human conditioning

paddled out into what looked like perfect overhead rights from the vantage of the bluff. I had the 6’3” under arm -shoulda had the 6’8” for paddle power. so much water moving made it hard to paddle for the 8 to 10 foot peaks. got stuffed a bunch. cut two slashes into my brand new winter suit with sharp glass fins. can’t imagine what woulda happened to my rear had I been skinning it. big bomb sets swept through the lineup. homeboy on the Flyer was in perfected position for a macker and rode it with style as we three sat on the shoulder in resigned drift.

paddled out again the next sunrise. walked down the trail, two boards under arm and a backpack with winter gear, skirting mud holes in the darkness. clean lines left over but all power gone now. big seals watched as Blacks and I shared the dregs of the previous day’s bounty.

saturday afternoon I bottled 61 red ales. it’s the second batch of brew for me and will be ready for tasting in the new year. six and a half percent power and of deep red colour. I hope it tastes as good as it looks. I’ll start a new batch as soon this one is ready to drink. maybe a dark lager.

professionally I stand at the threshold of dramatic change. the swing is dramatic –one way will be a working hell with a lousy work environment accompanied by endemic lifelessness and a demise of hope for self in the staff. the other swing, a new opportunity for me to write creatively for a living and perhaps still maintain a work life balance. or should I say a surf/work balance.

what would I give to be able to make my own hours and surf anytime the swell is running. at 34 I feel in better physical form than ever. and it’s strictly because of a surfing life. I am also more creative and surfing inspires me to write.

so any of you extremely wealthy folks out there who may be thinking about what to do with so much dough I have a proposition for you.

set up a trust that would pay me a humble salary so that I may focus on this surfing life and creating written works. in turn I will repay you by taking full advantage of a dream opportunity of a lifetime and transform myself completely into a finely tuned human. I will strive to achieve the highest potential of my physical and intellectual self to show that we have much more to offer than we are led to believe or allowed by our modern pursuit for the acquisition of wealth.

think of yourself as a muse, an investor in the human condition, in the dying art of personal development.

whadaya say?

controlando al diablo

here's a video I made a while back of my cousin Tadeo playing around in the living room at our old apartment in downtown HFX.

truth

street art is unapologetic. David Choe has a message for us all.

from Original Cultures

Ericailcane, DEM, Will Barras - Stay Away From Light (edit 1) from Original Cultures on Vimeo.

more info at originalcultures.org

wednesday afternoons

bailed work yesterday after JB confirmed my suspicions that a certain spot would be working. it was a high tide day yesterday so likely it wouldn't be as good as it coulda been. but the water and air are still warm so whose counting?

took out the fish for its first frontside session. damn I love that board. the waves were small but clean and fast with a mini hollow section on the inside. sat next to the kelp covered rock and picked off the smaller ones that were swinging wide. with the high tide the wave peels really close to shore on top of round topped boulders so that when you kick out you have to go over the back of the wave or risk a broken fin or worse.

Blacks was there pullin into little closeouts with ease. made one or two I think. we traded waves for a while. out on the horizon a deep azure sky skirted the ocean surface and then faded from a dark to light grey. the heavy fog diffused the remaing light casting a surreal glow across the viewscape. the red faced headland and remaining greenery on the shoreline added to the amazing colours.

what I love about surfing is how it motivates me to notice things around me. how it gets me out there and allows me to experience the moods and shifts of days and seasons. Blacks and I have over the past three years shared so many amazing sunrises, so many different skies and winds. we've seen seals -alive and dead. we've paddled out in minus insanely cold temperatures to surf knee high waves and on blustery victory at sea days to surf huge storm surf. always stoked.

this life never disappoints.

blind faith: part 1

science

beware of scientists who use the phrase:
"we used to believe that ____,
but now we now for certain that_____"
next generation's scientist
will likely use
the same phrase again
with new
cockamamie
discoveries.
why don't we
listen
to our own
intuition?
why don't we understand,
that the same breath
we breathe,
is the same wind
blowing
through trees?
beware of
blind faith

el picaro

I'll have to make sure this kid reads Lazarillo del Tormes and Huck Finn

influences

Chester Himes


Tom Waits

Tom Waits - Earth Died Screaming - The most popular videos are a click away

Jim Jarmusch

mongrel dog

I was caught by self doubt. like a mongrel dog tryin to cross the road after a beating. it is an absurd world that we live in. and the self aware notice the absurdities more often than the self involved. but we are all ego one way or another. some manifest it less and some more.

what is courage?

what is determination?

what is gritt?

some like Chinaski did what they did out of a sense of duty to their own constitution –he, praising and cursing his muses depending on the severity of his hangover.

some do nothing at all. they go through motions like so much flotsam and jetsam at mid-tide on a Jamaican beach.

and where do you see yourself?

how are you living?

how am i living? with trepidation.

that is no way to live a life is it?

fear is not a hoax but it also isn’t concrete. it can be malleable like Gumby. it can be used to one’s advantage or can be crippling like ms. it is the ability to move beyond failure that is a measure of one’s success. this is the paradox of our human condition and perhaps the crux of our western belief in good vs. bad. there is no good. there is no bad. there simply just is. everything is everything. absurdities arise when we negate this basic principle.

Himes wrote of the prison preacher preachin about pork chops and mashed potatoes in paradise.

do mongrels get pork chops in the afterlife?

more absurd world from Buk

one thirty-six a.m.

I laugh sometimes when I think about
say
Céline at a typewriter
or Dostoevsky...
or Hamsun...
ordinary men with feet, ears, eyes,
ordinary men with hair on their heads
sitting there typing words
while having difficulties with life
while being puzzled almost to madness.

Dostoevsky gets up
he leaves the machine to piss,
comes back
drinks a glass of milk and thinks about
the casino and
the roulette wheel.

Céline stops, gets up, walks to the
window, looks out, thinks, my last patient
died today, I won't have to make any more
visits there.
when I saw him last
he paid his doctor bill;
it's those who don't pay their bills,
they live on and on.
Céline walks back, sits down at the
machine
is still for a good two minutes
then begins to type.

Hamsun stands over his machine thinking,
I wonder if they are going to believe
all these things I write?
he sits down, begins to type.
he doesn't know what a writer's block
is:
he's a prolific son-of-a-bitch
damn near as magnificent as
the sun.
he types away.

and I laugh
not out loud
but all up and down these walls, these
dirty yellow and blue walls
my white cat asleep on the
table
hiding his eyes from the
light.

he's not alone tonight
and neither am
I.

more at bukowski.net

winter cycling

frosty mornings now. temperatures still hover around freezing in the morning and then rise with the warming sun. but soon that will change. snow and ice will come as it does at the end of each year. I never fear the weather on the commute. more so the drivers who fear the weather on their morning drives and second guess themselves with timid brakes and gas pedals and jerky steering. still sometimes when I look out the window and it's icy and minus ten I get a little tinge of regret about suiting up for the morning commute.

more comic strips at Yehuda Moon

the reach around

been commuting to work by bike now since 2004. I wouldn't trade my ride to work for anything. although that's not to say it's not without its shitty moments. below is a diagram of perhaps the most sketchy and common situation I face riding my bike in Halifax. it's not only drivers speeding around you to make a right turn but also just to get around to make it to the red light before you do.




I tend to have different reactions to shitty driving especially when I feel like the pulse passing through my veins at an increased pace could have been my last. sometimes I just ignore it. other times the middle finger makes me feel better. gave a lady one this morning -she slammed on her brakes and zipped into the bike lane to park giving me less than a moments notice to correct.

sometimes I totally loose it. a few weeks ago I almost got licked by a young woman driving a purple Ford Ranger extended cab. I caught up with her at the next light and pulled up to her window which was halfway down. she was still texting away on her phone. I gave her a few choice words that my Mama would not be proud of. she wasn't expecting me and that's the point.

sometimes loosing it has its negative side. one time in Portland, Oregon I was cruising home from work on my fix when an oncoming car swerved way into my lane to get around a car parked in his lane on a residential street in a NE neighborhood. I gave him the finger and loud "fuck off.!!!" homeboy slammed on the brakes, u-turned and came after me. lucky for my I dipped down a dead-end, one-way that I could sneak across the grass and make my way down to MLK. I lost the guy. he may have kicked my ass.

more recently a guy on a sport bike got pissed cause I dipped around him at the light. I'm on a bike man. he caught me at the next light and offered to kick my ass the next time I did that to him. in a moment of adrenaline filled bravado I told him "lets go." the light turned and he twisted his throttle like it was something I should admire and was off.

I love how the power of the gas pedal and the combustion engine gives people a sense of power, no matter how meek and weak they are when they are just flesh and bone, sans machine.

lots of people that I've met over the years who were regular bike commuters got licked down by a car at one point or another. my friend Drew from DC took two massive beatings. luckily he still rode his bike and wasn't too jaded.

hard for me not to be a little uppity about riding my bike to work. it takes effort and I have to endure some shitty weather sometimes. but it is also amazing to feel the blood pumping through my veins halfway through my morning commute, sleep still heavy on my eyelids. and it's great to speed home and bank turns after work.

and no I don't have a DUI. I choose to ride my bike.

if you cut me off and I give you the finger or worse it's because I take it personal.

the buzz and the hive

there's a buzz a buzzin. everyone is still high from last Friday's lines which at some places had more power than we've seen inna while.

the surfing community here is an interesting one. about 80% are beginners who usually don't surf in the winter. then there's the middle ground, weekend warriors, committed to year 'round surfing but may not make every swell.

and of course there's the core guys who are always out. the guys who have arranged their lives, jobs and everything else in order to give them the freedom every time the buoys lights up. the guys who know exactly where to go once they know the wind and swell direction.

this type exists everywhere but somehow I feel that here it's different than other places I've lived.

maybe it's the bitter fucken cold. or maybe it's the East Coast culture. but it is different. in the lineup with the crew it's still very competitive and there is a pecking order. but there is also camaraderie and smiles among acquaintances, even if you know them only by how they surf and how the hooded wetsuit frames their face. you'd see them on the street in plain clothes and you may not know that that was the person sharing overhead freezing rights the morning before.

there are waves coming now. it's winter. see you guys out there.

remember: the halifax explosion

bombs have no positive attributes







these photos are of my neighborhood. it was completely flattened during the explosion.

"The Halifax Explosion occurred on Thursday, December 6, 1917, when the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was devastated by the huge detonation of the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives, which accidentally collided with the Norwegian SS Imo in "The Narrows" section of the Halifax Harbour. About 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, or collapsed buildings and it is estimated that over 9,000 people were injured. This is still the world's largest man-made accidental explosion.

At 8:40 in the morning, the SS Mont-Blanc, chartered by the French government to carry munitions to Europe, collided with the unloaded Norwegian ship Imo, chartered by the Commission for Relief in Belgium to carry relief supplies. Mont-Blanc caught fire ten minutes after the collision and exploded about twenty-five minutes later (at 9:04:35 AM).All buildings and structures covering nearly 2 square kilometres (500 acres) along the adjacent shore were obliterated, including those in the neighbouring communities of Richmond and Dartmouth. The explosion caused a tsunami in the harbour and a pressure wave of air that snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels, and carried fragments of the Mont-Blanc for kilometres."

style: greenough and warren

george greenough is often referred to as the father of performance surfing. on his kneeboard greenough would do super high speed cutbacks back into the pocket in a way that no one had ever done before him.



tyler warren is young kid who seems to be able to ride any type of board. he's got loads of style in the water and is easily one of my favourite surfers to watch on video. here he does his best greenough impersonation on a Velo spoon replica.





tyler warren has a film coming soon. check out more info here

home brew + winter quiver 09

India Pale Ale - 6 day primary fermentation, 15 day secondary fermantation. alcohol content around 6.5%. seems to be getting better after 4 weeks in the bottle. not as sharp and hoppy as Propeller but definitely an IPA. good at room temperature too.




6'8" Tom Neilson
6'3" Tim Patterson
5'8" Tim Stamps

stormy friday, first snow, big surf

yesterday I woke at 6:30AM to change Moe's diaper. in his room it was bright like morning and yet not sunlit. I looked out and realized that the brightness was street lights reflecting off of the years' first white snow. it was a peaceful scene even though the wind was howling at 30 knots.

riding my bike to work was almost like surfing shallow victory at sea beach break. in order to avoid slidin out I had to ride in the tracks left by cars, as the plows were nowhere to be seen. on the road, jumpy morning drivers with trigger foot on the gas pedal, become even more sketchy as snow plus cyclists makes them super fucken jumpy. in the end I made it to work at a decent time and escaped without a fall.

I watched the buoys all day, refreshing the screen even though I knew it hadn't changed since the last time I checked but it was like an itch that had to be scratched. phone calls were made, emails sent, no one knew what the conditions were like. there were few places that would handle the east swell and raging offshores and everyone knows where to go. at 2 PM I made the call. I pedaled home against a headwind that made it seem like a steep mountain grade. my legs burned when I put the bike in the garage. I ran inside and collected my winter gear and two boards. off I went like a crazed crack head with a $10 bill looking to score a hit.

I pulled into the lot and had to park in the back. the place was packed. the bay was sheltered and glassy between sets. the peak looked a little overhead and with 15 plus guys on it. I split and went to the next spot. as I parked JB pulled up behind me. we suited up quickly and opted for our thrusters. we were soon joined by a local head who dominates the area. no one else was out. the sets looked big but it wasn't until we made it out that I realized how big it really was.

I won't go into detail about the session. it's not important to review the details. I can however, say that JH and Blacks and JB and the rest of the crew were scoring. I was flailing. the small thruster that I'd been riding since spring now felt tiny in my winter gear. I kept getting hung up in the lip and getting worked more times than I care to remember -at one point running into shredder X like a nube on a soft top in summer slop. reckomn sometimes you got it sometimes you don't. needless to say the small thruster is gone. the doubt about whether it was big enough or not is gone.

the waves in Nova Scotia are mostly cold, windy and weak. but on those days when the stars are aligned and you are able to bail work...

inspiration: bunting and Oldfield

today as I walked down the sidewalk I saw a pigeon up ahead, standing on one foot and hopping around as if his foot was broken. I watched him for a while to see if he was truly injured. it seemed he was and yet was going along about his pigeon business, probably grateful it was a foot and not a wing.

inspiring.

below is a clip from Nathan Oldfield's film Seaworthy. Nathan is a truly inspiring figure in more ways than one. his films and photos are passionately crafted in a way that betrays any sense of commercial interest on his part. my favourite section of the film, and indeed one of my favourite clips of all time, is the one of Heydon Bunting.

"When I was a kid playing at the park I wanted to go on everything -swings, slippery dip, the see-saw, the merry go 'round, it's all good. That's how you get the most fun out of the park." Heydon Bunting

Heydon Bunting Sequence: From Seaworthy from Nathan Oldfield on Vimeo.

I've interviewed Nathan a couple of time on phoresia.org. check it out here.

swimming in the morning sea

I had a sleepless night. between changing diapers and too much coffee late in the day I finally closed my eyes involuntarily around 4AM. the alarm went off at 5:20. the buoys looked good for a specific place I wanted to check. I knew it would be dead high tide but figured it'd be something. loaded the car and drove through squalls and complete darkness. parked and jumped in the back seat. changed into winter gear. sprinted down the trail in darkness. first light just a few minutes away. it was flat. the full moon high tide made it too deep for anything to show. I was devastated. really. north east winds whipped across the open beach making for scarce chance of shorepound. all night tossing and turning, all I thought about was surfing. making turns on the new green machine. I sprinted back to the car. checked a few other places and no luck. finally I settled for a messy peak off in the distance. it was less than stellar. would be morning surfers walked out and surveyed the victory at sea conditions. no one joined me. I got a couple of shoulders which quickly turned to mush. an hour in I managed to get the one wall that swung wide and stood tall. I carved down the face like in a dream, not expecting it to wall up. three years surfing this spot and I'd never seen one wrap into the point like that and drop me so far in. east swell I reckon. I got out after that one. changed out of my suit in the driving rain. drove home in morning rush hour traffic. changed a diaper and then rode in to work on the bike in a heavy rain.

it would seem that it wasn't my day, my morning. but after some thought I remembered that I went for a swim in the sea at sunrise on a Tuesday before work. and that's something.

secret barrel
photo from MSW