The Forward Thinking Designs of T.Meyerhoffer

"What in the hell is that thing?"
It would be easy to instantly dismiss these funny looking surfboards as design gimmiks, just another theory being thrown at the wall to see what sticks in an ever expanding world of surfboard design and manufacture.
Until you find out that this design has come straight out of the fertile creative mind of Californian surfer Thomas Meyerhoffer, who used to be a designer at Apple. Now it's worth a double take no? This guy was on the team that crafted the original iMac, so despite it's wierd looks you know that there are reasons behind its shape that go beyond interesting aesthetics.
In the words of Justin Cote from Transworld Surf:

“I didn’t even want to paddle it out, but when I did and finally caught a wave, the thing actually ripped. I wanted it to suck so bad, but it turned right off the bottom, sped down the line, carved right into a cutback, and basically did everything I commanded—I was shocked. This board was not supposed to work. So why does it?”
Transworld Surf, October 2010.



These boards seem to be the most comprehensive marriage of short and longboard designs yet, with a shortboard shape incorporated into the tail of the board bringing the widepoint further back to enable sharper turns. All of the unnecessary volume and weight of foam is removed from the front rail line (because lets face it all that rail just drags and slows you down) leaving a standard longboard nose area to walk up and perch on. It's a similar theory to slalom skis, and I imagine that it can't have a negative effect on the flex characteristics of the board through turns either.
Digging a little deeper reveals a whole host of design elements aimed at producing faster, smoother longboards that behave more like shortboards: features such as a convex bottom through the mid section to enable smoother rail to rail transitions flowing through to spiral vee double concaves through the fins, and a drawn out tail to balance the nose and hold in through turns.
Regardless of all of these technical details though, there's living proof below that they work, as demonstrated by Matt Martin at Bells, Australia (photo by Steve Ryan) showing a Meyerhoffer longboard coming nicely off the bottom and even getting jammed nicely in a tube.
Who knows, perhaps Thomas is on to something and we'll see more trimmed down and refined longboards coming through, looking to the future rather than taking inspiration from the past as is so often the case with longboard design. It's nice to balance it all out, and it's even nicer when a design so left of field works out and really breaks the mould. It reminds me of a favourite quote of mine by Sir Ken Robinson, who said "If you're not prepared to fail then you'll never come up with anything truly original".
These boards are something truly original.


Check the website here, or read an interview here.

Boris

I was a bit sceptical when my friend Ben told me that he was getting a pet budgie. Infact I straight out laughed at him. Then Benny moved in with us and brought Boris with him, and it turns out that Boris is a little legend of a bird. It took him a few laps of the room and a couple of spills to figure out where the windows were, but now we get regular random fly-bys and he takes delight in dive bombing house guests. He's pretty good at thumb wrestling too.

I don't know if this is his favourite perch, but it's definitely ours, on the deer antlers above the fire place playing king of the castle and styling.

He's such a rad little budge that the boys went out a couple of weeks ago and got him a girlfriend, so now we've got two of the colourful little things flapping around the room squawking at the seagulls outside and dancing at each other.

Indian Ocean Faces

Old Tamil Lady, Ella, Sri Lanka.

Bhodisatva, South West Sri Lanka.

Village Elders, Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia.

Rickshaw taxi rider, Java, Indonesia.

My old boss Rod on a vineyard in the Margaret River area, South Western Australia.

My friends Dr. and Hotchy at Big Day Out music festival, Perth, Western Australia.

Little girl with an ice-pop, Tokyo-Sexwale township, Jeffreys Bay, South Africa.

Xosa family, Tokyo-Sexwale township, Jeffreys Bay, South Africa.

Young Bedu men, Al-Ashkara area, Oman.

Outside the coffee shop, Al-Ashkara, Oman.

Here's a grip full of portraits, old and new, from just a few of the places around the edges of the Indian Ocean.
Each of the Worlds Oceans are so great that there is a massive amount of diversity to be found around the edges, diversity of climates, cultures, religions, ethnicity, wealth and environment to name a few. Whilst I've splashed around in and traversed each of these Oceans, the Indian Ocean is that which I have probably spent the most time circumnavigating and exploring, and there're still a ton of places around the edge and islands in the middle that I'm desperate to check out, and a few that I still can't (Somalia, Yemen and Burma). There's still time yet though.

My thanks goes out to the people above for allowing me to take their picture, I fully squirm in front of the camera which is why I hide behind it so I appreciate it when people let me do this to them.

Highs & Lows

Both of these stories are spewing out of every surf media outlet right now, but being a surfer, and with surfing informing most of the content of this here blog, I'd be doing a disservice if I didn't acknowledge the bipolar week that surfing has just experienced:

First up, at the end of October the tectonic plates that meet along the Indonesian archipeligo rumbled into life again and an undersea earthquake triggered a three metre tsunami that swept across the Mentawaii island chain off Sumatra. Over 300 souls were lost in the area, long held as the surf worlds garden of Eden but vulnerable to these acts of a grumbling planet. Surf Aid International are on the ground delivering aid, you can donate here.

Then this Wednesday, the 3rd of November the news broke that former 3x world champion Andy Irons had been discovered dead in a hotel room in Dallas, Texas, reportedly succumbing to dengue fever on his way home to recover in Hawai'i. Irons was a man who polarised surfers opinion; an incredible talented surfer he was the only competitor who's ever really taken the fight to Kelly Slaters dominance and wrestled several world titles from him, however he was also extremely competitive and appeared to have the arrogance to accompany this. Therefore as you'd expect when an athelete in his prime succumbs to illness, detractors have turned on the rumour mill. Whatever your opinion though, there's no denying that one of the most naturally talented surfers on planet Earth has checked out early, and the real tradegy is that his wife is expecting their first child in a months time. Friend and photographer Dustin Humphrey wrote a really nice eulogy here, and if you want to see the man in his prime go watch the final section of One Track Mind - it'll blow your mind.

And then yesterday, Kelly Slater hit number 10 in '10. Phenomenal. The man who has dominated competitive surfing for a generation just took out his tenth world title in Puerto Rico at thirty eight years old, eighteen years after he won his first - here's the breakdown:

1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010.

The guy has a pact with Neptune, I'm certain of it.

Both images via the photographic genius of Dustin Humphrey.

BST

It's over. Officially. Done for another year.

It's a bitter-sweet weekend here in the UK and France. Yeah you get an extra hour in bed but the clocks going back by an hour signals the end of British Summer Time and the reality hits in that winter is on its way, despite the fact that it's been pretty darn autumnal here for the past month odd at least.

So just take a few moments to cast your memory back over the summer that's just been on the north side, or if you're the other side of the equator, maybe just envision the good times to come.

I took these photos in early September in and around the fishing town come artists community of St Ives. No it ain't an "app", they're the real deal shot on a thirty odd year old Kodak 127 camera on out of date cartridge film. The camera's getting temperamental in its old age, missing exposures when I wind it on and periodically the shutter won't release. Having taken it in to be repaired the advice I got was just to give it a good whack whenever it won't play ball, and sure enough that seems to solve most of its problems.
They look like my memories of summer in Cornwall when I was really young.

Explore Your Own Backyard: Instalments 1&2

Coming off the back of the good reception that "Patience" recieved, and on a similar theme, I thought I might roll out the first of a couple of mini-series that I've wanted to kick off for a while. Here's the first two instalments of the new "Explore Your Own Backyard" series:

Whilst I love nothing more than new places and faces, I'm as guilty as the next man of suspecting that the grass is always greener some place else. Not always so. It's easy to overlook your neighbourhood for providing you with the environment, ways and means to get your kicks, and when you realise that fact and make the most of where you are right now rather than pining for someplace else, you get a lot more enjoyment, a lot more often.

Part 1:

This is Pete. He runs his familys dairy farm in Westland on the South Island of New Zealand and works flat out. I worked for Pete one Spring time a few years back. Being a dairy farmer is rewarding but damned hard, especially during calving when we spent weeks working 14 hour plus days in the cold and rain milking, delivering calves and doing all the other hard graft required to keep the farm going - "A whole lot of death and mayhem" was how he described the calving season.
The farm stands under the shadow of the Southern Alps, and the Franz Josef glacier is a 15 minute drive away, we were on the edge of the nearest village. One of Petes oldest friends had been one of the original guides on the glacier, but despite this and his lifelong proximity, Pete had never been more than about 20 metres onto the ice. Until now. Myself and the other guy working on the farm wanted to climb the glacier, and Pete figured that if we got up super early and got the bare minimum of farm chores done by day break, we could all go up with his friend. So we did, kitted up in a rag-tag array of old crampons and ice axes, we spent a day up there, first on and last off looking down at the identically dressed tour groups tramping the well cut steps far below. We got to cut our own steps and searched for giant quartz crystals.
When your backyard is one of the most accessible Glacier National Parks on the planet, it's well worth exploring.

Part 2:

I must've looked at this cave and patch of cliff a thousand times whist sat out in the line-up surfing, but not being a proper climber I never really appreciated it. That is until I moved in with Matt, who IS a proper climber. At low tide you can walk out around the base of the low cliffs and over the reef, to patches of secluded beach in the mouth of the caves, and we carried around a crash mat, climbing shoes and a bag of chalk to try and suss some bouldering routes. Here's a shot of Matt with a vicious heel-hook, just about to haul himself up and over the lip of the cave onto a patch of rock that is "merely vertical" rather than massively inverted.
The whole coastline around here is like this, if you've got a climbers eye and can spot the routes. Lucky for Matt he runs powerboat Sea Safari tours so every day at work whilst pointing out dolphins and seabirds to tourists, he gets to explore our backyard looking for climbing routes.

"Stiff upper lip old chap"

"Keep calm and carry on"
Somebody's selling an awful lot of tea towels and tin mugs with this war time slogan on it, going for the quintissentially British "stiff upper lip" angle on retro design. It got me thinking though about what a good piece of advice it is. Take a deep breath, count to ten and make a new plan.
Missed a connection? Didn't get the job or contract your plans were pivoting on? Luggage lost in transit? There's a million different ways that it can hit the fan at home, work or on the road, but very few of these things are insumountable. So just keep calm, and carry on.
This is an image of my old friend and neighbour Jim, looking quinissentially British, taking a slurp out of said tin mug after harvest.