So this weekend, Beej, Sulli and I hit up East Runton for what turned out to be some classic wind-blown, out of control 6ft slop. The wind was super onshore, but we managed to get a few decent rides and had a good laugh.

After a few beers in the pub at West Runton, we then went to the pier in Cromer and got stuck into some classic fish and chips. All in all a good trip to the coast, apart from the poor surf. We will hopefully be planning another trip to a better spot down in The Gower over the next few weeks.

After our little adventure we drove back to Elsenham and relaxed for a bit, watched the ruggers, before heading back to London for an evening of beers and a little PlayStation2. I met up with my mate Simon from work in the Keston Lodge and had a few more drinks, met some new folks and had a good laugh which resulted in getting to bed at 5am. Must admit I did feel a little worse for wear today.

Anyway back to work tomorrow, another week to look forward to. Simon, Gustavo and I are going to book a surf trip up to Fuerteventura for the end of the month, which will be something exciting to look forward to.

TBC…

So my buddy Simon and I might be hitting up South Africa next month for a little surf travel. Full of anticipation I checked out the charts on Magic Seaweed and low and behold it is going crazy down there this week. If you look at next Saturday you will see what I mean, a 19ft swell at 14 seconds is pretty damn solid. I have surfed Cape Town before and didn’t get munched, but am quite aware of the shark-factor down there, but I guess if its your time, then its your time, fingers crossed if we do make it, the only munching that we will be doing will be of the local seafood, be that from the ocean or the girls in the bars!

So it has been about 6 weeks since I have been in the water and I can really feel it, not physically, but more kind of mentally. It is hard to explain, but as the saying goes, only a surfer knows the feeling.

When I am not near the coast surfing for a prolonged period of time I start to get tetchy, sometimes depressed or claustrophobic and have to go and hit the gym or pool to get a fix of physical exertion. Surfing can be such a consuming experience, both physically, mentally and spiritually and when you feel and associate those feelings with an activity that you don’t do that often it always results in wanting more.

The longer I am away from the sea the more tension builds up in my system, and no amount of gym work, swimming or chasing girls totally gets rid of that. Fortunately I am off to The Gower in little over a week for a weekend session, lets hope the swell coincides with the trip. Me, BJC and Mark will hit it up and hopefully enjoy some of the first autumn swells of the season, it will be a little on the chilly side, but nothing a bit of neoprene and a warm cuppa won’t solve!

But I know this won’t be enough in the long run. Surfing is like an addiction, you get drawn into its appeal: the lifestyle, the travel, the escape, the challenge. The more you do it, the bigger the dose you need to get the same effect. I guess you could compare it in a way to smoking, the more you smoke, the more you need to get that nicotine fix. Although for me, surfing is a totally positive experience, there are no bad side effects from getting fully imersed in the sport/art, well apart from a beating to the bank balance.

I have 2 weeks holiday left before Christmas, and this will obviously be spent surfing, the question I guess is where. Then there is also the question of the long term plan, I am not sure how much longer I can live inland, being away from the coast and the sport that I love so much. It is great to go on trips both abroad and back home, but I don’t really have the opportunity to integrate surfing into my daily routine, which is what I feel like I need to do. I admit I have been pretty dedicated over the past 4 years, but I feel that over the next year I need to step it up a gear and make a move closer to where I feel most happiest: the ocean.

What this space…

I bought the new Ben Harper album last week and have been checking it out on the pod this week whilst on the way to work. There is quite a bit of acoustic work on there, coupled with the usual blues-edge that he does so well. My current favourite tracks are “Fool For A Lonesome Train” and “Lifeline”. Some people have criticized Ben Harper for going more mainstream, but I still think he is great, and hopefully he will be back over to the UK on tour some time soon!

So I have had an account on Facebook for about a year and a half now and it has been interesting seeing the changes the site has gone through. I first joined up through an invite from my ex-girlfriend, when the site was still invite-only and mainly used by college students over in the USA.

It’s only in the past 3 or 4 months that Facebook has become a bit of a craze in the UK, even making the national news on the BBC and getting businesses is in tizz about whether they should restrict access to it during work hours. There have also been articles in the papers about City workers who are trying to big themselves up amongst their peers and clients by ‘friending’ as many people as possible. Anyway bankers will always be bankers as they say, but that aside, I have been feeling of late that Facebook is becoming a little bloated.

Back in the day it was all about the wall, photos and messages. Whereas I dig some of the new functionality and the API and applications you can openly develop, I feel things are becoming a little over the top. When I go to some of my friends’ profiles I now have to scroll down quite a few screens just to see their wall, as they have installed super wall, fun wall and all number of pointless apps that appear in the interface before the standard wall.

The result of all these extra apps and functionality, in my opinion is actually reducing the usability and accessibility to some of the content, in the context of the profile. You know have almost an overload of widgets to contend with when looking at a profile, too much user choice and not enough screen real estate to fit everything in.

Another drawback of the apps and notifications associated with them is I am getting spammed with useless Facebook mail now. X is asking me to ‘be a Zombie’, Y is sending me ‘a beer’, Z wants to know my ‘top 10 breakfast cereals’, it is all becoming a little too much.

It is interesting from a user-group perspective, if you compare those that have used Facebook the longest, i.e. the college kids in the States, versus those over here in the UK, then you tend to find that the more mature user-group tends not to have bloated their profiles with all the superfluous crap that my friends here in the UK do, they keep the focus simple, the way I like it.

In my opinion they should revert some of this functionality and go back to the good old days and for me at least I think the user-experience would become more rewarding. So no more requests for ‘zombies versus pirates’ please people, it is boring and all a bit old hat, plus I don’t have the time for it.

Happy social networking!

Always eager to get in the water and for a new excuse to buy a new bit of kit, I was browsing on the internet today and came across some nice tasty SUB: Stand Up Paddle Surfboards. The concept of Stand Up Paddle Surfing isn’t new, the Hawaiians pioneered it years agobut it has come into vogue over the past few years thanks to Larid Hamilton, and more recently in the UK through the big man himself (Laird not me) paddling the Channel to France on one of these beasts. The idea is instead of paddling on your belly, you stand up and use a canoe-style paddle to propel yourself along.

Anyway I am thinking of getting into the sport as it means not only can you go out in flat conditions, which we get here on the East Coast a lot and get an amazing work out but it would be something cool and new to master. Olaus McLeod recently paddled from Lands end to the Scilly Isles and back on his board for charity, now that is something to get inspired about.

This month the UK Stand-Up Paddle Surfing Championships are being held in Watergate Bay on the 29th Sept, a perfect chance to go and check out the up-and-coming sport.

Anyway I am off to check out the shops to see how much one of these suckers will cost!

I was sifting through Surfline this morning when I came across this article on the poor bas*ard who got partially munched over in Northern California this week at Marina State Beach. He is now in a ‘fair condition’ over at San Jose hospital, and will hopefully be making a full recovery.

It is crazy when you read stories like this. I myself have surfed in some places known to have sharks: Cape Town, Durban, San Francisco, Fiji, Bali, Oz etc, but have been fortunate enough never to have seen anything. I can’t even imagine how I would react if I saw a 12ft Great White in the water coming towards me, bitchin’ stuff.