They Don't Make 'em Like They Used To

In a couple of days I return to the UK and am due to pick up my car from my magician of a mechanic who's had it in for its annual MOT (UK vehicle safety and roadworthiness check).  I am due to pick it up but, just the same as every year, I am not entirely confident that it will have passed and that I'll be able to.  When I dropped it off he lowered his voice (to the tone reserved for use by concerned vets who don't want the family pet to overhear that it might not have much time left) and said that my run-of-the-mill mundane silver estate car (which has getting on for 250,000 former sales-rep miles on the clock) has served me well and added, "There's a similar car for sale over the road.  I'm only saying, just in case..."

For as long as I've been able to drive and afford to run a car I've placed a whole heap of other things higher on the list of what to spend my money on than my vehicle (see this former post).  Actually getting to the beach has always been far more important than what I get to the beach in, and thus over the last 12 years or so I have owned a succession of loveable bangers or functional wagons, each with their own stories to tell.  Every year I am still however, without fail, slightly surprised when my car fails its test and needs work doing and money spending on it.  I really shouldn't be.  And, every time that I need to consign an old four-wheeled friend to the scrap-heap and search out a new set of wheels, I always end up spending the bare minimum on another barely functioning motor car.  But one day - one day -  I'll get my act together and hunt down an old car that comes pre-loaded with stories; a vehicle older than I am with a front-end like a smiling face and an interior that smells like an antique shop.  I adore cars with character.  I've no doubt that if I ever manage to do this I will be lumbered with an absolute heap that costs an inordinate amount to fill up with fuel, that I can't drive in the rain, is impossible to source parts for and that I won't be able to transport surfboards in.  But I'll love it all the same because if you're going to spend some time broken down by the side of the road anyway, then you might as well do so with some small degree of style stood next to a beautiful machine.

"Drive It Until It Dies"

Sheared bolts and a missed ferry, France 2008.

My car croaked last week.  Without any warning, on Thursday morning I turned the key and the starter motor made a horrible grinding noise and the engine refused to start.  I was marooned at home for the long weekend and right now I'm awaiting a diagnosis from my magician of a mechanic.  He's kept most of mine and my friends cars running and road legal for years because most of us around here figure that our hard earned cash is better spent on surfboards and chasing waves than on four fancy wheels and leather seats.  If a repair bill comes to more than a few hundred quid then it's probably more than the car is worth so it's time to hunt out another banger.  It's a "drive it until it dies" mentality that keeps the dream alive.

I hid my bus in the West Australian bush for three days whilst I hitchhiked home and organised a horrifically expensive tow-truck.  I was pleasantly surprised to return and find tht it hadn't been burnt out.

What little mechanical know-how I have has come from dealing with my broken down, limp-along cars; blown head gaskets, rusted out exhaust fixings, mashed splines, knackered distributor caps and all sorts of broken belts.  I'm not much good with repairing any of this but I'm getting to the point where I can tell what's what under the bonnet and understand what car whisperers tell me about my petrol-related problems.

When it's too windy to surf it's the perfect time to crack a beer, lift the bonnet and (in my case) try to pretend that I know which bit does what and pass the spanner.

Cars are almost as important to surfers as surfboards are, although none of us probably realise as much.  They're freedom, transport to and from the beach, to and from different beaches, they're the planes and trains of regular ol' road trips, accommodation, look-out stations and changing rooms.  And there's a certain sort of dirtbag pride in eeking a few more miles out of a car that's as old as you are.  If I had a brand new car then I'd wreck it within a week by smearing wax on the seats, filling the foot-wells with sand and making it smell like wetsuit boots.  On the outside it'd be caked in a paint-wrecking cocktail of salt and guano.  I'd probably be embarrassed to pull up in the car park to check the waves and I'd no doubt be skint.  Beater cars are brilliant.  They have character and they take on personalities to the point where you give a rolling metal box a name and include it in the surf-trip stories that you tell:  "You remember when Turtle broke down on the way out of Mundaka and we camped on a garage forecourt for three days" or "I slept in The Falcodore for three straight weeks that summer" and "how's about the time you set fire to the Casbah's engine?"
Little did I realise just how big a part mine and my friends beach-beaters had played in just about every surf trip for the past decade until I sat down to write this.  I wonder how much it's going to cost to repair my car this time around, and whether or not the story can continue or if I'll be looking for a new wagon to build some memories with?  Whatever happens though you can guarantee that I'll be patting the dashboard and saying thank you next time I successfully arrive at another beach to go for a surf.

Meanwhile in Mundaka...

Harbour Hop Off, Mundaka.

Spectating Spaniard, as some surfer gets slotted.

High tide, and it still looks better than your local spot on it's best day.

It's autumn in Europe and the migration's on. Just like the birds, as soon as the wind starts to blow the leaves off the trees wayfaring surfers based in Northern Europe start to work their way south down through France and Spain and then onto Portugal, Morocco and the Canaries for the Winter, following the weather and the waves.

The WCT is in France at the moment along with a fair few of my friends who keep telling me how sunny and nice it is, and my mind has been cast back across all of the trips that I've done down to the Basque country over the years.

All that I can think of is Mundaka.

The rivermouth sand bar that sits just outside the entrance to the harbour of this small Basque fishing village can, on the right day, produce some of the best left handers ever to happen to moving water from any of the seven seas. Tom Curren reckons so (Surfer magazine 52.8, The 100 Best Waves) and I won't argue.

I've made the two hour dash there from South West France a few times when it's looked like it might be on and only lucked in once but that once made up for all of the other failed attempts. The swell has to be coming from just the right direction out of the North West and needs to be a good groundswell, it needs the right tide, sand in the rivermouth, the sand bar needs to have settled into just the right shape over a calm summer, and you have to be on it before the secret gets out and every other European surfer arrives. That's a lot of stars that have to align to get good waves here.

But when those stars align you find yourself paddling into a wave that funnels along the sandbar, locking you in and drawing up like a drainpipe being wrung out, completely mesmerising you as you battle with the decision to stall and grab rail or try to stay out front in relative safety clipping swooping turns off the top.

I lucked into all-time Mundaka with my good friend Krede Wright from West Australia back in 2008 when we were driving (slowly) around Europe in a Westfalia named Turtle. We got two days of great uncrowded swell, double overhead on the sets and overhead on the friendlier ones. A local ex-pat claimed that in the fourteen years that he'd lived there working for Billabong it didn't get much better very often. I watched Krede weave through some big tubes on his backhand whilst I sniffed around for some more manageable ones. It still ranks as the only wave to leave me spitting blood without hitting the bottom or my board, just the sheer force that the water smacked my face was enough. I decided that my hair needed cutting to get it out of my eyes when surfing and shaved my head with beard clippers which took almost an hour. Our van broke down and we spent three nights sleeping on a garage forecourt. None of it mattered after the waves we'd got. Just look at the photos: That's after we got out, at high tide when it had filled in and got "a bit rubbish" compared to earlier.

Over the years various factors have conspired to result in the WCT no longer holding an event here; the Prestige oil spill left globs of heavy tar buried just beneath a thin layer of sand (the soles of my feet were stained black for a week after wading in the waveless shallows in Mundaka in 2002), the sandbar was starved of sediment for a few years in the middle of the decade and almost disappeared and the fickle nature of the wave meant that too many of the professional surfing events scheduled to be surfed here had to held at the rubbish beachbreak around the corner.

How fortunate.

The eyes of the world are elsewhere and still this quiet fishing village sits here, sleepily waiting for a swell to light up the rivermouth and keep the fishing boats in the harbour for the day. If it happens and you're anywhere nearby, you have to drop what you're doing and get yourself there before everybody else gets on it.

Just trust me on this one.

There's other good stuff in Spain too; Flamenco Feet, Barcelona.

Big Sur

There are roads, and then there are roads.

I damn near drove off the edge of the cliff a few times along the Big Sur stretch of California's Pacific Highway 1 because I was trying to peer over the edge and take in the view the whole time instead of just being sensible and keeping my eyes on the road. This is looking south across Bixby Bridge (as featured in Jack Kerouac's Big Sur) in the late afternoon - beautiful light on a beautiful stretch of coast with a huge NW swell rolling in and throwing up loads of mist and spray.

Ten Tips To Take With You

1) Take the airline blanket. It's free like the food right? Warmth, a spare towel, picnic blanket, bunk-bed privacy and surfboard padding are just a few of their many uses.

2) The travel uniform. After a lot of trial and error, I've boiled it down to a combo of a black t-shirt and camo shorts or dark jeans. This get-up'll hide several days worth of travel grime, sweat and spills. The only time this has failed was when I hitched a ride in the back of a builder's truck full of cement dust at midday in Central America, when nothing could've disguised the road on me. Just don't wear white, tie-dye or some 'safari' costume.

3) Take half as much stuff, and a bit more money (twice as much would make a neat sounding phrase, but who's got that much coin?). Whatever it is, you can probably buy it there, and it'll probably be cheaper.

Which leads on to...

4) Go Loco. You don't take food with you right, so why take toiletries when you can buy toothpaste and soap when you arrive. Immerse yourself that little bit more and enhance your experience, and you probably won't get sick either.

5) Flag towel. If you've got to bed down in a hostel, backpackers or any other sort of communal accommodation then get yourself a flag towel. As long as you're at least partially proud of where you're from and it won't get you lynched then this'll avoid you losing your towel from some washing line. They're bulky and heavy so there'll always be a few people who'd rather half-inch one than carry their own, and they're much less likely to take a distinctive towel that's the flag of a country or region that they're not from because it's kind of a give away.

Smart hey.

6) Go Overland. Either when you get there, or even just to get there in the first place. Catch a bus, hop a train, climb aboard the local supply boat or rent a moped. Just don't get in an air-conditioned minibus whatever you do.

7) Say "YES" to everything. Within reason, and using your good judgement of course. Try it: Good things'll happen, opportunities will present themselves and you'll have a much better time.

8) Make memories. Keep a journal, carry a camera or collect your tickets to scrapbook. If your memory is even twice as good as mine then I'll bet that in ten years time you'll have forgotten at least half of the names, faces, places and events that you never thought you would.

9) Take a pen on the plane. You're bound to get handed an immigration or customs form to fill in and there's nothing more annoying than having to ask to borrow one or not getting your mitts on one at all until you're at the desk.

10) Do it all with a SMILE. It's a universal language and makes the world a better place.

But most of all make the most of it, breathe it all in and just get amongst it.

The World's a beautiful place so go see it.

Al-Jazira Al-Arabiya

A few weeks back I fulfilled an ambition that's been eating away at me for the past four years or so: Go on a surf trip down the Arabian Peninsula, look for waves where people don't usually look for waves and have a bit of an adventure. Naturally I also took my camera.

Drift online surf magazine have been good enough to run the article that I produced as a result, so rather than me posting a ton of photos here, you can hit the jump and check it all out via them; words, images, the whole shebang...

Al-Jazeera Al-Arabiya

Big thanks to my friends Scott and Dan at Surfing Dubai, to Kim for relentlessly bombarding my inbox with photos of his own trips to the area and swell charts until I could bear it no longer, to Drift for once again deeming my output worthy of spreading and to you for taking the time to be interested. Cheers, I'm made up.

No speedometer but a string of prayer beads...

There was also a range of various Buddhist and Hindu deities displayed in all of their flashing light glory above the rear view mirror ensuring safe passage as the driver hammered along the narrow road. From my standing position in the aisle I couldn’t really see what was going on, but I could sure as hell feel how fast we were cornering and caught glimpses down through the windows of all of the tuk tuks and carts that we were overtaking. Mostly on blind corners.
People were puking out of the windows, mums were breast-feeding, there were bags of stuff from the market everywhere, a tyre blew out and had to be changed on the roadside and we were joined for a few miles by a couple of soldiers toting AK47’s, hitching a ride up the road to the next check point.
Just a few of the myriad sights you get to see when you put your life in the hands of a local bus driver.
Your board bag will either have been stuffed through an open window and wedged in the aisle, or strapped onto the roof alongside a cage of chickens. A friend of mine once had a trussed up live goat tied to his boardbag on the roof of a bus in Nicaragua.
In almost every “developing” nation in the world, where the car hasn’t yet become an everyday, often unnecessary, “necessity”, buses compete with mopeds as the primary form of transport. You’ll see a lot more on a couple of hours ride on a local bus, meet more interesting people and generally step down at your destination a lot more grateful to still be alive.
It’ll take a lot longer, be a hell of a lot more uncomfortable and probably be terrifying. But it’s heaps cheap, and a million times more interesting than a taxi.

On The Road

It's the book that launched a million road trips.

Kerouac's train of thought tale of criss-crossing North America and Mexico was his effort to "explain everything to everybody" by way of skid row stories, hopping freight trains, jazz, pot and stolen cars in a definition of the beat movement that he inadvertantly found himself the poster boy of.

It's a good reminder that sometimes the best thing that you could possibly do is just GO. No direction or aim to speak of, just the wind at your back and an inquisitive mind. It'll get you a long way. That and a smile. Placing the journey over the destination, if there even is a destination, and just see what the hell happens out there along the way. The places you end up, the people you meet. Be open to the things that happen, the things that would be a stick in the spokes if you were rolling with deadlines and itineraries to keep but now instead become the opportunities and the gateways to the things that you'll actually remember. Hit and hope.

"Fifty years after the novel's publication (fifty three now), the book continues to inspire and awe those who pick it up for the first time. For those who are seasoned readers of Kerouac, the book serves as a signpost to the past, marking a transition, a rite of passage when they first realised that there is a world out there beyond their hometowns where starlight shimmers in the desert heat and the wind blows lonesome snow drifts across mountain passes like cold, unfeeling fingers."

Paul Maher Jnr

Hit the road and see what happens soometime. I'll see you out there.

EUroad tripping

About this time last year I was on my way back from a surf trip through France and Spain with my friend Krede, an old housemate who was over visiting from West Australia. The month long road trip was bi-polar: if anything could go wrong then it did, but we scored some incredible surf and I came away with some good photos. We ended up at Mont Saint-Michel having missed a ferry due to various reasons, so used the spare day until the next sailing to go sight-seeing, and arrived here early in the morning.

On the way back to the port the bolts on one of the wheels on our van sheared off, which just about sums it up.