My stag do tonight

‘You don’t surf to bad for a cripple’ said Selway, fair point I have got the knees of an OAP but why does he keep having to go on about my knee brace, it’s not like I wear it out of choice or for a fashion statement. He doesn’t like eating fish but I don’t go on about it, ‘just try it mate, it tastes like chicken’ I could say every time he has to explain why he doesn’t like it. Obviously I do say this but only because I know it winds him up and he always goes on about my knee brace.
Anyway, so it’s all coming to an end. We’ve done our male bonding, tops off cuddles and all that shit and it’s been a great success, I got to meet Manuel for the first time, a few waves were surfed, a couple photo’s taken and some little clips filmed and it should all be available for your pleasure soon and did I mention I got to meet Manuel. It’s been hard work I’m not going to lie but it’s all character building or so they say and now we’re in Padang and I’m going to have my stag do tonight, don’t get me wrong I’m not getting married but just fancy a stag do. You know a little celebration and a final bit of team bonding plus I want to see how it goes so I’m prepared for when I do have one.
Manuel say’s ‘Fucking boats’ not sure why just think he’s over them, fair enough I’m not going to argue. Thanks to Diego for making us so welcome and everyone at Mentawai-surfcamp.com

The new 'Manuel' Fan page on facebook

I know you shouldn’t have one but I think I’ve got a favourite on this trip, Manuel’s from Lanzarote and is amazing amounts of fun and priceless for entertainment but I bet at home’s he’s one of those scary locals that surf’s solid and is just intimidating to look at, with the ability to call you off waves just with eye contact but once you get to know him he’s just like a big cuddle bear. He dislikes surfing small left hander’s just as much as me and generally only speaks 4 words of English at a time. ‘We surf the right’ is his favourite thing to say and he also sings a lot to himself in Spanish, he has trouble sitting still for more than 2 minutes which has been a slight problem when we’re spending so much time on a small boat going from spot to spot.
He often disappears from the camp and can usually be found playing football in the village with the locals or having a sneaky beer on the beach as if he’s an underage drinker or trying to keep it under wraps. I LIKE him so much I’ve set up a fan page for him on Face book I think you should LIKE him too.

Dr Baker

All I want is everyone to be happy, I think they are but it’s been hard the last couple of days. Waves have been small; mainly lefts and we’ve been spending a lot of time on the boat trying to make the most of everyday and milking every opportunity, so much so when we get home I find myself gently swaying from side to side and stumbling around my room.
Good job Baker came along though, not only is he a really good filmer,  he can punt huge front side airs and now he has turned into the team and island doctor, words spread and we’ve got people queuing for miles to see him and get his worldly advice and he’s turned our room into a surgery. He patched up Fergal’s foot and I even heard Damian asking his medical opinion yesterday and now it’s turned out he’s an expert in Malaria too. With his malarial facts Bakers re writing medical journals and claiming things that can’t even be found on Google or Wikipedia ‘once you get malaria it reoccurs the same time every year for the rest of your life’ but after hours of discussion, debate and research it's become apparent. You never question the doctor, never.

How did you sleep?

Shit view in it and it’s what I have to wake up to, well this and Selway moaning then baker saying really odd things like ‘I slept like a rapist last night’ ‘what the feck are you going on about baker?’ ‘well I slept really well and so do rapists’ the conversation went on like this for about 5 minutes and it turns out the poor lad has his little sayings a bit mixed up but I’ve assured him that rapists probably don’t sleep that well and he really should of said either a baby or a log but I’m not too sure it sank in.
I did on the other hand do an amazing aqua poo today which was possibly the best move I did all day. I paddled past everyone on the peak at bank vaults while they all gave me funny looks as if I was blatantly trying to sneak them all and Manuel even asked me where I was going, I just replied I was going to charge the outside and kept paddling, the thing about aqua poo’s is the sense of freedom that you don’t get with other poo’s and this one ranked highly as one of my better ones.
Apart from this not much to report, everyone’s been barrelled, Damien’s done about 50 back hand air reverses and Fergal’s cut his foot. 

A funny joke

So an English man, Irish man, French man, Spanish man and a Portuguese man all arrive on this island right...... Really they did, this isn’t one of the racist jokes that used to be so popular at school it’s the European Analog surf trip to the Mentawai-surfcamp and after a brief few hours in a air conditioned room in a swanky hotel in Padang we all endured a horrific boat ride, it could of been amazing but the second we left the port the sky’s clouded and the wind began to blow, too tell you the truth I was shitting it and it wasn’t helped by the fact our 2 captains were chain smoking the whole journey whilst surrounded by open barrels of fuel and I couldn’t help but keep thinking the worst case scenario, would we slowly burn or be blown sky high but we all arrived safely although a little wet.
Remember I told you about my mate Dave back a long, well after all my scepticism he invited me to come visit him and said I could bring a couple mates. Me being a bloody nice bloke and all round top guy decided to ask my euro team buddy’s for bit of male bonding, in a good way of course not the tops off cuddling each other way although that may or may not happen but in the team building way and getting to know each other that little bit better and of course get some waves, some shots and a few clips.
I’ll let you know how it goes and how the waves are too.

Bike race

The other day I got this taxi to town, well I say taxi I just walked out onto the road and some guy on a motorbike stopped and asked If I wanted a lift, I said yes and then we did that bartering thing that you have to seem to do everywhere in indo. He says a stupidly high price then I say no and suggest a stupidly low price then we come to some agreement somewhere in the middle; the whole thing does my head in and no matter what all ways leaves me feeling a little ripped off. After finally getting to a price I jump on the back and have to endure a motorbike ride from hell which consisted of my man smoking a fag whilst driving, having a phone conversation and thinking that by beeping his horn its ok to take blind corners on the wrong side of the road, silly me course it is. I just held on for dear life and just hoped I’d get there in one piece, problem was I’d foolishly paid for a return journey but there wasn’t a chance I was getting on the back of that guys bike again.
So my time in Nias has come to an end and apart from my taxi experience was pretty epic. It wasn’t all about getting barrelled though, here’s me knocking the top off one, a wave that is. Next stop mentawai .

Feeling lucky

How lucky am I, Just over a year ago I was bored out my brains lying in a bedroom at my mum’s house going on massive internet binges and talking to a cuddly toy I called Big Bird after having my knee reconstructed by my mate Andy the knee surgeon from London and getting over a relationship failure. So a year on I’m all smiles, well not all but more smiles than usual. I’ve had a couple of big waves under my belt and now I’m in indo loving life, Haven’t had the shits yet either which is good news and for some odd reason my farts don’t seem to smell anymore, I have on the other hand broken one of my new boards which is slightly annoying as I feel I hadn’t given her a proper pasting yet and our relationship was cut so short but I guessed it was sort of jinxed from the start as when I picked it up from Diplock a comment was thrown out there that I’d never snapped one of their boards, which was true but not anymore.
Indo’s an odd place and it’s been about 11 years since I was here last and I’d forgotten how bloody brilliant it was, all rules are flexible and you can pretty much do anything and go anywhere, at a small price of course and everyone seems pretty happy about it. So this is me J O J (just off the jet) pasty white, ginger and straight into a Nias double up, of course this isn’t the best way to deal with them but it is one.

A grand don't come for free

Moved out the multimillion dollar beach house I briefly lived in while in Devon the last few weeks, did some plumbing, had to deal with the most horrible and useless estate agent in the world who I nicked named the devil woman and finally found a place to live, had a few loose nights out and did a bit of surfing then picked up a few new boards, got myself a wetsuit sponsor who I’m stoked to be with and booked myself a ticket to indo. Now I’ve just saved myself a thousand pounds, yep 1 grand. The dreaded check in desk is possibly every surfers nightmare with a lottery outcome but when I got told I’d have to pay a 15kg excess for my sporting equipment I wasn’t that bothered, it’s pretty usual and usually can cost anything from £20.00 to £200.00 but when the woman at the information desk asked for £1000.00, then my credit card I pretty much started crying. ‘Sorry sir but the only sporting equipment we let go for free is golf clubs’ ‘we give you 20kg of luggage for free, sporting equipment or not and anything over that is classed as excess and charged accordingly’ ‘can’t we come to some agreement’ was what I pleaded ‘you know just pretend there golf clubs or something’ but she coldly told me rules were rules and there was no one in the airport who could authorise this. I just left the counter speechless and feeling sick. Without much thought I started unpacking and stuffing anything I thought was essential into my board bag, I’d have to ditch my bag and just take boards, I went back to the counter and explained what I wanted to do and asked where I could leave a bag. She didn’t give a shit pointed me to the check in counter again and said I had to re weigh the bags I wanted to check in. As I wrestled my bag onto the scales and poured my heart out to the guy whilst trying to take some weight with my foot, the check in phone rang. It was that bitch from the information desk telling the guy he had to take my boards to an oversized weighing belt, what was her fecking problem I thought as the scales dipped between 19-23kg depending on where my foot was.  The boards weighed in at just over 27kg and although I was still in the depths of a serious excess luggage fisting I had saved myself some serious money, then the guy just turned to me and quietly said ‘we’ll just call that 20kg or there about shall we?!’ and gave me my boarding card.
OK so I still have a bag in Heathrow and no clothes but yet again it shows how fickle the rules of the excess baggage are, just hope they turn up now.