Sunday Drive

Monochrome Monday (King Tide)

Save Kirra

Please sign the online petition
to the Premier of Queensland
(the elected leader in charge)
to stop
this ecological insanity - click here.

Midday at the Oasis

The Day started out innocently enough. I was dusty and sleep deprived from a BIG night. 

The dawn check revealed a nice new swell had arrived with the faintest of offshore breezes. 

A quick text or three to the tribe, followed by strong coffee and I'm on it, floating around the rock shelves of The Point on the multi-coloured Seasurf Seahorse log below. It was not the right board for that day, but the only other one I had on me was the red 6 foot quad. Ohh how I would discover the folly of bad equipment choice.

It was one of those rare swells where the wind hung offshore most of the day and there were plenty of waves to go around. Everybody was buzzing that the next day was going to be even bigger. So I stayed out way longer than I should have like an addict getting way too much of a good thing. Telling myself that I would shoot instead of surfing the next day when The Swell would peak.

Even when I was exhausted beyond what my body thought possible, I stayed out, telling it that we would rest the next day. Just a few more. Too much fun is never enough.

Unless you have a bad wipeout.

Like a really really bad wipeout, where you are flung in front of a 6 foot wall of whitewater and as you hit the surface on the way down, in a most inelegant manner, the air is punched out of your lungs and The Rogue Set cartwheels you dismissively across the big rock shelf like a baby seal being tossed around by a killer whale.

And that's what happened.

But that's the easy part.

When that stopped I could not get to the surface because I was wrapped in four foot of boiling foam and instead of swimming to the surface, I'm clawing at foam that has insufficient density to get me to the top. I can't touch the bottom to launch myself upwards.

And I start to think I may not make it. And instead of looking back on my life and all that, all I can think in disbelief and shock is "this can't be happening".

Somehow that extra blubber I'm carrying finally earns it's keep and I slowly rise to the sweetest sensation on earth.
Fresh air.

To whomever was watching over me on Tuesday December 3, 2013 thank you.

Single

Ash Grunwald and Rasta will be competiung,
All the info at the Burleigh Boardriders' webbie.
Happy Birthday Peter Harris.

South

dawn departure

for a run South

to surf with some

old mates.

Grain

Monday Mourning

Five years ago, today

was my brother's 

last birthday.

I missed him that day

I surfed Noosa in the morning

Had brekkie with mates

And then the car wouldn't start

I still miss him

Happy birthday bro

Shine on you crazy diamond

Gertrude Stein vs Neil Young

I don't set out to procrastinate or get distracted.

It just happens along the way.

For example, I'm cleaning up my desk. There's a pile of official documents, computer hard drive cables, business cards, shirt buttons (??), a funny note from my staff and other scraps of paper with stuff written on them - ideas from friends on where to buy silk for surfboard fabric underlays, repeat medication slips from the doctor, financial statements and then I spy a post it note with just this written on it "mexsgarage.com.au".

I have no recollection how that came into my possession, so I fire up the computer to investigate it via Google.
It's some sort of automobile website for a crew who do impressive classic olde cars makeovers.

I stare at the post it note again. Is it even my scratchy handwriting?
I decide not and turf it.

While the web is up, I check my email and there's something from one of those online travel agents promising bargain prices. Maybe I can afford that return trip to WA and catch up with Corey at Margaret River, I ponder.
So I send him a text to find out when he's flying out of that mining site in the middle of the desert - the one where he gets paid to blow stuff up and shoot critters like this.

In my distraction, I have let the water for the morning coffee boil and gone cool. I start to reboil it. The water here is suss in summer anyway.

While that's happening, I spot an interesting email from Byron Bay, the epicentre of the surfing rainbow. Ohhhh look at that! Jim Banks has a sale on and the photos of his new Indo board range have me dreaming of exotic locales.
Meanwhile,  the water for the coffee has boiled and cooled again.
I have lost an hour I'll never get back.

The photo below sums up my shifting focus and distraction perfectly.
I bought some beautiful little roses at the markets, thinking I'll do a macro Tina Modotti style shot. I got distracted too many times and now the blooms have gone belly up. Since we are having a heat wave I end up getting some nice shots of rosarian decay.

This is what they should have looked like.

"A rose is a rose is a rose" - Gertrude Stein

I'll probably get distracted and go off on an artistic tangent all the same again in 2014.

It's not all bad, though.

Sometimes artistic deviation can lead to interesting results. As the great sage Young once remarked when commenting on his various stylistic changes away from Mainstream Music:

"Travelling there was really boring 

so I headed for the ditch. 

It was a rough ride 

but I met more interesting people there." 

- Neil Young

Lone Xmas Tree

Couple of un-tweaked snaps from this morning's two and half hour bike ride.

 I saw this lone Xmas tree in the middle of nowhere a few days ago and thought  I should come back at dusk with camera and some portable strobe gear but the forecast is for extreme hotness, so it was dawn mission instead.

Bungalow Bill

Bungalow Bill Stewart from Woosleys surfboards swinging it round the summer traffic.