Do you know what helps traffic move a lot quicker? If you weave back and forth between lanes, and drive as close as possible to the car in front of you.
The Southern California freeways are an absolute shit show around the holidays. I just got home. I went just over 125 miles away to visit some family. It took me 2 days to get home.
Not really. I got home in about 4 hours, double the amount it should have taken. But my brain took 2 days to reset. I spent a lot of time on the road. Like I said, I didn’t travel much further than 100 miles away from home, but I did much more driving than that.
65 miles the first day. 120 the second. 125 to get home.
At least 10 hours spent on the road.
It was tiring.
The good news is that I didn’t miss much in terms of waves. The wind was on it early locally, and there wasn’t much swell anyways. Saturday morning saw some moments, and by that time, I was on the way home.
The past couple of days I’ve surfed the windy afternoon session. Hasn’t been fantastic, but it’s great to be back in the water. I was landlocked for a week.
And while I didn’t miss much in the water, there were a few happenings around the surf world. If you were offline and busy for a few days like I would expect you to be, here’s what you might have missed. If you didn’t miss this stuff, apologize to your family. And pay more attention to them next year.
MICHAEL DUNPHY WINS O’NEILL COLD WATER CLASSIC
Steamer Lane is one of those waves that reminds me of Bells; classic, and can have its legendary days, but for the most part, tough to surf. I’m sure the locals from either joint would love hearing that. Without seeing a really good day of waves, the O’neill Cold Water Classic still got some solid viewership on the web, at least relatively speaking. It’s a QS event, remember. The Virginia Beach veteran Michael Dunphy came out on top this year, backing up his buddy Kolohe from last year. He beat Davi Toledo, who I believe is Filipe’s brother. One guy who impressed me in the brief live heats I watched was Levi Slawson. He could be a qualifying threat next year. Congrats Dunphy.
SEARCHING FOR DILLON PERILLO
I was just recently talking about how Kai Neville was the Taylor Steele of my generation. Certain sections from his movies are burned into my brain. That part in Japan from the movie Dear Suburbia, for example. So that’s why any surfer that had a part in these movies is basically a hero to me. This new Chapter 11 edit is really rad. I almost forgot about Dillon. Until I worked with/for him about a month ago. Cool dude. Watch this video. It’s good. I love the tongue-in-cheek title, playing on RipCurls ‘Search’ thing.
KELLY SLATER’S NEW BOARD DESIGN
Kelly never stops hey? OK, Slater Boards, Wave Ranch, the new turtle/moon flip flops, Endorfins.. What’s next you ask? Well, it’s yet another groundbreaking board design! This one is supposedly modeled after the outline of a Great White shark, hence the name “Great White”. My buddy sent me a text about it “you see that new board yet?” I guess Slater was doing a speaking tour of sorts about the model. Exciting stuff. Said friend attended. I’m guessing he’ll have one before the new year. “It’s like a twin pin,” he says. We’ll see about it. He will, not I. Maybe I’ll let you know what his review is. Or I’m sure you can just look one up by now. This thing got a damn Sports Illustrated article already.
VANS PIPE MASTERS INVITE LIST
I remember last year this was a hot topic because of all the non-invitees. I think I’ve seen a little of that this year, but not as dramatic. The draw is really intriguing in my opinion. Not your average surf contest. That could be their marketing slogan.
Anyways, a few people I’m excited to see surf Pipe – Craig Anderson, Benji Brand, Russell Bierke, Harry Bryant, Eimeo Czermak, Noa Deane, Finn McGill, Luke Shephardson, Taro Watanabe, and last year’s winner Balaram Stack.
A few people I’m interested in seeing surf Pipe – Cherif Fall, Mikey February, Mateus Herdy, Kyuss King, and Shaun Manners.
Window opens next week, December 8th. See the full list here.
VANS NEW SURF VIDEO
The team surf video is all the rage right now. Vans follows Billabong, Quiksilver, and RipCurl with their stacked team clip ‘Whats The Call’. Talent level is always up for debate, but Vans has by far the biggest and most diverse team out of the field. There is surely some surfing in this video that everyone can enjoy. Worth a view.
So that’s where we’re at. There’s a QS contest going on at Haleiwa. Always good surfing to be seen there. Got some new stuff coming this week. Stay tuned, see you then.
Cheers,
hwilsin
Drew Stanfield