Just one will change your life. Image: Ferraris
“Do you bring the bong? No, I thought you brought it!” This trip has been like a Cheech and Chong bong party, without the bong.
Traveling isn’t always easy – different beds, snoring friends, babies crying, funky food (“for the last time, vegetarian does not mean I eat chicken, god damn it!”)
There is nothing like that first drink of tap water in a foreign land. Having been cursed in countries south of the border for over thirty years, you would think I would have learned by now. Instead, I run out to the reception with a hopeful expression on my face. “I just drank the tap water, is that cool in Africa?” I ask. Then I picked up some gnarly African flu; for four days in I was praying to trade it for anything Montezuma style. The illness knocked me out like Mike Tyson in a drunken bar room brawl.
“Dear God,” I prayed, “just give me enough energy to surf.” So, there I was dragging my sorry ass out into the surf and then crawling back to bed for the rest of the day. Viva vacation.
When I showed up to my hotel, they lost my booking. “Sorry bru, no room for you,” was all I got. Thinking I was feeling better, I ambled out to find some decent food, as I’d been living off cough syrup and aspirin for days. I’d had so many flavors, my tongue felt like the sticky side of a live mousetrap.
Things were beginning to look up. I got a good seat, had a glass of wine, put my order in, and then a coughing fit took hold of me and I had to run out of the establishment for a five minute fight with my lungs. It was like an epileptic seizure. I thought I was going to swallow my teeth. I made it back to my table and ate my food so fast that, well, I’m not sure I really ate it. I wanted to get back to the hotel to my apple cough syrup.
I climbed into bed waiting for the storm to arrive with a full box of tissues and a jug of water. When I opened my book, I noticed a black spot on the page. “What the fuck, is that?” I said to myself. “The damn thing moves when my eyes move.” I get up and look at the mirror. Turns out that during my coughing fit, I broke a blood vessel in my eye. It can’t get worse, can it?
In the morning I woke and noticed something different. I could feel it, it was something in the air. I ran outside and took a peek over the railing straight out at Supertubes. The swell jumped overnight, the wind switched offshore, and the swell was hitting directly from the east — perfect conditions. I’d been waiting four years for this… I have surfed many good days here, but this was as good as it gets.
Just paddling out at J-Bay, you have to have some decent size balls. The reef sucks out like a hooker on crack.
Between all the jagged rocks, there is one sane way in and one out. Five years ago, on my first trip, the reef sketched me out so hard that I paddled all the way from the beach at Bone Yards. It took me 40 minutes to get into the lineup at Supers back then. After five trips here, though, I don’t make that paddle any more. This day I was in the lineup and on my first wave before you could say lickety spliff.
I paddled to the peak and nodded to the crowd of locals that are as friendly as a pack of hyenas after a ten day fast. At the top, the waves at J-Bay are the biggest, but you’re lucky to make every fifth one because if the swell doesn’t hit the reef just right, it runs too fast down the line and closes out on top of your head. When that happens, you better hope you have one of the last ones in the set, because getting caught inside means you’re about 10 feet from razor sharp reef.
Most guys sit just inside and pick off the set waves when people on the outside fall, but every once in a while, it hits just right and wraps along the reef perfectly. I was right in position for that was going to test my limits. Swinging fast, I dropped got pitted on takeoff, then I shot out and hit the lip as hard as I could. Then it became a race. The middle section of the wave is a race track, and if you make it though it will reward you. If you don’t, it will punish you.
I drew my line high and made the next section with my hands over my head—inside the greenroom—another few turns and a smaller barrel on the inside. I paddled back to the top, and a few of hyenas were smiling at me—it only takes one to change you forever.
