sonny photos

Finally

This post is dedicated to Roger Laenen, who was always teasing me in Belgium about actually being able to surf.

Jacqui offered to take some pictures of me surfing, cool been wanting some pics of me surfing.
Not the best surf out there, and I wasn't having one of my best surfs, but still, nice for me to see a pic of me doing my favourite thing. This shot , bottom turning to nowhere

Smacking the lip, or better know as a "reo" short for  re-entry, this move usually follows on from a bottom turn

A combination of a backhand re-entry and a cutback, the re entry was pretty small as there was not much power in the lip of the wave, and a cutback , is when you cut back to the foam to get some power back from the curling wave to set up your next turn.

Another forehand re entry, now I'm not getting as much vertical on this wave as I would like for two reasons, I'm not as good as the pros, and the waves were weak in this session

After that last re entry above, big cutback, love doing this turn, big wide turn and then hit that foam ball again that's coming towards me in the left of the picture

And finish off with a little tube, or a little barrel, which is embarrasingly looking more like a head dip. Not like the pros out at Hawaii getting shacked, just no comparison, but i had fun

New board

Buying anew board today,haven't bought myself a new board in a long time, last time I bought a board was about 6 years ago. I didn't plan on buying a new board, it's only because I lost a find on my other surfboard while surfing a spot in Avalon called off rocks, and as the name says it is a wave that breaks off the rocks and yes, I hit a rock, which snapped the fin of a board , just buy another fin you might say.Unfortunatly the fin system on that board is not in production , so I can't buy one anymore. So here we are at mi mates , Bevan,surfshop.I know Bevan from a long time ago, he was a succesfull male model, did quite well, stopped and opened a surf shop in Avalon called Boardscape.

He's putting the fins in my new board ( oh yeah, he gave me an awesome mates rate 200 bucks off the sale price ) He's sititng on the floor with his backsideto the door and we're having a bit of a laugh as someone just walked in and commented on his plumbers crack

Double concave, can't wait to feel how this board will go, was not keen on getting a new board, was quite happy with the board I had

This board was originally made for Joel Parkinson one of the top 16 pro surfers, it was to be used in Jack McKoy's film Free as a dog. But pro surfers end up with a lot of boards, and this one made it to Bev's shop. And that's why there is a signature on the board, now, I could just buy this board and sell it for quadrupple the price to some kid in Japan, because it has a signature on their of a pro surfer

no hard feelings Joel, but I want to go surfing, and not with your name scrawled all over my board

What a girl

Still can'tbelieve she just did that, Coco, a real water baby, well
I can't call her a baby anymore, a real water girl, thumbs up

Driving back to Antwerp

This pic looked a lot better in real, sun streaming through, and omnimous ( sure I just spelled that wrong ) looking clouds in the back, about to leave the streets of A'dam and get on the highway, first stop off to say hi to Astrid and give her some Paris photos

It's time for me to leave Europe when the sun starts to set this early in the afternoon

And the constant rain, those lights up ahead, over the road  are a bad sign when they are flashing, you can just make out two of them in the photo

It means traffic jam, and in Holland, no matter what time of the day it is, you never ever , can complete your trip without running into at least one of these, and it's a grind, can't wait to get on the PCH in Australia , zooming up the east coast without the traffic