to triangulate my position. We were so far out in the ocean that lining up on stuff was impossible. When a set came to us, we all scrambled for safety, except Jim, I saw natures little road signs begin to appear. First the water ran off the reef east of us in a ugly display of displacement. Then rocks appeared. And Jim calmly sat on top of those rocks as the rest of us ran crying out to sea like little faggalas. Jim casually turned and looked like he was going to drop right into the dry rocks. The peak jacked up and Jim disappeared down it's smoother-than-a-porn-star's-coochie face.
It took a while for everyone to figure out that because of the heavy bowl on the peak, you gotta take off right in front of the rocks. Or a fair way down the line. I must have paddled for 10 waves before I got mad and sat next to Jim and finally caught one.
Words can't really explain it. The physical aspects go like this. The medium size waves were two or three feet overhead on the wall, sheet glass. It has a hollow as hell first section which runs about 20-30 yards across fairly shallow reef. That is followed by a steep but rolly section that ran forever -it seemed- maybe another 50 yards. And on the medium size waves that hugged the reef better, you get greeted by a third rolling bowl that lets you surf until your legs gave out. If you got one of those, you got cleaned up for sure, so it was a toss up. The big sets were a lot hollower but were shorter and petered out in deep water missing the reef on the inside. Sort of like a reverse Kuta reef.
After my first wave I sat in the channel and freaked out a little. My heart was going a million miles per hour. My mind was doing loops inside my skull. I had a hard time rewinding the ride and figuring out what happened. I saw a big set coming so I started paddling back up the point. Everyone was scrambling so I put my head down and started sprinting again. When I looked up I saw Jim air-drop into a huge set wave right under the hook. He made the drop and stood tall for a few moments before the foam ball ate him. I screamed as loud as I could. That was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life. Then I got cleaned up really bad and pushed way past were I kicked out of the previous wave. As I paddled back I watched everyone of my best friends catch the most beautiful waves anyone has ever seen. I was hooting and whistling and screaming for all of them.
This went on for a couple hours. Everyone was screaming and whistling and getting shacked. On another particularly large set, Jim again went for that late drop tuberiferious-ness. He had made several of them and also gotten bitch-slapped a few times. This time however he got pitched out into the flat and landed on a rock on his taint. Yup. His taint. He paddled back out agonizing over his now very tender perineum. He attempted a few more waves but finally chucked it in for the day. How ya gonna surf with your nifkin all jacked up?
Slowly the crew headed in one by one. Until only Bill "Gloydal-Zoydal" Gloyd and I were left. Since only two of us were there and Jim in particular was gone, we were left to cherry pick the best waves. Bill mentioned to me after I paddled back from my best wave of the day that he was going in. I thought about it for a second. Then I asked him to turn around and have a look at the whole scene. Look at the perfect blue sky. Look at the gorgeous white sand beach with only our own footprints on it. Look at the postcard palm trees and rain forest that surrounds the whole bay. Look at the clear warm water. Look how many people are in the water. LOOK AT THE FUCKING WAVES! His eyebrows raised up and he smiled that smile only a kid gets when he knows he can get away with something. He nodded in agreement. and we kept surfing.
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