hey, that homeless guy looks familiar

Ahhh... there I was, only a week ago, surfing my favorite little reef whilst sporting my Rodney Harrison Chargers jersey circa 2003 . Warm water, offshore winds, definitely good times I like to experience as much as I can. I guess I was itching to revisit my home state of California though. As any surfer will tell you, nothing compares to going on a surf trip, especially a surf trip to Cali. I had been watching the buoys off of the west coast of the US for two weeks when the surf dropped in Guanacaste and the swell was forecasted to get big off of the northwest coast of the US. It was then that I booked a last-minute ticket and hit the road.

The day before I left was pretty chill. I took my family out to a big breakfast in Brasilito at the Happy Snapper with James and his family. Taking a 1 year old and a 3 year old out to a restaurant can be synonymous with hell, and it wasn't long before both kids were screaming and destroying the place. It won't be long before my kids are all grown up, time goes by so fast it seems, so I just wanted to hang with the family a bit before I left on my trip. I feel like I've been connecting with baby Happy more and more, he digs on me and I dig him. He is really special, already walking now and now he's starting to say his first words. Whenever I leave on a trip I worry that I'm going to miss something big in his young life. I am so stoked to finally get back to my family last night, they are truly the best thing that ever happened to me.


SUNDAY March 1st
So, I flew to Los Angeles Sunday afternoon. My friend John Alexander picked me up at LAX. He was driving the infamous Uncle Rico van and I was overly excited about it.

Uncle Rico is one hell of a great van. 1985 Chevy V8 with an ugly fiberglass roof extension. It is the same van that Uncle Rico drove in Napoleon Dynamite, except its brown instead of orange. For anyone who has waited outside of LAX to get picked up, you'll know that most of the people getting picked up are getting picked up by friends and family members driving new SUVs, rich sports cars, high-end everythings. And then came Uncle Rico. John and I immediately hit the road and headed due west to El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, in a holding pattern for my good friend Justin who lives in Venice Beach. Justin was bringing my wetsuit and surfboards as well as a thousand WRSC stickers. We were chilling out in front of his house for what seemed like forever, Justin and Paige were driving back from San Diego to LA and 2 or 3 hours later than they had said they'd get up there. I barely snuck in through his doggie door and found his weed, which was lucky. By the time they got home John and I were putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

We got my gear, chilled a bit, hit the road after 9pm and drove north, deciding to spend the night in Oxnard. We pulled into a Walmart parking lot.


MONDAY March 2nd

In case you didn't know, Walmart is a great spot to crash for the night. I've done it a few dozen times in my life, though maybe I've slept in my car a bit more than you have. We cruised down to C-Street in Ventura and got some fun waves. This was the first time I had put on a wetsuit in a couple of months, fortunately it was a 4/3 and I had some booties too. The swell hadn't really started to hit yet, it was only waist to chest high, but surfing C-Street was cool in itself. It ended up being my favorite spot on the trip. After surf, we cruised through Ventura. I'd never really hung out in this town, I thought it was pretty mellow. I'd only surfed in Ventura at the harbor once during a contest in college, its kindof like LA "north" but at the same time quite toned down and relaxed. Its a strange combination of old meeting new, old school style surfing seems to be pretty big here and I like Ventura for that.

I wanted to stop by the Walden shop but they were closed. Then I went and found the Wetsand surf shop on the strip.

I had spoken to Chuck, the owner of the Wetsand shop, on the phone once before and sent a couple of emails about giving wetsand.com the webcam feed. When I showed up at the shop I found Chuck and said hi. One of his employees said he was busy, but then he wandered out onto the floor. Unfortunately he thought I was there to sell him something and proceeded to tell me that he had sold wetsand.com last year and wasn't interested. I got strange vibes from the guy and was a bit let down when I sensed no aloha spirit whatsoever. Surfers are a traveling bunch, if you surf and you meet a fellow surfer, there should be some immediate connection between you. Something along the lines of "if you're ever in tamarindo look me up" and "if you're ever in Ventura lets go surf" kind of thing. I felt none of this from Chuck, sad to say. Maybe he was having a bad day (it was a Monday morning), but we definitely weren't. After yet another breakfast burrito and plenty of WRSC sticker tagging, we took off for the Pismo Beach area and scored a great sunset surf at the Saint Andrews reef. There were sea otters in the lineup and plenty of kelp, reminding me I was in great white shark territory. It wasn't crowded though, and the wave was setting up nicely over the reef and throwing some really nice right bowls. No barrels, but tons of fast drops and nice shoulders.


TUESDAY March 3rd
We spent the night at John's house, his family is great. I lasted about ten minutes before falling asleep watching some new tv show I'll never get to see in Costa Rica. When we woke up we went back to the Saint Andrews spot but it had turned to junk. The swell had picked up but it had gotten stormy and onshore, still a beautiful day though.

The weather reports showed that Santa Cruz was in the middle of a nasty storm so instead of continuing north we turned back south. The waves wouldn't be as big but they would be much cleaner. Even though I grew up in California I never realized how many right point breaks there are. As we got further south the winds cleaned up, it got sunny, and the waves started to look good everywhere we went. Here was an empty beachbreak south of Campus Point in Santa Barbara, breaking pretty nice.

We scored Rincon at about chest to head high, really clean but a bit crowded. Its such a good wave, though on every wave you have everyone down the line watching you surf, just hoping you fall so they can take off on you. Tons of fun waves and we surfed for hours. No water back in the van because we're idiots, we were totally dehydrated and just Pacificos in the fridge. Lots of WRSC stickers found their way onto trash cans and street signs in the Rincon parking lot, then we drove back up to Carpinteria where we spent the rest of the afternoon riding John's kids' rip sticks, these two-wheeled skateboards that are really fun to ride. I skated for HOURS, probably because the one paved road I have in Tamarindo has cars driving so fast that skating on it would be a death wish. We found a brewery, I can't remember the name but the beer was good and we drank plenty of it. We camped in the van in a neighborhood on the side of the road, falling asleep watching One California Day, a new surf movie. its pretty good. John snored all night long which really sucked, next time I'm taking ear plugs. It was like a band saw cutting through metal. It made me want to hold a pillow over his face but that would have been rude.


WEDNESDAY March 4th
I woke up to find that we had been parked in front of a middle school. Two dudes sleeping in a shady van parked in front of a middle school overnight probably wouldn't go over well once school opened so we split at daybreak. We drove past Rincon but it was onshore, the storm had moved south. We went back to Ventura, pulling back into the C-street parking lot to find onshore winds but still some waves. We decided to wait for the tide to drop (ended up hanging out there all day in the parking lot)

The view from the van, watching the waves, chilling out making pancakes and eggs and coffee. Some of the best things in life are free.

The fishes, waiting patiently to go surf. Finally, the tide dropped and the wind died. The waves got really fun. We surfed for 3 hours, until I couldn't surf anymore without eating something. After food it was all about the rip sticks in the C-street parking lot and putting up stickers everywhere. I met a ton of surfers, most of which already knew about our surf camp. Hopefully this trip will create some new guests as I spread the surf camp gospel. By mid afternoon we were on the road driving to San Diego. We met my parents for some dinner and beers, then back to the house I grew up in to play some Shaun White Snowboarding on the PS3 and then it was sleepy time.



THURSDAY March 5th
Somewhere around this time I was told by my staff that there had been incredible winds in town and that the Kahiki restaurant, and the entire Iguana Surf rancho and attached shops for that matter, had burned to the ground. It was a pretty big fire, I included a couple of pics below.



What a bummer. In the week I was gone from Tamarindo a few strange things happened, or maybe they just seemed strange because I wasn't here like I normally am.
Meanwhile, in San Diego on this morning we ended up at Fletcher's Cove in Solana Beach and found some great shoulder to head high waves with hardly anyone out, probably because of the fatal great white shark attack that happened here last summer. After surf came another burrito and more tagging with WRSC stickers in the parking lot.

I guess you could stop reading by now, because basically all I did on this trip was surf, eat burritos, put up stickers and sleep in my van.

But, if you're still reading, here you go:
That night we went to PB and ate dinner at the same restaurant I met my wife in, Fred's Mexican Cafe on Garnet Ave.

John and I had way too many drinks, somehow I didn't realize that it was Cinco de Fred's which means they hand out shots and charge basically nothing for huge beers and margaritas.

It was this night that I got into a fight with the chicken for giving me a bad coupon.


FRIDAY March 6th
After drinking way more than we should and deciding it unwise to drive, we spent the night in the van at the top of Mt Soledad with a nice view of downtown. In the morning I spotted the largest raccoon I'd ever seen, it was the size of a dog, probably because it was eating rich peoples shit out of their garbage. I'm surprised nobody had called the cops on two hoodlums in an Uncle Rico van on the side of the road in the richest neighborhood in SD. We took off when it got light, before 6am, it was freezing and our wetsuits were totally wet. We surfed Scripps, it was decent but the worst day of the week for me (maybe because the waves had been really good every day before and this day was only average). Afterwards I made arrangements to stop by the Boardworks shop in Encinitas to meet my friend Sean Mattison and hook up John with a new Hynson Black Knight Quad surfboard. Here's Sean ripping on one of them.

I got to Boardworks and met up with Sean as well as Phil who runs Boardworks, I'd met Phil a couple of times at the surf expos in Florida and always told him how much I dug their boards. Sean helped design the Hynson BK Quad for Boardworks, I had just met Sean a couple of weeks earlier in Tamarindo when he was down here helping run the surf contest we just had. We hit it off, probably because I totally respect the guy for how much he rips. He and Phil decided to make me a team rider for Boardworks and hooked me up with a 5'9 Hynson BK Quad. I now ride for Boardworks. It took me only 15 years of surfing to get sponsored.

Here I am with Phil on the left and Sean on the right. Lets make this blog the official announcement, the Hynson BK quads are the real deal. I will still continue to finish my shaping room and I will be making custom polyurethane boards on-site at the camp, but I'll be carrying a full line of Boardworks boards for rent and for sale. Hynson, KG, Steward, Ben Aipa, too many to name really. I got back to CR last night and this morning I had the new board waxed and was surfing Casitas. I'm happy to say that I was totally stoked with how it performed. I was worried that maybe a 5'9 was too short, but really there wasn't a bad difference from my 6'0 fish, only good things like being more responsive and snappier. STOKED

As far as the rest of the trip, John took off after he got his own board, a 6'6 Hyson BK Quad. We chilled in the van on the side of the Boardworks shop for another hour or so and skated in the street, watching the waves and hoping the wind would switch or die. It didn't. I tagged more street signs with WRSC stickers. John took off with the Uncle Rico van back north. Saturday was more surf, then some shopping for gifts for my two awesome kids. A lot of other things happened during the week, too much to bore you with in this blog. I had a great trip. I always have a great trip. Life is one great trip. Since I live above my own business and am always on-call here, its nice to be on the road, appearing homeless, chilling, surfing, drinking 40s in beach parking lots like a bum, talking to random people, tagging stickers everywhere, hanging with my parents, hanging with my friends, road tripping, joking, laughing, missing my family, being happy to come home. 7 days was just what the doctor ordered. pura vida - joe