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I Hope We Can Still Be Friends, New Zealand

When the sun shines in New Zealand, the landscape is positively lambent, offset by a turquoise sea that is delightfully banded by white or black sand beaches.  The beaches stretch for miles (literally, 90 of them at the top of the north island) and the fields and hills are dotted by cows, sheep and--very, very rarely--a human being.

The people are a hardy folk.  I think the reason their rugby team, the All Blacks, is so good is because there are a disproportionate number of HUGE dudes walking around with broad upper bodies and tree trunks for legs. Probably from wrassling livestock all the time--this remark shared by a kiwi pal I hung with in Bali, not my original thought. You couldn’t go 10km without seeing an All Black flag flying somewhere.

Whether due to the influence of the “Lord the Rings” being filmed here or a condition pre-dating the film,like hobbits the kiwis frequently spurn shoes. You can see this on display in cities like Auckland, the airport, or people walking along a road in the rain. Don’t matter. Shoes not required.  Incidentally, if you are total tool with money to burn (and I say this as a big LOTR fan) you can take a 12 day “Lord of the Rings” tour of New Zealand for NZ $8000. Or visit the site yourself: www.yesiamatotaldoofuspleasetakemymoney.com.

The Kiwis are a friendly bunch as far as I have encountered. I have rarely if ever—fine, probably never--paddled out to a break and have a guy literally paddle over and greet you with a big smile and a “Howit?”  And that happened all the time. Even when Tal dropped in on some guy during one session, the Kiwi was chatty and awfully cool about it.  And last night, as we were checking the surf, some nice Piha locals rolled a huge fat joint next to us and asked us if we were interested. They looked like surf hooligans, but nice kids. And get this: the customs agent as I was heading home asked me, “Enjoy yourself in NZ, mate? Been awful wet.” He seemed genuinely concerned I might not have had a good time.  I mean, that’s some hospitality.

Now, that gets me to the “when the sun shines in NZ” opening. The sun did not shine in NZ much. Roughly 2 days. Otherwise, pretty much perpetual light to heavy rain. When you are living in a van down by the beach,  that really sucks. Now, that wouldn’t matter much if you were just surfing all the time right? You’re already wet! 

Yes, but the surf largely disappointed. And my god, did we chase. Up the island, down the island, back up the island. Piha, Shiprwrecks Bay, Raglan, Ruapuke, back to Piah, Muriwai. We scored maybe two good days with a decent swell and the strong offshore winds that you here so much about in terms of why NZ can be a great place to surf. The rest was, at best, windy beach break conditions.  Some guy quipped after a middling session that “If you have a helicopter, you can always find good surf in New Zeland.”  The theory being that if the winds are onshore on the west coast, you can hit the east coast where they’ll be offshore. The pisser is that I forgot to pack my helicopter. And that the swell was mostly hitting the west coast, no matter what the wind was doing so it might not have mattered.

Many years ago, I was thinking of going cycling in NZ with my pal Noel. My mom asked me, “Why would you go to there? It’s just like northern California.” Turns out, as with many things, mom was right.  I should add: it’s just like Norcal when the rain hits in Nov-Dec.  Cold, wet, challenging surf conditions with a lot of rugged, chunky slop that pummels you frequently in return for low quality waves.  Being back in wet suit instead of in board shorts was no fun either.

There is obviously a ton more to do in NZ than surf, especially if you like the outdoors. And I did think about hanging up the surf agenda, but the rain still woulda made hiking or going to the beach subprime. I shoulda gone to Marlborough and spent my time wine tasting, but we were tempted and then betrayed over and over again by the surf forecasts.

Oh, by the way, you can get NZ wine cheaper at home than you can here. Even the lamb was surprisingly expensive. Someone, not entirely credible, attributed this to a rough spring with lots of frost that killed off lots of little lambies, thus driving up prices. (In case you are a Wall Street exec and thus perhaps don’t understand economic theory:  When supply goes down, prices go up;  which  is bad for my wallet. Think about it as sort of like when you innovate financial products that create no value to society (e.g. credit default swaps) to hedge your highly leveraged transactions on dubious mortgage derivatives and there is a huge run on liquidity as market confidence expires and your firm collapses,  which is also bad.  And in the case of the lambies, there is no $700 billion dollar tax payer option to bail them out.

With weather forecasts encouraging the purchase of an ark for the foreseeable future, I decided to blow this taco stand and head home 2 days early. I can go surf in sloppy beach break in the cold at home for less money and not live in a van down the river.  

Sorry, New Zealand, things didn’t work out. But I still respect you and I hope we can be friends.

Missive from the Depths of Unwinding

I've had a few emails recently asking if I'm still alive, if I have joined Colonel Kurtz's gang up the river or perhaps am now communicating (ineffectively) via smoke signals.

The truth is, I've been deeply relaxed and turning on the computer and dealing with the sporadic connections seemed like a drag. Some of you still working or parenting for a living (or both) may wonder how relaxed you can get after 2 months of indulging in endless beachy fun. Well, let me try to explain how it worked in my case.

Case Study 1: My last dawn session in Bali (well, not quite, more on that below), I was talking to someone between sets. I said I'd been in Bali a month but I was okay leaving because--whether another day, another month, another year--I didn't think I could unwind further. There were a few breaks I wish I'd gotten around to surfing but I'd surfed so much going out and seeing the sunrise or sunset was just as cool as catching a wave. It would be nice to hang out longer, but it would also be nice for a change of scenery. I had the thought out loud and not consciously before that moment but realized it was true. I was really, really chilled out.

Case Study 2: Another way I found out how relaxed I really was occurred when I missed my flight to New Zealand. It's a long story, but the short story is I was too relaxed. It ended up costing quite a bit of money in the end to get sorted out. Someone told me maybe there was A Reason I missed my flight (you know, it crashed or was taken over by genetically evolved apes or whatever people think when they say things like that). But if there was a reason, it was discovering that I was so relaxed that the events which led to me missing my plane could happen in the first place... It was actually, in a warped way, a good thing. Or my ability to see it that way must be a good thing. Or something. I'm too relaxed to continue thinking about this. And, bonus: I avoided those damn apes!

So, obviously I surfed a lot since my last posting. I did some other fun stuff too. I had a nicely timed break from surfing after a two sessions in some seriously big surf. During one session, this HUGE swell had showed up out of nowhere about 20 minutes after we got in the water. I've been in some big surf the last few months. This was the first time the whole trip where I was on the verge of panic. Maybe past verging. The ocean had turned very, very ugly. The guy I was surfing with gotcaught inside, pounded and washed ashore with a broken board. I realized getting out of the water--navigating double overhead slabs, a crazy rip and huge surf pounding down on the beach--was going to now be the main goal of the session (surfing at the moment no longer being an interest of mine).

Anyhoo, I then passed a few very fun days in Ubud, taking a cooking class, going on a cycling tour (during which a 7 foot cobra cruised across the road in front of us) and getting my longest massage ever (nearly 2 hours). Ubud is a great place to unwind and soak up Balinese culture. In addition to learning how to cook some staple Balinese dishes, the cooking class included a tour of local markets and rice paddies.

It was interesting to learn that the local farmers are going organic. Moving away from a government-assisted program of chemical fertilizers used for the last 30 years or so, farmers are now going back to a more natural cycle that includes keeping flocks of ducks in each family's paddies that help contain insects, provide natural fertilizer etc. Apparently, rice output has virtually doubled off the same acreage as the move to organic has taken place. Plus, the ducks are super cute. And they make a nice Thanksgiving dish.

I arrived in New Zealand 2 days ago. It's pretty much rained the entire time so I'd be lying if I said I'd fallen in love with the place. Per what you hear, there are a lot of sheep and few people. The topography is very reminiscent of the Sonoma coast. I'm spending the next few days in a surf camp, but my Israeli pal and I are more or less going to be cruising around in a camper searching for waves the entire time. For those of you who know my feelings about camping, you would be amused to see how I'm living. I think its going to make me really psyched to return home. We better score some good surf for this s***. I did grill up some tasty lamb at our camp site on night one. After two months of a diet consisting of way too much rice and chicken, eating red meat and  bread again felt like heaven. Oh, and wine! Man was it good to have some red wine.

I'm looking foward to seeing some of you readers soon--hard to believe, but the journey is on its final 2 weeks.