I liked the last “make it or break it” so much that here is another one. I’m going to throw these up quite often I think. And as I said before, I plan to work out some sort of prize system (i.e., guessing correctly puts you in a raffle for a prize or something) for the future.
This one is a meaty off-the-lip. What do you think? Make it? Or Break it? Reply in the comments.
I said I’d reveal on Friday, but I think that’s too long of a wait. So here is the sequence:
Made it! This accidental one-foot air was during a heat at the recent Cactus Cup. My foot slipped out of the strap and I thought that I was ruined, but luckily even though my brain thought I was going to crash, my body managed to position my foot back on the board, landing out of the strap but able to fully recover for more turns on the wave.
Congrats to Ruben for guessing correctly!
I loved a feature that Windsurfing Mag ran years ago called “Make it or break it” that had a radical or interesting photo that looked to be in the middle of a big wipeout sequence. The question was “Did he land it? Or crash terribly?” Readers would submit answers and the next issue would reveal the truth. Soooooo! I want to try something similar here. I’ll start by posting photos of myself but would love to move onto other riders and user submitted photos as the feature expands.
Here is picture (click on it to enlarge) by the wonderful Clark Merritt from the Cactus Cup at Punta San Carlos (btw, part 2 of of my cactus cup story is coming soon this week!). So, did I make it? or break it? Respond in the comments with your guesses. The answer will be revealed this Friday. This week, there won’t be a prize but if there is enough popularity, I can see this becoming a prize winning contest in the future. Remember to respond in the comments.
So here is the first ever maui monday report with the latest news from Maui! Unfortunately, this week on the rock has been rather uneventful. Summer on Maui most often means flat water. It gets so bad in July that we are lucky to get anything over knee high. August, though, is the month when the swells start to return. August is far from good but definitely getting better.
Well, that process of returning swells hasn’t started yet; Maui is still in a very severe wave drought. Further, the summer is normally really windy, so last week’s few windless days were rather abnormal. BUT they came as a relief to me, for I fell ill with a small head cold and thus spent the days indoors reading and watching movies (to name a few: The Social Network, Rare Exports, Your Highness, The Name of the Rose, Crimes and Misdemeanors). After the wind returned for the weekend, I did miss a few windy, waveless days because I didn’t feel well.
Though, at the start of the week– right after getting back from Baja–I did get to sail a couple days. And on those flat days, I worked on some fun freestyle like pirouette jibes. Also, my starboard tack back loops look pretty bad, so I’m trying to spice some style into them by throwing my head back at the apex of the rotation. However, because the waves are so small, there are really only about 5 opportunities to jump in a session, so it’s not so much training as it is just messing around.
Summer on Maui means no Pros. This is both good and bad. Good because there are fewer people on the water competing for all the waves and jumps. But bad because having other pros on the water is really fun and good for pushing oneself.
It seems that the wind is back in the normal trade wind pattern for this coming week and I can’t wait to go do some more jumps! Jumping is a bit of a sore subject with hardcore waveriders. Some say that it is not a part of true windSURFING and refuse to acknowledge jumping’s legitimacy. I call BS. True, if the waves are good, I prefer not to jump even if there is good wind for it. But that’s not because I think of jumping as not counting, but rather I just have so much fun riding waves that I don’t even think about jumping. That said, I do think it’s important for wavesailors to work on their jumps. So that’s the goal until the real waves come this fall– when that happens, I’ll only be riding them, not jumping.
Here are some photos that Jimmie Hepp captured from last week. You’ll see that despite the lack of Pros, there is no such lack of tourists.
In addition to foto friday, I am going to start a maui report every Monday. I’d like to get a feature for every weekday. Maybe a day with a feature on my own photos? Not sure how that will work regularly since I’ve reverted to shooting film and sometimes can’t develop for weeks– and, I’m not good. Tips on windsurfing technique? What do you want to read? Tell me in the comments.
I prefer the red-eye all-night flights on united when I fly from Maui to the mainland because I normally can sleep quite easily, making the trip seem instant (and with my frequent flier status, I always get upgraded so its not too cramped). However, dream full flight was NOT the reality on from OGG Maui to LAX California. And to make matters worse, I had a very strange non-direct routing– I had to stop off in both SFO San Francisco and LAS Las Vegas for just under an hour each. This meant that as I got more and more tired as the journey progressed, I still had to stay awake to get off one plane and get on another.
The most shocking part of that sleepless ordeal was LAS airport. I’d never been to Las Vegas before and didn’t know that gambling was allowed in the airport. Less than 20ft from the gate stood machines for slots, computer poker, and all sorts of electronic devices created to eat money. I really don’t like the concept of gambling– the poor and unfortunate greedily hoping for a quick fix all while ironically giving their money away and becoming poorer in the process– but it was still incredibly interesting to see the flashing lights above the screens that mesmerized the players’ eyes.
Once in LA, I had about 8 hours before my friend Ruben Lemmens arrived for us both to drive to San Diego. I originally thought that staying in LAX would be fine, but I’d forgotten that LAX resembles a truck stop in a third world country. In the dirty area outside of the baggage claim I could find no where to sit, no where to eat, and no (this was the deal breaker) internet. I had to leave the airport then.
Leaving the airport would have been fine if I did not have two massive bags full of my heavy windsurfing gear (weighing over 70 pounds each). I was not exactly what one could call mobile. I schemed with the overly helpful airport information man and we finally found an airport bag storage company. Yes! I was free from the chains of my coffin bags! Free at last!
With my bags stored, the question was: Where should I go? I asked this to basically everyone around me (this group included the airport info man as well as the bag storage people). They all unanimously thought that I should head to the beach. My only thought? Hell no! I spend my life on the beach, I don’t want to go sit in the sand for nothing. I’m in a city and given that this doesn’t happen often, I want to visit! Plus, a trip to San Carlos, Baja is a trip of weeklong beach 24/7… with no escape. The Santa Monica Promenade then was my destination.
Once in Santa Monica, I strolled the busy promenade. I walked for quite a while before I got a call from Kevin Pritchard who informed me that he too was in Santa Monica. We decided to meet at the Barnes & Nobles that he was currently in. I checked my map and thought, “oh! that’s just around the corner. I’ll be right there.”
It was NOT just around the corner. After walking for about half an hour at a brisk caffeinated pace, I finally found the B&N with my Ezzy Sails windsurfing teammate. We talked about windsurfing films and joked about the breadth of magazine topics available and then he left to go meet his girlfriend (pro skier Resi Stiegler) for lunch. This left me to myself.
I browsed the book store and took the opportunity to purchase a book on drama writing (my latest little obsession– though I know nothing about it) and a copy of Montaigne’s complete essays. With these books in hand, I walked to the store’s Starbucks. With a fresh coffee (remember, I didn’t sleep the night before) I sat down with my books.
My lack of sleep plus caffeine caused an in-and-out focus on the fundamentals of script writing, so instead I took to folding swans out of my plane tickets. I used every little bit of each of my 3 tickets, so in the end I had a whole gaggle of swans. I took these swans and walked around the bookstore to my favorite books. And at each book, I hid a swan (I also hid some random ones just for fun). The books included (ordered in the order that I placed the swans): Lermontov, Bukowski, Simic, Nietzsche, Merwin, Wilde.
Then my phone buzzed and Ruben was ready for us to make the drive to San Diego. I left my birds and began the drive south.
I’m going to start this as a regular feature every Friday where I’ll post a selection of photos I’ve found online or elsewhere that are somehow visually charismatic. Enjoy:
Just got back to Maui after winning the Cactus Cup in San Carlos, Baja. Full report to follow!
The Aran Islands lie off Western Ireland. All three are small… wastes of rock… without trees… without soil…
In winter storms they are almost smothered by the sea… which, because of the peculiar shelving of the coastline, piles up into one of the most gigantic seas in the world.
In this desperate environment the Man of Aran, because his independence is the most precious privilege he can win from life, fights for his existence, bare though it may be.
It is a fight from which he will have no respite until the end of his indomitable days or until he meets his master – the sea.
That is how the film Man of Aran opens (see picture for more reference). The people of the Aran islands live from the sea– fishing for food, collecting seaweed for soil, and riding the massive atlantic waves. The islands have inspired much art (with J M Synge’s The Aran Islands being quite paramount).
As I get ready to leave Maui to head to the deserts of Baja, Mexico, I can’t help but think of how the sea is my master too. Everything is done in search of wind and waves. The world is crossed many times over in the name of windsurfing.
Windsurfing is the perfect enjoyment– it is the precise alchemical blend of pain and pleasure.
Ah the pain! Do you remember learning to waterstart? Do you remember the agony of floating downwind, foot propped on the board, and neck craned up willfully wishing for the body to rise up out of the water pulled by some invisible string. Of course, after a million attempts, you made one— and that single waterstart filled your body with a deep, warming breath of euphoria. The happiness of succeeding and of using mind and body together to join with the elements, this is bliss.
And that bliss takes work. I’ve done a lot of sports competitively and windsurfing is one of the hardest to learn. One can paddle out a surfboard and just sit on it for an hour and then paddle in and say that they surfed. That’s most definitely not the case with Windsurfing. Windsurfing is like learning a language– the body has to learn to act instantly upon reading the wind and water. And this is a type of mastery, a mastery of the purest form of sailing, which is windsurfing. And this mastery satisfies something so deep and primal that it borders addiction.
Windsurfing also requires a full commitment. “Go all in,” that’s the motto of windsurfing. Whether it’s leaning over the board’s rail with a gybe or driving to the beach at the whisper of wind. It’s like the best love making– the self is completely immersed in the whole.
And after the first waterstart, it only gets better. Let’s skip jibing, planing, and freestyle and go straight to riding waves (my favorite aspect of this sport lifestyle). There is nothing better in life than riding a wave. Forget parties, forget sex, forget whatever other people do for fun. Riding a wave on a windsurfer is simply better than everything and anything else.
To ride a wave is to be in perfect harmony with the ocean, which is the most massive entity on earth. Everything human thing combined (cities, planes, bombs) is insignificant compared to the sea. And riding a wave is to be part of the sea. This is to react to actions before they happen. This is to move without conscious thought. This is perfect.
Windsurfing is the debt and pleasure too. I will take nothing less and could want nothing more.