Quote Week - 5

"A ship in port 

is safe

but that is not 

what ships 

are built for".

Anon

Quote Week - 6

"Travel is the only thing

you buy

that makes you richer"

Anon

Quote Week - 7

Quotes are just about always taken out of context and often glib.

Still. I'm a fan. So today marks the start of a week of them as we count down to autumn.

"I do not exist to impress the world.
I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy"
Richard Bach

Snaked twice

How times have changed. 

Snake story one: I'm jogging along the concrete track beside the creek at dusk when I see another jogger coming my way with a crazy uncoordinated gait, arms flapping and shining one of those blue-white LED torches at me. (I got a half busted red bicycle light flashing n my hand, so the lycra Caddell-Evans-wannabes don't mow me down).

He's a bit freaked out apparently because he just saw a snake on the concrete bike/walk track. I'm surprised by his reaction. This is a bushy section with dense stands of mature eucalyptus (gum) trees,  a creek and the nearest habitation is a good 300 meters away. I tell him "yeah, I see them around here all the time. Thanks for the warning" and keep going. All of asudden, all I can think about is snakes and I'm on hyper-alert, gingerly navigating every large crack and every small gnarly branch on the darkening track lest it be a snake.

Snake Story Two - I'm visiting Nana Brine at her beachside abode. We've seen lots of big fat red bellied black snakes on the concrete track she talked the council into building - the one that curls from the esplanade to the beach, between two multi-million dollar houses. 

She's nearly 90 and tells me about when she was a young girl living near a mangrove shrouded creek, there used to be a lot of snakes, so her father would kill them with an axe and then hang them on the fence. I'd love to know why, but she doesn't remember that part. 

Maybe next visit.

Windsong

Some days 

you just want to lie on the deck 

and soak up the rays

and others

well

you feel the pull of the tides

 and the caress of the wind 

on the waves

and so

you unfurl the main

check the stays

check the larder

and let go the anchor.

The Bluff

Wollongbar

Today's post is for all the walking wounded who are starting the working week already wrecked.

Today's image is what you get when you take $5K worth of camera equipment out at the wreck site of the Wollongbar at Byron Bay on a flat day, process the 100Mb image down to a1M jpeg, send it to your phone and processs that on a free app, then email it to yourself to process again in photoshop. Easy.

Quote

" The salt in our blood

matches the ocean's salinity."

JFK

Sub-optimal

We've been talking a lot lately about why our friends gave surfing away and let their boards gather dust. 

Some got into other scenes. Some pursued careers far from the brine. Some were seduced by their demons, never to return.

We've also been talking a lot lately about why we keep surfing. 

Even in dribbly conditions, after searching for an hour along scoured sandbanks. And we keep coming back to the social aspect of surfing a quiet spot with a couple of pals.

Doesn't matter whether they are riding one fin, no fin or three finned mals. It's the social aspect of sharing the brine under a big blue sky with people dear to us.

A big feed, a coffee or three afterwards and talking story is the icing on the cake.

Here's one for everybody who still goes out even when it's sub-optimal.

Surf n Circus

Coming to the Gold Coast in March is the cultural circus that is Bleach. A few images here from their web site. At the same time (stupidly, says I) is the Noosa Festival of Surf 200 kms to the north.

Although both are designed to harvest the tourist dollar by appealing to a diverse range of (cashed up) tastes from surfers to live music devotees to aRt tragics (stupidly, I tick all boxes), there's some interesting stuff afoot for those in love with the brine. 

See you there.