Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Unreal day of surf... Check the Twitter box for a bonus!

Super fun day of surf today. High pressure, sunny, glassy... and the water wasn't ridiculously cold again. Every time I go through the ice cream headache syndrome, I remember an article I read in Surfer Mag a long time ago. The article had something to do with surfing the frigid waters around Humboldt in Northern California. The part that always comes to mind is a description of an old timer's trick for dealing with the icy water. The guys would tie a wooden dowel to the end of their wetsuit zipper pull. They'd make the string to the dowel just long enough for them to put the wooden stick in their mouth and bite down on it while paddling out. Supposedly this countered the dreaded brain freeze. True or not I have no idea... but gnarly- and memorable.



Photo: The left... fun.

We had none of that today- no dowel bite.
In fact I wore a long sleeve spring suit (O'neill's 2mm Guru... my new favorite suit for stand up). The surf started off super thumpy. The high tide brought better shaped waves and bigger surf... some sets were easily six foot and maybe even a foot or two more on the mackers. I was able to find a nice hole on the southside and scored five or six really good lefts. The rights were too fast for me to make- I did give a couple of them a shot but pretty much just got pounded into the sand.



Photo: The right... fast.

The new board is soooo good!
A whole different beast than the 9'4 I've been riding. Way more twitchy, much less foot pressure to get her to do what you want- and huge amounts of drive off the tail- even though it's been thinned and narrowed (magic fin placement... maybe?). This board is a beach break scalpel- it turns off it's hindquarters and just lets you scoot all over the place. If you're still riding a big, heavy 10' beast and want to zip around give one of these a look- you like the change.



Photo: Just across the street. I'm all about the fourth one down, add guacamole.

The Twitter Box: How's that thing? So I guess I just let you know every fifteen minutes of my life... um, is that interesting? It's semi-therapeutic for me... and I'm strangely fascinated by it...weird. Let's see how long I can keep it up. I've gone to other Twitter accounts to see what people are Tweeting about... I guess I just don't quite get it yet. But I'm trying. Check out the Twitter box for the little bonus video that I posted up... hard drive left overs and some Go-Pro footy that I shot today. Have fun.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

twitter is gay!!!!stick to blogging!!!

John Ashley said...

C'mon, don't you like the "twitter box"?

Truthfully, I don't know how long I can keep it up... it may just die a natural death.

And that might be soon... I'm so A.D.D.!

Joe Agliozzo said...

Nice Vid!

John -
Which board in your quiver do you like best for your home break at say knee to chest high. IB is very much like el porto here in Manhattan Beach, and I am close to your size (about 25 lbs less) - would love to get your opinion as I am thinking about adding another SUP to go with my Uli lopez. (I think the Naish Mana 7-9 would be a kick in knee to chest high - I need to demo one).

John Ashley said...

Hey Joe-

Thanks! Right now I'm way into this Viking Bump... if it gets above head high and juicy I'll go back to my 9'4 Viking and run a bigger fin in the middle box.

For straight up beach break stuff- turn and jam sort of thing... Viking Bump for sure. It is tippy though!

Those Naish boards look good, lots of guys ripping them in vids I've seen- mostly smaller guys since they're narrow... definitely try one first if you can.

Keep me posted!

John