Slide Magazine...

Surfing’s Dark Secret… Scheiße ya!

2010-02-07T20:40:08+00:00

My girlfriend read something I’d written on t’interweb the other day and reacted like a proper Daily Mail reading shocked of Tunbridge Wells-

“You really piss in your wetsuit?” she exclaimed in horror. ‘Err, yes. Everyone does, what of it?’ I replied.

“So you mean to tell me that even Kelly Slater pisses himself when he wears a wetsuit?” She -like most hot-blooded females I know- has a bit of a soft spot for The Bald One™ and whilst he may be the King he still needs a wee now and then; although as we all know he pisses excellence…

This got me thinking. Surfing has a dark damp secret. One that is curiously absent from the mainstream medias golden tinged Endless Summer ideal of what surfing is. Surfing is not all VW combis, beach parties, sunshine, attractive tanned people, wild sex, longboards, guitars and Jack fucking Johnson on the stereo as London ad agencies would have you believe. Far from it, but then again the more realistic version, the one you will actually see in Britain and Irelands beach car parks on a daily basis is as far from that rose-tinted ideal as possible. Namely: ugly, cold, pale-skinned people, wearing rubber suits, gleefully urinating on themselves as they nearly freeze to death and enjoying it. Which is wrong on so many levels. It sounds like a water sports website that even German lovers of all things gimp would find a bit gross.

From early childhood we are taught that peeing your self is wrong. Wetting the bed is evil and will get you sent straight to damp pissy hell. In fact if you still piss the bed at a late age they consider you a mental. Pissing in public will get you a caution from the boys in blue and if you do it again -unavoidable after 10-pints of fight strength lager- you will get arrested. Not so in the more libertarian France where you are positively encouraged to piss outside anywhere, at any time, even when talking to an attractive femme, she will merely keep smoking her Gauloises and admire your rostbif while you do so. Fact.

So how it is that whilst in a wetsuit it is considered totally fine, nay, encouraged in the winter to have a good, long piss? Or am I talking completely out of left field here? Hands up who never pisses in their wetty. Thought so…

Jeez- I make sure I drink heaps before going out in the winter just to make sure I have enough in the tank for a couple of those delightful warming episodes.

So. Who else pees for fun when engaged in sports? I guess swimmers have sneaky ones, they kind of take it for granted they are swimming in a soup of water, chlorine, skin flakes and pee, they might as well make the pool water yellow and be done with the pretence. Canoeists, windsurfers and all our supposedly related surf disciplines like kiters and wakeboarders will all be pissy boys (maybe that’s why they wear boardies outside their wetsuits? To hide the stains?) Cyclists and marathon runners must have something taped to their bits cos stopping for a leak is gonna ruin your world record attempt? F1 and rally drivers probably just put a bolt in the end or something technical.

We are pretty unique. Hell, I’d even say we are more advanced, we aren’t repressed in relation to our bodily functions. A pee in the winter when the sub-zero temps are really starting to bite is a magical thing.

The only problem is modern wetsuit technology. It is getting too good. Time was a duckdive or good beating and you’d get a decent injection of cold North Atlantic briney to flush out the urea flourishing within. These day the wetties are so stretchy, so well cut, so frickin’ tech that hardly any water gets in- or more crucially out.

When I take my hooded 6mm off I steam. The wetsuit lining fabric is not wet, only damp patches from sweat, and the aforementioned downstairs mistake. So. This leads to an unenviable dilemma. When getting out from a winter session, when you have most definitely gone to the toilet on yourself, do you pull the neck out and go for the Atlantic flush of ice water. Or do you pretend you haven’t then hope no one smells the overpowering stench of piss in the car on the way home?

As long as everyone’s gone for option B then it’s fine. No one will mention it as everyone will be equally embarrassed.

I tend to go for option A, but I am a masochist.

The other question is when is it okay to wee? Some people think if the suits on then its toilet time. Be it in the car park or walking down the beach. But beware- I was ankle deep about to go out at the Peak in Bundoran a year or two back and just doing up me chest zip- which broke terminally. I couldn’t get it done up so retired peeved to the car. Regretting the piss I had done on the walk down. As I had to sit in the car for two hours covered in fresh piss waiting for everyone else to finish their session.

Going back to the disgusted partner of mine, who by now is looking at me like she caught me knocking one off too donkey porn, she had to ask- ‘Do you shit in your wetsuit as well?’

My answer- ‘Not intentionally.’ Not that I have. But I know people who have. Everyone does. When people are ill, it can be unavoidable, a shart in a wetsuit is probably the best place for it… and that’s a warmth that really does last.

Let The Froth Commence...

2010-02-04T21:07:47+00:00

There was a time long ago when surfers forecast what the waves were going to be doing in the future themselves- just by looking at a picture of squiggly lines. They didn't go on the interweb and get spoon fed numbers and stars. These squiggly line pictures were hard to find -the world wide web only existed in Tim Berners-Lee academic brain at the time- and to see them you had to watch the BBC weather religiously...

All while praying that Michael Fish didn't stand in front of the squiggles. The only other free source was in the quality newspapers but their squiggly line pics were very basic and not much cop. You could pay your hard earned cash for a weather fax (a fax machine is like a crap paper based internet minus Facebook) but fax machines were not common in most homes.

Figuring out what the waves are doing from squiggly line pictures is a skill every surfer should have. Knowing how the wind aligns with the isobar lines and how fetch and wind speed affect swell size is important. You can be in charge of your own destiny. All surfers in those days would always get excited about 'onion ring' lows, so named because they looked like... you get the idea. A rare beast, the perfect onion ring low in the Atlantic matched with offshore winds in the SW approaches is what makes for watery fun times- big, clean swell. If you've been looking at your numbers and stars you'll have noticed the pixels are excited all because of what's happening on the squiggly line picture. Do some research, buy Tony Butt's excellent book on Surf Science, learn the old ways young Skywalkers... Cos it's onion time!

Pictured above- Mr Alan Stokes, Little Fistral, lunchtime today.

Julian Wilson, Kelly Slater, Dane Reynolds and J-Flo In Slo-Mo...

2010-02-04T09:54:28+00:00

More stunning visuals stuck around an attempt to make you buy stuff. Don't worry about the boardies (as it is the middle of winter and miserably wet and cold as only Britain can be) and enjoy Dane, Jools Wilson and the Bald Man in super slo-mo... Clips after da jump-

Ian Walsh On A Whopper..

2010-02-03T17:45:56+00:00

Okay so this may be an advert but as adverts go it's pretty frickin cool. Ian Walsh, Chopes and one mother of a big wave... Clip after the jump-

Alan Stokes Is The Internet...

2010-02-01T16:46:28+00:00

Mr Stokes has a shiny new website that's gone live about 3-seconds ago. It looks right tasty with plenty of photos, vids and his bloggity. Good to see the Brit pro's catching up with the World Tour fellas when it comes to online shenanigans. Mick, Parko, The Goods etc are all doing it so why can't we? It also features a plethora of my photos from all over the place. Go check it. It nice...

Bruce Irons Bum Ride...

2010-02-01T09:19:32+00:00

It's not quite a classic 'cockroach' (where you lie on your back and wave your arms and legs around) but it's a pretty good bum ride. Especially considering it's at wild, wooly Pipe. The Volcom QS is down to the semi's which will hopefully run this evening our time. John John, JOB, both Walshies, Mark Mathews, Danny Fuller, Kiron Jabour and East coast US surprise Brett Barley are in the frame... Clip is here (Day 3, Rd32, Heat4 apologies their embed code is useless).

Surf Photo 101- Gizmos, Putes, Etc...

2010-01-31T20:05:39+00:00

A decent laptop is now an essential part of your armoury. Never used to be but times change and be glad you’re reading this now and didn’t have to deal with laptops like my Apple 180C ten years ago that had something like 8mb of RAM and found Internet Explorer a struggle… I’m a Mac geek -as are many photog’s and creative’s originally due to the Mac’s superior colour handling ability when it came to print work flows- but these days it doesn’t really matter what you have as long as it’s got a decent processor under the hood. The current MacBook Pro 13-inch would be my choice- it’s tough, good value, rock solid OS and with Photoshop CS4 on board will do all you need.

I know nothing about PC’s at all so can’t really dispense advice on them but as long as its got a fast processor and at least 160gb hard drive then it should be cool. Software wise Photoshop CS4 is the go to guy. Not cheap but it is industry standard. You can always ‘borrow’ it from work or school if they have a multi machine license. I avoid the camera makers app’s as with Camera Raw/Bridge/PS CS4 does all the organising/raw conversion/post processing I need. I’ve not played with Aperture much but it also seems pretty good and is a lot cheaper. Storage wise on the road I back up to my old school iPod (60gb, you can enable the ‘use as external hard drive’ option in iTunes) and to a Western Digital Passport 500Gb drive- they are tiny, weigh nothing and power off the USB so no need for another annoying power lead. Double back ups are pretty essential cos if some fecker nicks your laptop you’re done for. When travelling keep the iPod and other external separate as well just in case you lose a bag… At home I back up to a Western Digital My Studio 1TB drive, these things would have cost hundreds a year or two ago but they are below the £200 mark now and are Mac formatted out the box. They are connectable with Firewire 800 which makes things a hell of a lot quicker (until the new USB standard comes in anyway). I used to back up to DVDs as well but am sorely behind with that… Backing up is essential and you need to be super careful with it. Once gone digi files are gone. Not like you can get your slides drum scanned again. I lost the best days files from the last Mentawai boat trip as I deleted them thinking I’d burnt them to DVD etc already but hadn’t… It was a 3-week trip so there was 20gb’s+ of shots, but it’s still no excuse, it’s only cos I’d sent processed versions of the best shots out to clients that I have copies at all. Memory card wise get the fastest and best you can afford, it makes a huge difference, the write speeds of top grade cards help clear your buffer quicker so you can shoot more. I use Sandisk's Extreme IV 8Gb. On a 40D I get 600+ shots on the 8gb card which is more than enough for most sessions, indeed I can shoot a whole trip on the one card (unless it’s sequence city with guys like Reubs). One tip with cards- never shoot until they are totally full, when it’s down to the last 10 or 20 change the card out. Things can go a bit odd if you fill the buggers right up…

Always download your cards asap, I'll do a quick edit of dross then back up, twice. So now if you lose your lappy, the card corrupts etc you're still two copies up… Be careful out there.

Carlos Burle's Jaw's Jaw Dropper...

2010-01-30T12:12:56+00:00

Here's a rather nutso clip of Brazilian big-wave nut-bar Carlos Burle at Jaws. Of note- he get's a huge barrel. Also of note you can watch this clip in full HD. Thass right full screen full HD. Which I believe is something known as 'the future'. We live in interesting times kids... Clip after ze jump-

Pumping Pipeline For the Volcom QS...

2010-01-29T13:49:30+00:00

Volcom's first ASP event has been, err, rather good. They've been scoring belting Pipeline on the first day of their first WQS. Usual suspects Jamie O'Brien, Healy et al have been getting some hell pits... Vid after the jump-

There Goes The No Claims Bonus...

2010-01-29T12:48:44+00:00

Consider the scene- a balmy June day in Hossegor, the swells a fun three-foot, the wind a light zephyr of offshore and the morning sun is just taking the dawn chill out of the air nicely. I’m down there shooting a bunch of micro-groms, who froth 24/7, but are particularly frothy this morning cos the shorebreak barrels at Caserne look super fun and –important when you are a 12 year old micro-grom- not too deathly or heavy.

So it’s all good in the hood. I bolt the Aquatech water rig together as I have hundreds of times before, whack on the old faithful Bong 3mm that never seems to get old, grab me swim fins and skip like a baby gazelle down the dune. All normal so far; a non-threatening day for a nice swim and a few shots…

Here comes the back story ‘Lost’ style- In fourteen years of shooting water photos I've never once been hit by a board whilst taking shots. People often ask me why I don’t wear a helmet like many water photogs do, my standard response is the earlier sentence, that and I find helmets restrict your senses to much, are a pain in the ass to travel with and I’m -excuse the modesty- too good. My job is to get as tight as possible with the surfers without affecting their ride and keeping me self out of harms way. Working with professionals this is not normally a problem. That’s not say I haven’t had my share of lickings and pain from my chosen profession (one with no health plan, medical insurance or risk related pay)… Robyn Davies snapped the nose of her board off on one of my housings (which was brand new that trip, never been used before, the housing that is, not the board, it survived thankfully), but missed me, in the Mentawai’s. She also landed on me in Ireland when a duckdive went wrong on a solid double overhead day at Bundoran Peak. She’d duckdived in front of me as I swam for the reef on a clean up set and somehow landed on my back still on her board, the centre and side fins neatly pinpointing my kidneys, it felt like I had been de-kidneyfied, I seriously thought when I took my wettie off my meat was going to be hanging out in a proper hung/drawn and quartered style... Thankfully it was just severe internal bruising cured later by several pints of iron rich black gold.

Aside from: a broken thumb and rooted left knee (ligament damage, bone chips, two years to walk without hobbling and still not 100% now even though it was eight years ago, it makes a nice crunch if you listen closely) sustained from going over the falls at perfect six-foot Mundaka; a broken rib from getting whomped in a shorey in Mexico and the other knee cartilage blown from Tolcarne wedge (of all places) I've done okay…

Until this day in June- I’m swimming out, it’s not a hard swim, more of a walk really, as the shorey is pretty shallow. There’s a few crew on it with the grom squad but not a serious crowd by any means. So I’m bobbing around, getting my bearings, trying to keep an eye on the groms cos unlike older pro’s they don’t really get the whole you need to actually ‘surf at the photographer to get shots’ part of water photography so I need to follow them around. It’s at this point a decent set comes in, the groms are caught inside, a local looking fella takes off to my left, a good three metres away going right, so he is heading away from me, I duck under the unbroken wave and… Ka-Pow!!! That’s right, a full old school Batman style sound effect.

Somehow yer mans board had got from where he was -defying every well established rule of physics in a deft way- and made it’s way into the side of my swede at Mach 3. It was at that point I found out I could swear loudly underwater. In my best Brian Blessed roar I shouted a profanity that rhymes with ‘duck’ (it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a very confused looking sonar operator on any nearby submarine at that point, that and a few offended dolphins). When I popped out the back of the wave I unleashed another, then remembering the fragile, unsullied minds of the groms, took to just saying ‘ouch’ instead. The rail, or tail, I don’t know which had twatted me in the cheek bone right in front of my ear, it felt pretty much what I imaging a baseball batting to feel like, the impact had split the skin in front of my ear and I was dripping man ketchup all over the place. The groms were really helpful, ‘Yuck! Sharpy! Ewwww! Your ears hanging off!! Gross!’ Good to know the first rule of First Aid –that of reassuring the patient that everything is cool- means nothing to them. My ear wasn’t actually hanging off, but it did look pretty messed up. Being from Somerset and therefore being double hard I still shot the session for a good hour before going in. Didn’t really fancy the hassle of going for stitches/ X-rays in a French hospital and seawater is a great natural antiseptic.

The guy responsible was very apologetic, his leash had snapped earlier and he hadn’t gone in, as he didn’t have a spare. Again his First Aid knowledge was lacking, ‘It looks bad, you should go in’ he kept saying, ‘No bother, tis but a flesh wound,’ I replied in a fine British stiff upper lip fashion.

The end result was a ‘post concussion’ headache that lasted three long pain filled weeks and a scar in front of my ear that looks like I’ve had a cheap, back street facelift.

I’m still not going to use a helmet. I’m just going to avoid non-professional surfers like they are card-carrying lepers. Purely from a self-preservation point of view. I’m fine now but it doesn’t bear thinking about the possibilities- if my head had been turned 20 degrees to the left it would have smashed my eye socket and possibly popped my eye. If it had been the nose of the board, it would probably have killed me, All not nice thoughts, not nice at all…