The Tao of Packing

I have spent my fair share of time living out of bags; in fact for a period of over seven years I didn't spend more than six months in any one place, living on one-way tickets with nothing more than I could stuff into my rucksack and boardbag.  I got pretty good at packing.

This past month I've packed bags for two trips that had quite specific constrictions:  a bicycle camping trip where everything that I took had to be carried on my bike, and a small boat expedition that necessitated me putting everything into a limited number of dry bags to be strapped down in the boat.  I like these sorts of packing puzzles just as much as I like writing lists of what I can pack for a flight that can be carried on my back and on the ends of my two arms without incurring excess baggage fees.
At the end of last year the patagonia cleanest line blog featured a post about packing by one of their climbing ambassadors Brittany Griffith, who uses a "room" system which I really like and isn't too dissimilar to my own technique.  

Here's how it works:  you probably only need things from three of the rooms in your house (bedroom, bathroom and garage), five maximum (kitchen and office).  Each one is it's own bag or sub-bag.

A washbag covers your bathroom packing and really all you need from there is your toothbrush because you can buy toothpaste, soap and deodorant in most places on this planet.  My first aid kit is kept in my bathroom, ready to go in there too.  Bedroom is clothing so is destination dependant but normally includes a few t-shirts, boardshorts, underwear, and I always pack my finisterre etobicoke insulation layer for cool evenings, air-conditioned airports and to use as a pillow.  Garage is for all of the fun stuff like surfboards.  Additional "rooms" are the kitchen if you're camping (and need to take a camp stove, mess tins and provisions) and the office if you need to take work stuff. 

Surfboards get dewaxed so that the wax doesn't melt all over everything else if my boardbag ends up sitting on the tarmac of a hot-as-hell hub airport during a transfer.  If I'm taking a wetsuit then that protects the bottom of my board/s (zip away from the board) and if I'm taking a sleeping bag then one surfboard goes inside that for extra protection.  I pack my towel at the nose end and then roll up all of my clothes, secure them individually with rubber bands and pack these around the rails, particularly at the tail end.  Fins, fin keys, wax and pocket knife all go in here too.
My "backpack" is a normal (carry-on) size Gravis metro bag, with a laptop pocket (I also chuck a magazine in there so that I don't have to dig around in my bag once in my seat), main pocket and three external smaller ones. The smaller pockets are what's important.  Stash passport and boarding documents in one for easy access, and toiletries in the little ziplock bag that they make you go through security with in the other.  Nobody wants to be stuck in the queue behind the person who has to dig around and unpack/repack their bag at every stop on their way through departures.  I normally stick a bodysurfing handplane in my backpack because if my boardbag goes missing in transit then at least I can still get in the sea whilst I wait for it to catch up with me.  I only take a carry-on bag because I'm a pretty firm believer in the "take half as much stuff and a bit more money" rule, although I tend to not take the bit more money because that normally went towards the price of the flight.
All of my work gear is camera kit that gets packed into a pelicase ("have you got any pppelicans in there??!") so that it's safe from water and dust and so that I can carry it onto planes rather than put it at the mercy of baggage handlers because it looks all important, electronic and expensive.
Backpack on back, pelicase in one hand and boardbag in the other (or being dragged along the shiny airport floor).  Sorted, and still moveable once beyond the boundaries of the airport trolleys and out into the real world.  Oh, and don't forget to pack a good book in there somewhere.

We've Got Roots.

A 1970's early twin-fin from Hawaii with a Union Jack spray job on the bottom on display at the Museum of British Surfing.

An old hardwood alaia and olo next to one of the earliest bellyboards (from Jersey) in the museum's collection. 

 The man who made it all happen, Pete Robinson at the end of the museum's hugely successful opening night.

Tucked in the back corner is an amazing wicker bellyboard with a lightning bolt logo sprayed on from this years World Bellyboard Championships and a cardboard cored, see-through surfboard designed by Mike Sheldrake and previously displayed at the V&A.

On the Good Friday the highly anticipated Museum of British Surfing opened it's doors.  Founded back in 2003 by Pete Robinson, the museum is a charity that has unearthed a huge amount of British surfing artifacts and memorabilia and amassed what's believed to be the largest and most historically significant collection of surfboards in Europe.  I first saw an exhibition put on by Pete in Brighton back in 2004 and walking through the doors on the Thursday evening before the grand opening for a special preview event (I tagged along as a guest of my friends at Finisterre), Pete's achievement in pulling it all together into a permanent museum blew me away.
The man has relentlessly researched the history of surfing in this country and recently discovered a letter in the Bishop Museum in Hawaii describing how two Hawaiian Princes and their English guardian went surfing in Bridlington in Yorkshire in September of 1890, a good 30 years before the first British surfing event was thought to have occurred.  Throughout the Victorian age many Hawaiian nobility were sent to Britain to be educated and the Islands have a strong and historic connection with Britain (just check out the Hawaiian flag) and it seems that many of these young Hawaiians surfed here during their visits.  This then grew with the development of bellyboarding through the early part of the 20th Century, Jim Dix and Pip Staffieri's hollow Waikiki paddleboards in the 1930's and then the arrival of stand-up surfing via visiting lifeguards in the South West and Channel Islands in the 1950's.  From there surfing bedded into the culture of coastal communities in the South West and around the country and there's enough history to fill a couple of books, and now thankfully, a museum.


The museum will hold annual exhibitions (it's inaugural exhibition is "The Art of Surf") and rotate the boards on display (they currently only have a quarter of their vast collection hanging from the walls and ceiling) and is well and truly worth a visit.  Pete Robinson deserves a medal for his dedication, belief and effort, and for donating his personal collection to the museum's permanent collection.
The museum is in Braunton, Devon, just off Caen Street in an old railway building.  If you live West of Bristol or ever come West of Bristol then, detour or not, you ought to go take a look.   

After the launch party I camped with the guys and girls from Finisterre and we woke up on Good Friday to zero degrees and a frost, which is frustrating when you're next to a van full of warm jackets!  The guys were holding a pop-up shop event in the room adjoining the museum over the Easter Weekend as one of the Museum's supporters.

A Cold Snap and the Stink Test

Initiative Surf coach Alex Espir, layered up and dry on the search for winter waves.

Drive, walk, watch, wonder, repeat. Sometimes whole days are spent in this cycle looking for waves when winter storms roll through.

It was -8 degrees celsius one morning this week when I got in my car to go to work. Damned cold. We're having a proper cold snap at the moment and it's coincided with a nice little run of good waves, with the cold easterly winds coming from Russia being straight offshore. It's times like this when I'm glad that my friends at Finisterre make fully functional technical clothing that keep me warm when it's cold and cool when it's hot.

Tom Kay started Finisterre making fleeces and hoodies in his attic in Perranporth. When the business grew into a workshop in St Agnes he brought a university friend of mine called Ernie onboard as the marketing manager and Tom Podolinsky as a technical garment designer. The brand has slowly grown and picked up a shelf-full of awards along the way for it's ethical business practices and environmental conscience. Alongside considering every step of their products life cycles, they also brought back a rare breed of fine fibre British sheep from the edge and used a Land Rover that ran on bio-fuel to get them all down to the beach for a surf. All things considered, they're the sort of company who deserve all of the praise and success that they get.

"Take this and just do what you do, be as hard as you can on it, and let us know how it goes" were Ernie's words to me as he handed me a Brisa synthetic base layer the day before I boarded a train for Morocco last Spring. The Brisa was a new addition to their range, and a controversial one being a synthetic performance base layer rather than their normal preferred material of merino wool. Synthetics are well known for their ability to wick sweat and keep you dry when active, but they're also regarded as being a bit stinky. So I stink tested it: I wore it for a week straight all the way to Morocco by train with all of the stresses, all nighters and running for trains involved in hauling surfboards across a continent, then climbed a mountain in it and made it to the coast. The Brisa's construction is like a double skin, with "pores" on the weave of the outside surface, kind of like human skin. When static the pores are "closed" but when the fabric moves (due to movement of the wearer) the pores are stretched open, allowing sweat to be wicked away. Here are a few select extracts from my product testing journal:

My friend Kyle in a Bise insulation layer, waiting for a train somewhere in France.

"Put brisa back on at 5am after a wash, underneath a Coho and Etobicoke and it's smelling ok. Had my camping knife confiscated and binned by security at St Pancreas (I've had it for 20 years, so upsetting) then spilt milk on the brisa. Not a good morning."

"Hauling a boardbag across Paris in the sunshine made me appreciate it's wicking abilities, plus black hides sweat. Note: Parisian cafe baguettes fit perfectly into the pockets of our Etobicoke and Bise insulation layers."

"8 hours on a "regional" train to Madrid, I did some yoga on the floor of the luggage area and then a night in a cafe bar next to the train station. 5 and a half hours so far of coffee, beer and backgammon, still 3 and a half hours until our (potential) train. The Brisa has now done 24 hours straight since it's last hotel handbasin wash and it smells alright. My eyes feel as though they've had fire spat in them though."

Day 6 of the Brisa stink test; drinking from a mountain stream whilst trekking in the High Atlas Mountains.

"Ferry. Bus. Tangiers. The Brisa has done 39 hours straight. Carry my bag and boadbag all around the crowded streets and alleys of the medina until we find a nice old hotel. We get offered hasish eight times and I have sweat my rig off. The Brisa gets a wash in the sink and the evening off."

We trek for miles up to the "roughage" climbers hut. It was damned hard going, hot and at altitude (up above the snow line) but the Brisa worked absolutely perfectly - kept me warm, kept the sun off and wicked sweat well so I didn't get cold in the wind." Back at the gite the armpits smell but the rest seems ok, hung it up to air.

"Could I wear it as a rashie? Alone with boardies or under a wetsuit? Our surf issues meant that I didn't experiment with either - it's not cold enough to need a rashie under my 3/2 and it's too windy for just boardshorts and a surf-shirt. I wonder what SPF rating the Brisa would have?

Lost down the lanes around the River Severn back in the UK looking for a "secret ledge" that turns the incoming tide into a surf-able river wave.

The Finisterre Landy: ever-ready for wind and tide to align ready for the dash downhill to the beach.

Finisterre have an online sale happening right now and are having a workshop sale next weekend, on Saturday 11th February at The Tubestation on Polzeath, with some big reductions on this past seasons range. It'd be worth your while swinging by if you're in North Cornwall.

On Yer Bike

Styling old bike and basket, Tokyo.

Every bike-riding kid in the world knows about backies. Just keep your ankles clear of the gears... Sri Lanka.

Bikes are brilliant. Did you know that they're the most efficient form of self-powered human transport? Something like 99 percent of the energy that you put into the pedals gets transferred to the wheels. That's pretty amazing.

Millions of people on this planet use bicycles as their primary form of transport, and I think that this is something that often passes those of us who live in "developed" countries by. The beach and the local shop are at the end of my lane, and I have to drive for an hour to get to work. I can walk to the beach and the shops, and there's no way I could pedal my pushie to work everyday. I wish I could. But here's the thing, if you regularly take on a journey that's more than a ten minute walk and less than a 15 minute drive, why not get on your bike? After all, it's good for you and the planet. Win/win.

My friend Will is one half of Brother Cycles; he and his brother (funny that) make exquisite track and fixed gear cycles up in the 'don, the sort that if you own one, you also need to own a damn good bike lock. Where I live is waaay too hilly for a single speed bike though; I've had them before (beach cruisers though) and they can be hard work with a surfboard under one arm.

The video below features a guy called James Bowthorpe. James is an ambassador for Finisterre (an award-winning ethical outdoor apparel company run by some friends of mine) who pedalled his way around the world a while back and wasn't put off enough to stop him him from entering the Race Across America. The guy's calves must be enormous. It's a beautifully shot video.

30 Century Man from Antony Crook on Vimeo.

I'm planning on taking a bit of inspiration from all this though, my bike needs the cobwebs blowing off it, a bit of an oil and a go out in the sunshine. Why don't you do yourself a favour and do the same?

The North Shore bike path runs the entire Eastern length of the North Shore of Oahu's 7-mile-miracle, from Waimea to Velzyland. It's just about the quickest and most efficient way of checking the surf. Backdoor and my bike.

These guys have the right idea.