>Surfin stuff< |
Friday, September 28, 2001
Just got back from a week away down the west coast, surfing beach breaks mainly, with my brother and some good fun too. Weather improving, putting the booties away, one day coming back from Apollo Bay we saw a whale offshore and watched it for a while, huge and just beyond the breaking waves. Then, three big groups of dolphins, over a hundred. Nice to be surfing in conditions like that! Friday, September 21, 2001
Got the new American SURFER mag today, an oversized edition with a picture of a little kid on the cover, called Surfing Forever. On the cover it said: 'When do you plan to quit surfing? If you can't answer this - if the idea has never occurred to you - then you must stop and consider the implications: if you don't ever plan to quit surfing, this means you plan on...surfing forever' It's a different kind of angle from the current issue of Tracks; the 31st birthday issue with a motley collection of 'fools, freaks, and frothers' with a picture os some guy with sparks coming out of his arse on the cover. And that's the difference: the Americans think Australian surf magazines are teenage trash, catering for the masturbatory fantasties of young Oz males and pandering to the old lowest common denominator, treat em all like they've got no brains. And the Australians, when they think about it, think that the American mags are at best, well....romantic. They describe the surfer mag book 'Perfect Day' as 'as you might expect, coming from the States, it's lacked with a fair bit of surfing romanticism' Which do you want? Hard core slash and burn oz-ism? or the idea of the thing. You can check Surfer Mag at Surfer Mag Tuesday, September 18, 2001
Saturday, September 15, 2001
After the horrific events in New York this week it was nice to get back into the cold water of Western Port Bay this morning with plenty of swell around (though I was told it was twice as big yesterday) and not too many guys surfing the bowl at Honeysuckle. It wasn't quite as cold as I expected and I took off my wetsuit helmet after a while and managed to get a few, though I've got to get surf fit again. Coming in I saw Mark McCabe and brother, ready for his first surf of the spring after having the winter off to go skiing. Sunday, September 09, 2001
and of course Sunday morning it's onshore; gone SW overnight and strong as well. Good morning for a walk along the beach. Saturday, September 08, 2001
and coming home around past Fisherman's Beach tonight, picking up Feeb from work, two guys surfing the bay; only a couple of foot but so nice to see the shapes of surfers paddling out into the waves, that looked quite clean surprisingly, though not quite big enough to tempt me out into the wild!
Pretty strong northerly this Saturday morning and I checked out Mornington Pier early just to see the wind direction and strength;strong enough to blow spray across the pier and stop any keen fishermen from getting out there, but absolutely howling. The surf report from Triggers said it was about a metre at gunna and howling offshore so I rang Steve who said it was blowing a gale down there and he'd checked Snatches and it was very peaky and ridgey; I forgotten the exact word he used but I knew exactly what it was like from the one word I could visualise exacty what it was like. Decided not to go down with the forecast for gale force winds - around 40 knots going around more westerly later. Just after that Johnno rang, looking for a surf, a great surprise since I haven't had a surf with him for ages. Next weekend...
Thinking about Surfing I've started this as a an (easy??) way to share ongoing thoughts and reflections about surfing around here, here being the Mornington Peninsula area south of Melbourne Australia. Here, not being renowned for its fabulous surf, and me, not being renowned for being a fantabulous surfer, but more for me to think about and record some of the surfing and surfing related things that happen. We'll see how it goes. |
