Stop. Don’t press play. Not yet. I can’t say I’ve ever been really intrigued by the description of a video on Vimeo. Typically, it’s where the creators of the video give credit to everyone involved in a project. Maybe they give a little summation of the flick itself – one or two lines tops. In the description for Surf Trash, though, Brad Flora sums up the craziness of one year with multiple injuries, and it will change the way you see the above.
Here’s what Brad says about a pretty heavy 2016:
“The streak of terror started when I broke my ankle surfing some shitty beach break when I lived in California the beginning of January 2016, four months later when I was healed up I took a trip home to Ocean City, Maryland in April to try and get one of the last winter swells and ended up hyperextending my big toe back, snapping it in half and tearing some ligaments. The surgery seemed iffy so I didn’t get it done but that had me out for six months. Sometime in that frame when my toe was nearly healed I was fucking around on a skateboard going crazy from being out of the water for so long and I ended up hanging up on a back D in the deep end of the bowl that we were skating and broke both of my arms. I wouldn’t exactly say my shit was so hot in 2016. When I could finally surf again in October 2016 I was wearing a brace on both arms, and had my toe all padded and taped up. Throughout the month of October I shed the braces and tape in the process of packing up my life in California to move back to the East Coast… and within the process of that, I was telling one of my best friends and talented filmmaker Blake Michel ‘yoo let’s go to Portugal I’m healed.’
It was November 1st, the day after Halloween. Hungover as shit. Truck all packed up, and I had scraped up enough money to get Blake in on Portugal, and we were set for the dreaded drive across country with 4 days to get home and then get to the airport in Philly. It sucked and we made it in 43 hours with no sleep, I’ve done it a bunch of times but Blake had never done it so it was cool I guess. We got to Ocean City, got drunk, got lucky with a swell on the day that we left, surfed that morning and then drove to the airport. When we got to Portugal I was fucking tripping, that is after I almost killed us in my first hectic five-lane roundabout fresh out of the airport. Beautiful. We stayed at Hostel 55 and the owners of the joint are classic, and they run a really rad gig over there in Ericeira.
We did get somewhat skunked with the weather conditions for the 18 days we went, though. It rained, hailed, and the wind howled at least half the time we were there, a victory at sea type of deal, but it didn’t really bother me. There’s a lot of other cool shit to do in Portugal, like drink a bunch at the bar, or hostel, and get real weird (Blake). Other than the wind we had to deal with super tides from the Super Moon which was tricky while trying to find slabs. A lot of waves were either just fully eating the rock almost doing it on the super low and the super high would flood the whole beach. We did get some really fun sessions though between storms, including a session at the Cave. That wave is the sketchiest mutant thing ever, over no water with a ledge of gnarly rock literally feet from you. It was a dreary, rainy, windy day, every wave was eating the reef and it didn’t look makeable. But I always wanted to see if I could nab one out there and no one was out so I cracked a beer to calm the nerves and trudged down the cliff. But ya we had a bitchin time. Obrigado Portugal, here are some clips.”
Check out more from Blake Michel on Vimeo.
