The Way The Cookie Crumbles

Brad's backhand foam climb, somewhere north of Hossegor.

"We've got plenty of time, I'll definitely make my train." were the famous last words that I uttered as I walked backwards up the beach with Harry, still firing off shots of the rest of our friends surfing an empty, head-high peak on the beaches somewhere north of Hossegor.  We ran up the sand dune, got back to the car and set off along the track through the forest to rejoin the main road, both pretty confident that we would get there on time and that I'd catch my train.  Well, get me there on time we did, but I hadn't accounted for the queue that I would face at the ticket office which was clearly running on a skeleton staff.  I watched the clock tick down from quarter to twelve towards the departure time of midday; I was fidgeting, huffing and starting to get anxious.  With three minutes to go I left the queue and tackled the automatic machine which spat my ticket out at 11:59.  I ran under the underpass and up onto the platform where my train to Bordeaux was waiting and, just as I reached out to press the button to open the door, I heard the ominous clunk of the doors locking.  "Non, c'est parti monsieur.  Le prochain train est à quinze heures" the conductor shouted down to me, as I watched my train leave without me and taking with it any hopes of me making my flight home and getting back to work the next day.  Harry doubled back to pick me up, and on the drive back to Hossegor the exhaust fell off his car on the péage.  Clearly it wasn't our morning.  We limped back with the car sounding like a motorbike and rejoined the rest of our friends who were spending the afternoon watching the WCT surf contest, and I fired off a few frames of the world's best surfers in action.  

Sometimes a morning really doesn't go your way and there's nothing at all that you can do about it apart from try your best to make the most of the afternoon.  It's just the way that the cookie crumbles, but at the end of the day cookies still taste good.   

Julian Wilson, teasing me for missing my train 

by pointing straight at 12 o-clock.

Ol' green eyes on a nicely backlit green wave.

Contest winner John John Florence entertaining the crowd 

way down at the southern end of the contest zone.  

The beach was absolutely packed in front 

of the peak and the grandstand.

Miguel Pupo casting a shadow in round 3.

Taj Burrow and a rooster's tail.

Pipeline

"The passage of time does not diminish the mind's astonishment at how one place can be both so overwhelmingly beautiful and so completely terrifying, all at the same time."

Gerry Lopez, "Surf Is Where You Find It"

It is the most famous, most revered and most photographed wave in the world.
It is also pound for pound the deadliest.  Every year in early December the World Championship Tour comes to a dramatic conclusion over this small but perfectly formed patch of reef in the middle of the North Shore of Oahu's seven mile miracle, and it's about the only time that you'll see just two people at a time sharing the peak at Pipeline.   I mean, there are surf contests, and then there is the Pipe Masters contest.  This year, as is often the case, the title race has come down to the wire:  If the current tour ratings leader (and former 2x world champion) Mick Fanning comes in lower than third place then eleven times former world champion Kelly Slater can snatch the world title away from under his nose with a win in this contest.  Kelly hasn't secured a world title in the final contest of the year since the 1990's (before his retirement and subsequent return to competition) so the stage is set for a dramatic conclusion to the year.  The Pipe Masters is on right now (Sunday evening GMT) and you can watch the action live here.  Even though Joe Turpell somehow still has a job commentating on surf contests it'll definitely worth tuning into over the next couple of days.

Images, top to bottom:

• Splitting the peak; one surfer goes right at Backdoor whilst another takes on the left of Pipeline.
• Winter in Hawaii:  Bring a bigger board and make sure that it has a pointy tail.
• 2000 ASP Men's World Champion Sunny Garcia making the most of a blip of swell one windy afternoon in October 2007.
• The price of Pipe.  Right before you step onto the sand from the Ehukai Beach parking lot, on the left hand side nearest Pipeline, the wire fence hosts a memorial to surfers who have paid the ultimate price surfing Pipe.  Many of them were professional surfers and it stands as a stark reminder of just how dangerous this wave is - just in case you thought you might paddle out and have a crack.

DR

For a good few years now Dane Reynolds has been heralded as the new messiah of progressive surfing - freakish talent stirred up with a good dose of innovation and an avante garde attitude to the modern world of competitive surfing. I clicked this moment during his heat against fellow "next big thing" Jordy Smith during the WCT France contest in 2008, the sort of showdown that I couldn't justify missing seeing as I was in the nieghbourhood. The Californian has a really interesting blog at www.marinelayerproductions.com full of photography, short super8 surf movie clips and out-takes from the life of one of the most scrutinised surfers today, which must terrify his team manager at quiksilver...