Five years ago today I wrote the first ever blog post entitled “The Guns of Love Disastrous” an ode to a Smashing Pumpkins b-side on the 1997 single “The End Is The Beginning Is The End”. I probably picked that title because I was listening to the track at the time. G2007.com is half as old as Google.com but with significantly less revenue. In fact Google Adsense (the advertising that is shown on pages that are referred from search engines) has returned me a whopping $150 since August 25 2006, however, G2007 is not about the money it is about letting people know what is happening, an online picture book with a slight sprinkling of narcissism.

I had big plans for the 5 year anniversary to do a site redesign but then I forgot about the 5 year anniversary and found out 2 days before about it. So I thought I would do a quick review of the last 5 years -

November 2003 – Kim, Gin and Me in Madrid on Holiday

We spent a long weekend in the Spanish capital. One of the things I will remember from this trip is trying on a jacket in Zara and liking it putting it down for 5 seconds then going back to get it to find it wasn’t there anymore and then to find Gin with a Zara shopping bag with the jacket in that he’d bought for himself. 5 years ago and I’m still not letting that one go.

February 2004 – Matt, Emily and Me in London

2004 was a pretty big year on the G2007 blog and really made it fun as I got the opportunity to travel to India for work for two months as well as go to Australia for a year.

India was great fun working in Signature Tower, Gurgaon with Nitin, Vijay and Tony (who’s real name I cannot remember). This is a video that is available somewhere on G2007 but I couldn’t find it when looking for it so I doubt it will ever be found by anyone else trying to look for it. It was about 43 degrees when I made this little video.

March 2004 – Tony, Vijay and Nitin in Gurgaon India

After two months of taking malaria tablets and generally not feeling too well from the heat but loving the time in India I went to Australia for a year to relax and do something a bit different. When I got there I had to find somewhere to live and I remember ringing Andrew (Cooster) from the hotel I was staying in, getting half way through the conversation and the phone cutting out. I didn’t bother ringing back until the next day when luckily the room was still available and so began that fun!

July 2004-Matt, Chris, Esther and Andrew (Cooster) – Bourke Street, Sydney

2004 was the year I got into surfing and have loved it ever since, many times were spent with Magnus and Faisel down the beach paddling for our lives trying to catch waves day in day out!

May 2004 – Magnus and me learning how to surf

I still use the very same wetsuit although it is falling at the seams!

I also was lucky enough to have Gin, Karine, Mark and my parents visit me all around December that year.

December 2004 – Me and Parents in Vaucluse

After some great months spent in Australia I decided to head back to the UK, via Japan and Canada. This made the trip back fun and also allowed me to complete a “round the world” adventure, flying East out of England and returning from the West.

May 2005 – Tokyo, Japan

After a couple of days in Japan it was off to Canada where I spent 2 weeks in Vancouver where I went a bit starbucks crazy. They say in London wherever you are there’s a rat within 2ft of you, in Vancouver they say the same but for Starbucks instead of rats. I also spent two weeks with cousins in Halifax which was great.

May 2005 – Starbucks Crazy at Cloverdale, Canada

I returned to London and was eager to carry on the surfing. My friend Faisel who I’d met in Australia had also moved back to London around the same time so we carried on the surf tradition by going down to Newquay (a six hour drive) and meeting up with Fizzer’s Uni friend Davey for surf trips. Most of the time the waves were too small, the atlantic just didn’t have the power in the summer that the pacific seems to be able to produce, but it was fun times anyway.

June 2005 – Davey and Fizzer Newquay, England

Mark got me a job back at the old company I used to work for before I left for Australia and this is where I met Amy. We kept it a secret for a while mostly to cover up our secret beer drinking trips away to Amsterdam -

September 2005 – Amy and Me Undercover in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Karine and Mark, who also had their baby Monsieur Felix earlier that year got married in Nice, France. It is still one of the best weddings I’ve ever been to, a thousand times better than any wedding pictures you see in OK! magazine of the rich and famous -

September 2005 – Karine et Mark kiss on the Beach Wedding, Nice, France

As the year went on Faisel and I kept a brave face on as the English summer crept into the English winter and the water got colder and colder.

October 2005 – Still Surfing but Getting Ridiculously cold, Wales, England

Annoyingly, somewhere in early 2006 the hard drive failed on the laptop I was using, taking a load of pictures with it, the first photo I have that is not already on G2007 is from September 2006! Well in that time, I had moved to Sydney with Amy! Mostly thanks to Marcus putting me in touch with a recruitment agent that got me a job and a work visa in five days. The first thing I managed to do when I arrived here was dislocate my shoulder, which wasn’t must fun neither was the 12 months it took to really get back to where I was with the surfing.

Simone and Stu were kind enough to let us stay at their place whilst we trawled the real estate market for somewhere to live. We eventually found a little unit in Manly.

March 2006 – Simone and Stu in Mosman

We had a little holiday in the year to Fiji which was excellent fun, we also went to Brisbane for Amy’s sisters wedding. Unfortunately original pictures aren’t on my computer anymore. That will teach me to backup.

October 2006 – Amy and Me in Fiji

Christmas 2006 was spent at Amy’s parents house in Brisbane and my parents and their friend Marion were over as well.

January 2007 – Parents and Marion at the Manly Wharf

January also saw the arrival of Andres and Yami to Australia from Argentina. We spent a month with them and did camping and spent a lot of time on the beach!

January 2007 – Andres with a Kookaburra and a Koala at Coolendale

Mike and Rach our intrepid friends hired a cave, yes, a cave for Rachels 30th Birthday. When you imagine a cave you picture a dark small opening that bats live in. This cave is in the Blue Mountains and is a bit better than that. In fact we went again a year after but it wasn’t for Rach’s birthday but we got her a present anyway.

April 2007 – Rach’s 30th in the Cave

Amy’s sister Taryn and Wade also came down to visit us from Brisbane where we had a good time visiting the blue mountains (not sleeping in Caves this time) and going to some really good restaurants in Sydney.

June 2007 – Taryn and Wade at the Blue Mountains

Carrying on a long tradition of trying to visit every restaurant in Manly, we went down to

That Christmas we went to England via China and had a trip to Prague. It was nice spending Christmas in England and getting the chance to see China, it was also great to meet up with my old mates from the village.

December 2007 – Me, Kim, Dino and Gin, Stratford-upon-Avon, England

We got back to Australia and it was so hot I missed the cold weather of China, England and Prague. In March we spent the most money possible on a dinner at Tetsuya’s for Marcus’ birthday which was great fun -

March 2008 – Marcus and Nancy at Tetsuyas, Sydney

We had a little holiday to Tasmania in May which was really fantastic as we seemed to get given free upgrades at every turn.

May 2008 – Tasmania, New Zealand

And then in July we went to Bali -

July 2008 – Amy in Bali, Indonesia

Well that was quite a uber post in the end. Look forward to doing Part III in 2013!!!!! There’s loads more photos I could have added, if you really want to look at more pictures then checkout the archives at flickr, that have pretty much all the photos I’ve ever taken (and have not lost) that I think are good enough for the internet.

After driving over to Charmaine’s house to get my old surf board and talk computers for a bit Faisel and myself headed over to Manly to meet Marcus and go for a little surf. It was a really nice day, the sun was shining and the waves were pretty ok. I had a try of my new fish board for the first time (apart from a go I had at Maroubra which was a non-verdict) and managed to catch one or two, on one ride I managed to get inside the cylinder section of the wave, which isn’t as good as it sounds because it was a close out and 1 second later was crushed beneath the mass of water above me! Although the view was good for that one second.

Marcus, Nancy, DJ and Fizzer

After the surf and a lot of sun, we met Nancy, Marcus’ girlfriend and headed to Oporto for some lovely fast food chicken based products!! (see above)

A nice day spent surfing with Marcus, Fizzer and DJ (Japanese backpacker in Fizzers hostel), looking forward to seeing Nancy and Marcus again when Amy arrives! On a side note, unlucky to hear Marcus snapped his board the following evening, at least I got to have a go on it before that happened!

Afterwards we drove to Woolloomooloo to say a quick hello to Mike and Rach in the East Sydney pub! It was a good catch up and great to see them again, as well as their new flat!

Me, Mike, Rach, Fizzer and DJ

Funny how in the same day I met the only people I have met in the “real” world that have regularly updated blogs [Marcus, Mike].

The next day I was so tired and my arms were aching from all the surfing and I have managed to get the obligatory air conditioning sinus problems, but Fizzer and me headed out anyway. We went to go to Freshwater beach but decided on Manly as it was a much nicer wave. I took my shortboard as the forecast was looking bigger than it actually was, however in hindsight I would have gone fish (like you care). Anyway my arms are still tired so did not catch much but it is good practice. I caught one nice left which opened up to be quite a nice little section to play with, I actually got dropped in on but too “stoked” to have a wall to mind. I also did the sweetest duck dive of my surfing career, when a larger set was about to break on me, I managed to go right under the wave without feeling any of its force but only hearing the thundering sound it made as it crashed down above me! The pengiun surfing population has also increased (mentioned in April 2005) as I saw them today in the surf and got very close to them (as they chased after fish).

Amy arrives in a few days time and I am looking forward to see her as I am missing her already!

That is it for the time being, peace out ‘stralia style!!!

It’s the middle of September, the best time of the year to go surfing in the UK because the water is “warm” and the waves are “big”. I will definitely say the water feels warm but that is probably because the air temperature is less than the sea temp!!

Faiser Chief (Faisel) is working at various Pharmacies on the SW coast, so, as testing for my new website GlobalSurfari.com I got the latest data and started the six hour drive to the coast!

Just to remind you how much of a rip off the UK is check this out -

$1.80 USD, $2.12 CAN, $2.35 AUD, €1.48, ¥200.66 Per Litre!

We also have to pay £3 for the privilege of parking near the beach here as well!!! So we headed for Croyde, which is Devon’s surf capital (its the Newquay/Bondi/Hossegor of Devon). It is a lovely little village in Devon (see map) which has a real nice beach break and also has some more serious reef breaks at either end of the beach. Something that the UK surf suffers/benefits from are large tides. The sea can go out and in over large distances, it dramatically changes the surf conditions and this definitely occurs at Croyde.

The sleeping arrangement, beautiful English countryside backdrop at Croyde -

So back to the surf. The GlobalSurfari.com surf report put the SW region of UK at 1ft with low winds and fairly good periods. The graph showed bigger swells on either side of the lull that was the weekend so I was thinking maybe if we weren’t going to get much waves what we would get might be ok. When we arrived it looked pretty small from the distance, but I am used to that now (in UK) that I was a bit excited because there was an opportunity to go surfing. Croyde beach has a main beach break area and two reef breaks at the North and South ends of the beach. The reef breaks only really get good when the surf is big so they were not really happening but they were giving more of an edge than the waves in the middle of the beach so I went as far South as I considered was safe without killing myself on the sharp jagged rocks that I could see and which were slowly disappearing under the water as the tide came in. I got a few nice rides and the waves really started to pick up a bit so it was getting good fun. I definitely could tell it was a good surf session as when I came out of the water I had the obligatory bleeding cut. Only got one picture on a good set and it’s of me coming off (looking midly concerned as I put my hand out hoping I’m not on the rocks) -

No I didn’t ‘recover’ this move

Faisel rocked up and we went for lunch at the local pub in Croyde, we had burgers and then I pulled out my GlobalSurfari UK – South West Print Page for Fizzer to check out -

Global Surfari Test Run

We headed back out afterwards and the sun was beginning to set. It was a beautifully clear day and the sun sets out to sea (as we are facing west rather than east as in ‘stralia). Which makes it a bit safer because you can see where you are going when you are flying down a wave towards some innocent other water goers in your path of destruction) but it also makes it harder to see the waves coming because the sun is sitting right where you are looking.

If however, you have the luxury of only being about 6 people out at that time and you have glassy 2ft conditions and left hand wave breaks then you are in paradise! Paddling out is an amazing experience. The sun is shining right infront of you and then disappears as swell rises up above the sunset and the wave has a beautiful green tint to it the swell then goes down and the sun shines again as you look out to the Isle of Lundy a few miles out to sea – dead ahead. I was in a perfect position to join a left hander, all I could see was a perfect little wave curling and getting ready to break as the green tint of the sun shone through the wave. It was an amazing experience and possibly the best surf session in terms of location and beauty I’ve ever been on!!

The next day and Fizzer was working at the Pharmacy so we drove over to visit him. On the way we passed Saunton, which is a really nice long boarders break that has less power than Croyde and much longer rides. You can see the swell coming in from miles out and it starts to build real early. Today was a especially nice day for the chilled out long boarder crew -

Saunton Long Boarder Crew

We bought some paracetomol and a tooth brush at Fizzer’s pharmacy then headed for a beach called Woolacombe. This had some waves breaking and occasionally some 2.5ft sets coming in. Annoyingly everytime a decent set came in I’d find myself too close to the break so I’d have to duck dive the first one, paddle out a bit more then turn around and begin the push for the next one. I need to visit the pool more often however as I was too tired from the day before to be able to push hard enough to get on! I did get a few nice ones, although most of the breaks were rights and my lack of experience recently is making it hard to hit those.

Woolacombe on Sunday, notice the insanely over deep duck dive being performed in the centre of the picture -

Duck!

Now it was the drive back to London, my favourite surfing trip and best waves I think I’ve ever surfed in the UK!!! Rock on surf trip 6….

As for the GlobalSurfari information, it was pretty correct, it predicted low winds (there was hardly any) and 1ft swell (which there was) so I am pleased with that!

I woke up at 07h30 in the morning, jumped into my jeans and t-shirt and bombed out of the door to go to the tube and pickup my hired Ford Fusion or similar motor. After getting off at the wrong tube (Kings Cross) although the sixt rental is called ‘Sixt Kings Cross’ it was actually a different tube stop. So after walking to Angel and still not finding the road I wanted I got into a cab which took me there (and cost about £5). When I got there the guy behind the counter asked for my ‘counterpart’ for my driving license. This is the green piece of paper that everyone loses when they get their photo driving license and is a big error for the UK transport department to make people not lose this flimsy piece of paper (they replaced the old licence with a photo card but expect you to carry this green piece of paper with you as well). The couple in front of me forgot their counterpart as well and she almost started crying because their home was not within a sensible distance of the rental place. So when I got to the desk and was asked for the counterpart I told him that it doesn’t ask for it in the ‘things to bring with you’ section of the sixt rental agreement print out. He circled the line that says ‘driving licence and notices’ or something similar. If it had said ‘driving license and counterpart’ maybe we all would have remembered it!! What was more annoying is that some guy with a Korean driving licence hired a car no problems, he didn’t have to bring any green pieces of paper with him! So I got back on the tube (the one right next to the sixt depot) and made my way across London (£2.30 return) to get my counterpart. By the time I got back to the sixt depot it was 10h30, 2 hours later than I wanted to leave. I could just picture Marcus down in Bournemouth rodeo clowning on some 4ft glassy sets off the pier and it was making me more and more frustrated with the car hire going all wrong.

So I got back to the depot and there was a girl in front of me, I was secretly hoping she had not brought her counterpart to make myself feel better, this was not the case. The guy behind the desk asked her how old she was “27″ she replied, he then asked me and I said “24″ and I gave a smug look to the girl as I was younger than her. He then asked the women what colour car she would like “blue or red”, she replied “ummmm…blue”. “OH GREAT I GET THE RED ONE” was the thought running through my mind, which looking back at it was silly because I couldn’t care less what colour the car was, the chemicals in my mind were just in anger mode at the time. He then asked how many people were travelling in the car, “4″ she said, “1 and a surf board” I said, “A SURFBOARD?” he replied and the girl laughed. “Yeah, I’m going surfing so something big enough to fit it in” I demanded. The girl got given the keys to her blue car and she went off smiling. I went to the desk and gave the guy my driving licence, counterpart, passport and two VISA cards, a little bit overkill but I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have to go home again. I was staring at the posters behind him, one was of a Mercedes E Class and the other a Mercedes C Class “Only £139 a Day!” the poster boasted (an absolute rip off in 98% of the populations mind). He then said “what sort of car will fit a surfboard in”, jokingly I said “one of those C Classes should do it” and he said “ok you can have it if you want” and I was like “for the same price” and he said sure. So I went from angry to ‘cool a Mercedes’ mode pretty quickly. The sixt guy said to enjoy the surf and I was like “yeah thanks cheers buddy” he went from evil counterpart demanding man to my best friend in the space of 2 hours.

Yes it ruled

So I got into my Brilliant Silver C180 Kompressor Limited Edition Merc and drove back to my flat to get the surf gear. I was then on the way to Bournemouth. I printed out a travel plan from Kings Cross to Bournemouth which was not the route I was going but I thought it would all work out. I just wanted to make sure I avoided Hyde Park as this was where Live 8 was happening. Anyway I got completely lost from my weird direction print out and ended up driving around Hyde Park corner. After spending about 1.5 hours in traffic jams in Knightsbridge and seeing police motorbike escorts for black landrovers (which probably contain Madonna, Paul McCartney and all the other heros of Live 8 in) I was on the open road to Bournemouth. I rocked up to Marcus’ house and dumped my stuff there and went to check out the surf to see how much swell was pumping through -

Triple Overhead (for mice)

So there was nothing going down in Bournemouth, after all the delays it wasn’t a big deal after all. In a park in Bournemouth they were playing Live 8 out on big screens so Marcus, Tracey, Nancy and myself headed down there and met up with a couple of Marcus’ buddies, here we are in the park having a great time watching Live 8 on the big TV screen courtesy of BBC Dorset. You could TXT messages to a number and they would appear on the screen, I sent “MARCUS, I LEFT THE CASH UNDER THE ICE CREAM VAN. GARY” but it never got showed on the screen

Friend A, Friend B, Nancy, Tracey, Marcus, Myself

Marcus was big-ing up the next days surfing trip to a secret spot a little West of Bournemouth that is a left hand reef break (a nice jagged rock bottom) that works with a bit of swell and no wind. I was excited but also a bit nervous, the predictions for swell at the weekend were great and I wasn’t looking forward to coming off a 3ft wave head first into cold water with a rock bottom. We had a lovely pizza express dinner and then headed back, watched a bit of Yield surf DVD and went to sleep. The next morning Marcus and myself headed off to the secret spot which was down all these little windy roads, I was wondering if I would need to know a secret handshake for when we got there (entry to the location it is at was £3 no secret handshake needed). When we got there it was F L A T -

Flat Reef Secret Spot

I love that we went to a ‘secret spot’ or a spot that is only talked about in hushed whispers, its like joining a special club of elite people. So I said goodbye to Marcus (visit his blog) and headed off on the 4 hour A road drive to Newquay.

The road that takes you to Newquay from the South coast is pretty terrible but has some fantastic scenery. You go around a corner and the ocean appears in front of you, its beautiful scenery in the South West. I eventually hit some dual carriageway and was seeing what my C180 Kompressor could do. When I came to some straights with a large field of vision and not many cars around, I checked the mirrors for the police and then double tapped the Kompressor turbo on the accelerator and hit a cool speed of 120mph 70mph. Brilliant, the fastest, nicest and newest car I’ll probably ever drive. When I arrived in Newquay I noticed a grinding sound coming from the left front wheel – oh great, bearings I thought, the wheel was falling off, which kind of worried me considering the ‘tests’ I was doing on the DC to Newquay. Even more worrying was that the car was a 2005 model and only had 5500miles on the clock. So after getting some weird looks as I drove around Newquay in a knackered brand new Merc I found the hotel and phoned the RAC -

Whoops broke it

After getting the car up on the jack it wasn’t bearings just part of the car’s underbody hanging off. No idea how it happened, but not what you’d expect from such a new car. Oh well, at least it was working and the RAC man turned up within 10 minutes of the phone call which was great. Now onto the surfing. This is Towan beach outside of the hotel and it was huge -

Gold Coast, Australia South West Coast, England

There were some real big sets coming in, some hitting 4ft and the surf report was talking about some 6fts at Fistral beach! The period was too short for me and didn’t fancy going out in that surf, so I met up with Fizzer (who is down in SW doing pharmacy stuff) and we headed to Hayle. It’s 10 miles up the coast from Newquay and by the time we got there it was around 18h00. That was ok because its not dark until 22h30 or so, it was just a bit colder. Hayle is a slightly protected beach (recommended by Marcus) and it didn’t have the messyness of the other beaches we drove past. Actually Hayle was just about perfect, perfect sets coming in at 3ft with nice periods between them and a nice break. Fitness in surfing is so important and after the paddle out I was already tired, I am glad I had the extra bit of training the weekend before as I don’t know if I’d even had made it out. After waiting around for a wave and trying to catch a few and failing (offshore winds and a gentle break were making it hard) I managed to launch into a beautiful wave. I checked the left and it would let me go, so I popped up and carved left the board was flying and was one of the first ‘proper’ waves it had been on, I went up the wave and then back down it again before it broke, it was absolutely beautiful. I reckon if I had bottom turned a little harder I could have boosted off the top. All the girls watching from the beach (not sure if there were any) would have loved that for sure!! I was claiming it to Faisel “DID YOU SEE THAT FIZZER????” and he was like “No, sorry” ALWAYS the way. After two hours in the water and a deteriorating body strength and cold setting in (couldn’t hold my fingers together after a while) we got out, it was a good little afternoon surf and made the trip completely worthwhile!!! I went back to the hotel and after having fish and chips I fell asleep. The next day I woke up and went outside to check the surf -

Learner City

There was a lot of people heading out and the waves didn’t look that good so I headed up the coast. Watergate Bay looked beautiful, but the waves were breaking all over the place and there was no quality to be had -

Watergate Bay with Headland Hotel, Fistral in the Distance

So I went back to Learner City and had a little bit of fun, but was still thinking about the perfect waves we had the day before and if it wasn’t for the on set of hypothermia and exhaustion I would have stayed their longer and got some more quality waves. So I drove back to London at 14h00 and found out the London Congestion Charge has increased from £5 to £8. So I will have to pay that for driving the car (that is now full of sand) back to the depot tomorrow morning, as well as having to buy a underground ticket to get to work, £10 before the day has even started.

A nice little weekend but TOO EXPENSIVE!!! It appears that you can’t even park your car in a field in a middle of nowhere at a secret surf location without paying at least £3!!

The conditions for surfing today were absolutely perfect. A fairly strong offshore breeze and glassy clean water conditions….but where is the swell!!!! Annoyingly the waves were about chest high max and with the occasional bomb set once every 30 minutes. Faisel and myself were surfing in the south corner of Freshwater just off the rocks (which were of no concern with the lack of surf), we got a few lefts and a few rights it was pretty good fun although I only wish it was twice as big. Here is a wave from today at DY (there’s no scale reference of this wave but I assure you it is tiny but beautifully formed) -

RealSurf

On another note, have you ever had it when your phone seems to have gone mad? When I got back from the surf the phone in our house was ringing. I ignored it because I never answer the phone (to my flatmates displeasure) because I didn’t give anyone the number and I’m too lazy to go and answer it but after the 10th time of ringing I thought I better go and check it out. So when I answer it all I get is this ‘schhhummm…schummm…schhummmm’ noise like something was rotating and brushing against something although I’d never heard anything that sounds like it before, a bit freaky.

Faisel saved someones life today whilst surfing, which is hard to believe as he can barely swim himself. I completely didn’t notice that someone was drowning, I was too busy watching out for blue bottles and dodging a crazy fish that was ‘coming for me’ (serious) oh and trying to go ahead in our ‘wave off’ which I could not do as I was in full wet suit because of the blue bottles on a beautiful hot day and practically dieing of heat exhaustion. Anyway, Faisel sent an email to all his friends and me about it, here it is reproduced without permission (I like his use of the & to replace the word ‘and’ I see the & as a bitwise operator exclusively) -

I performed a surf rescue today at Manly beach, which I will now tell you about with tongue in cheek!!!!!

Have to go now – have to save a small child, mother & father from a natural disaster after helping an old lady across the road.

These are what the waves on the North Shore were looking like this morning, perfect glass sets with a little offshore wind -

Possibly DY – Credit: RealSurf.com

Faisel and myself headed down to Manly and it looked beautiful, I could see a small left hander going off in the middle of the beach. A rare occasion getting these sort of waves in Sydney. So we are out waiting for waves, pretty hard to catch because of their nature, I caught a few and it felt good. Then I see a nice big wave coming in and I am located prefectly next to a longboarder, so I paddle into the wave and it lets me takeoff. I stand up and bottom turn into the most beautiful looking wave arc I’ve ever seen. It felt like I was in my own little world (some people think I am all the time), I couldn’t hear any sound apart from the ‘chuka chuka chuka’ sound of the board skimming across the water and the occasional drumming my fingers of my left hand made as I put them into the wall of the wave. I then realised I had been flying down this curve for about 8 seconds and say to myself ‘this is the best ride ever’!! I then hear next to me the wave breaking just behind me at ear height, so a 2.5-3ft wave, probably a small pipe behind me if I could see it. The water was getting shallow and I could see the sand from the previous wave break so I turned to the beach still on the board and look at the first person I see (a surf school learner) and throw my fists in the air as if I’ve just scored a 9.5 on the ASP World Championship Tour (or a ‘wave off’ as Mike calls them). The wave break then catches up and throws me off the board. I paddle out to the lineup with a massive smile on my face and found myself to be physically shaking from the experience. I didn’t get a wave like it again all day, although I tried, a few were pretty cool but nothing touched that one. I’ll never forget it and no accidents today, no head crunching of fin cutting. It didn’t seem that long ago that Magnus, Dis and myself were getting wiped out on every wave.

On another note, Irregular Shed put up some screen grabs of the weather forecast…. can’t wait to get back -

Sunny, Rainy, Partly Cloudy and Windy with some Snow and Gales

Also whilst I was there I found this picture, thought it was pretty funny. ‘are you thinking what we’re thinking’ – I very much doubt it -

It is 07h00 on Thursday morning, I am planning to meet Fisel in one hour for the 9 hour drive to Yamba. I press the ‘snooze’ button on my alarm and wake up again at about 11h30. At 12h00 with the surfboards loaded on the roof I am at Fisel’s house and we are just about ready to hit the road for the 650km drive up to Yamba. Jenni, Rach and Mike left at about 09h00 and were well on their way up the coast, whilst Fisel and myself sat in traffic jams playing ‘travel monopoly’ as the Easter rush to get out of Sydney began. Michelle, Lyly, Henry and Dan were still at work so were not leaving until even later. We stopped in a placed called Marrickville to check the surfboards were not falling off the roof, I took this picture of the sunset over the river there -

Marrickville – somewhere between Sydney and Yamba

The only places to eat on the side of the road, like in most countries, are McDonalds, Hungry Jacks (Burger King). In Coffs Harbour (Gin and myself’s favourite place) we went to ‘Red Rooster‘. I’ve always wanted to try a Red Rooster meal but afterwards I wish I hadn’t!!

After driving for what felt like half of my life we arrived in Yamba! Mike had phoned me earlier to tell me the place was a mess and that we needed to get some bleach and spray to clean the place up. I did not realise he was joking and ended up buying loads of cleaning equipment that we did not need. The house we had was beautiful, the open planned kitchen/living room/dining room looked over the pacific ocean on Pippi Beach (we actually happened to have some of the biggest waves I’ve ever seen on it). Of course the first thing we did after bring all the stuff in was crack open a beer!!! Here are the initial crew at the Yamba house -

Mike, Rachael, Faisel, Jenni and myself

We had a quick game of ‘Twister’ and ‘Hide and Seek’ and then the other guys arrived, we had a little drink together and then all went to sleep in our new home for a big planned day of surfing. I woke up the next day to look out the window and see the waves were still messy and, when not messy, absolutely frighteningly big -

Checking surf conditions from our balcony using binoculars

Faisel and myself headed down to ‘Main Beach’ to checkout the surf, it is much more protected than the beach above and so was much smaller. It was a bit too small to be honest but was fun for our first day in Yamba. The place is really cool, we did not see any other foreign tourists whilst we were there apart from ourselves and this is all available 1.5 hours South of Byron Bay!

In the evening Dan cooked a lovely meal for us using some special rice and a lot of basil and cheese, here we are enjoying it in our house -

Clockwise from left – Jenni, Dan, Rach, Mike, Michelle, Henry, Lyly, Faisel

We then played ‘Zoom’ a drinking game that has a million rules. If you get caught by the games master (Dan) then you have to ‘skull (down)’ a few gulps of beer/vodka orange. Clearly it ends up with everyone getting drunk, we then moved onto playing Twister which just gets out of hand -

Twister!!

I have many many more photos from the Twister matches we played. Especially from the ‘girls only’ round that we had, I’m not allowed to put those on the internet though (as I was told by the girls), which is a shame because they are brilliant !! So after a very drunken night we had a very late start on Saturday morning!! Back to main beach again but not for very long because it started to rain and thunder!! Jenni, Fisel and myself sat in the car soaking wet looking over main beach. There were two guys still in the water surfing until a lightning bolt struck the end of the river mouth entrance not 0.5km away from us!! We gave up surfing for the rest of the day and went back to the house for a rest. Later when the weather had cleared up we went for a walk around one of the heads of Pippi Beach. I really wanted to go and have a look at these monster size waves there were breaking over the rocks that I could see from our house. On the way around the rocks we saw some dolphins fishing in the bay. I managed to take a picture of a nice wave breaking as well as the dolphins in one shot -

Dolphins and Waves in Yamba

I also snapped Jenni in the sunset on the rocks with Yamba in the background, it made a nice shot -

Jenni and the Yamba skyline

That night we headed into Yamba in search of food. We ended up at a Chinese restaurant where we had some great food and conversation about our favourite countries to visit. We headed back, played some (competitive) Trivial Pursuit (my team of Rach, Jenni and I came last) – we were playing the Australian edition and no one on our team was Australian (English, English and FInlandian).

Next morning after a quick breakfast, Henry, Fisel and myself (Dan was out of surfing, we think he might have fractured a rib) headed to main beach again. The waves were disappointing so we walked down to Turners Beach, which is the next one along. The waves here were much better!! They were pretty big out back, ranging between 3 and 5ft. Instead of trying to paddle out through these massive waves we decided to jump off the rocks into the swell. Doing this for the first time was a little daunting. It is not the jumping off the rocks that I was scared of, it was timing it right so that a huge wave wouldn’t throw me back into the rocks I just jumped off. The key was timing and paddling as fast as possible away from the rocks so that wouldn’t happen, it did not happen (obviously). The southern corner was really for right handers, some guys were surfing from the edge of the rocks across the wave and getting really long rides, Henry said it was the stuff that surf magazines write about. I rode a few (mostly as left handers), I then paddled towards what was probably the biggest wave I’ve ever had to paddle into ever! I am pretty sure it blocked the sun out when it was beginning to break right over me. It was very scarey and I was in the worst place I could have been. I attempted to duck dive it but didn’t get the board nor myself down far enough. Henry said he saw the board fly out from behind me as this monster wave crashed down right on top of me. When I came to the surface I thought I had lost an arm! One of the fins of my board caught me across the wrist and has left a mark on my wrist that looks like a suicide attempt! I am just glad it did not break the skin all the way across! So now I was bleeding into the ocean (I didn’t come in thats not the right attitude) with sharks possibly all around, however instead of seeing sharks, whilst waiting for some nice waves dolphins bobbed up and down in the water no further than 5 metres away from Henry and myself (Faisel was AWOL at the time). We came back for luncheon and no one was home, however this sign was on the kitchen table -

Surf’s Up!

We already knew the surf was awesome, we had been out there all morning!!! In the afternoon Fisel attempted to make some video of us all surfing, as Jenni, Rach, Lyly and Mike were all practicing in the water! He got some good footage, unfortunately none of Henry and myself on the take off of the big waves out the back but a couple of us in the dieing seconds of those waves. We have loads of video footage to make a little surfing video though, I am going to be putting that together this week so watch this space!! Here is a small snapshot that Fisel managed to capture of me at the end of a ride (thanks dude) -

6ft whitewash!

Jen + Dahlberg, Hen + Webber and Fiz (filming surf video) on Turners Beach

So after a killer day surfing (some of the biggest waves I’ve ever caught) Lyly and Henry made a fantastic fish pasta and tomato mozzarella pizza!!

Michelle’s t-shirt says it all

I then rewarded my board for its good efforts for that day with a new layer of wax -

Waxing

Everyone always talks about Byron Bay and how you must go there when in Australia. Seeing as we were only 1.5 hours South of Byron a few of us decided to head up there to check it out. After an early morning surf, Dan drove us up to Byron Bay whilst the others checked out the surf at Angourie. We went to Watego’s beach for the day, Dan and myself watched malibu board riders catch nice little waves that were giving them 50 metre rides. Here is the beach at sunset, you can see Jenni making footprints in the sand to the right of the picture -

Watego Beach – Byron Bay

After a day of sitting in the sun and telling each other good and bad jokes and finding out that the deal on our house was to good to be true (we had only booked until Monday and not Tuesday – it was resolved though) Dan payed for us to have dinner at this lovely little fish restaurant next to the beach. I had the best piece of Salmon ever. We also had a load of deserts which were beautiful but was far too much food!!

Dan, Jen, Mich and myself in Byron Bay with Deserts

Tuesday morning and we had to be out by 10h00. Fisel and myself walked the 2 minutes it takes to get to main beach to have the last surf of the Easter holiday at 08h00. The earliest I’ve ever surfed and it was brilliant! On the way back we stopped off at Seal Rocks, I really enjoy this place and Jenni wanted to have a look at it (after reading all about it on this very website). Here is Jenni and myself at Seal Rocks in the dieing hours of light of today -

First and Last Visit to Seal Rocks

The best Easter I’ve ever had!! Watch out for the video on the website shortly!!!!!

On a separate note, I mentioned Kelly Slater was ripping it up in Sydney the other day when we had 20ft waves coming off of a major storm. Here is a picture of him riding at Deadmans that day -

Kelly Slater riding Deadmans

Faisel and myself made a video diary of our day at Freshwater Beach. This basically meant filming waking up to going back to sleep again. Its a full on 11 meg download but it is well worth it! If the video keeps stopping them download the video and watch it locally.

Right Click Save Target As..

Faisel is punching my model flatmate in the stomach?!?!?! -