Solo mission to Mahia

Last week was a big week.  My daughter turned 18, so it felt like the right moment to go on a solo surf trip.  I haven't really done that in years, since she was a very small toddler.  I've taken my family and forced them to watch me surf, but I haven't taken off solo and allowed myself the luxury of surfing every possible moment and consigning washing to a distant memory.  I've been eyeing a spring trip to the east coast for years:  The westerlies that devil this coast blow hot and offshore there, and spring storms in the antarctic send a succession of southerly swells.  It would be a chance too, I thought, to catch up on my Nanowrimo, or more accurately, keep the momentum going, because at the time of departure I was, amazingly, ahead of the game.

I'd planned on allowing parts of two days to get over there, but I hadn't factored in getting out of work early or the difference in speed I got from a) taking a different route over than I have in the past and b) not lugging a family of four and all their crap.  I still took part of two days, because I wanted to camp at Tutira and see if I could snaffle myself a trout for supper.  I couldn't, but it's still one of my favourite spots to camp.  A southerly front had passed up the country a couple of days before and there was still snow lying on much of the high ground.  The evening was crisp, cold as soon as the sun went down, but undeniably beautiful..

Tutira

It's only a couple of hours from Tutira to the Mahia peninsula, and it wasn't until long after I got there that I realised I'd miscalculated, a little.  Firstly, I was banking on finding something, a village store or something where I could buy milk and a couple of supplies, but there's nothing, nada, zip.  And secondly, the spots that were catching the southerly swell were big, spooky, and I would be flying solo.  My radar must be pretty good, because I was chatting to a local a couple of days later and I was told that the spot I was eying up had recently taken possession of a resident 5 metre white pointer.

Blacks, bigger and spookier than it looks.

The southerly swell was due to back off, and an easterly to kick in.  I figured I'd head north to Gisborne for a day or two, pick up some supplies, and hit the surf there.  It's an easy hour's drive, and there's good places to stay.  Lovely places to stay.

Beachfront, Tatapouri

Surf was OK, nothing special.  Headhigh and semi-organised, good enough to spend a couple of days surfing twice a day and feeling some kind of surf-fitness coming back to me.  I got a few fun kegs but nothing fabulous.  Surfing twice a day calmed the voices in my head enough for me to crank out a fair few pages of my Nanowrimo.  It's starting to acquire life and momentum, which is great.  It's easy to keep writing something that wants to keep being written.  It's like being wanted.

Typical Gizzy surf that I got, fun but nothing more.

Out of season Giz is a relaxing place to hang out.  It feels remote enough now, back in the day this place must have felt like the end of the world to those who lived here and the travellers that made it this far.  There's a beauty all its own to this part of the coast, gentle and unkempt at the same time - very different from the rainforests in my part of the country.

East Coast hillside, dawn.

After a couple of days I was ready to head south again.  I checked the surf forecast and saw that the east swell would hold for another day, the next dawn looking like it'd be it for a few days.  So I determined to head for home after a night on the peninsula.  I found a deserted freedom campsite, which really...doesn't get a lot better.  I cast out a line and watched the sunset, once again acting as a one-man fish exclusion zone. 

Spot for the night, Mahia peninsula

Yeah, that'll do.

The surf the next morning was just...magic.  Blue, sand bottomed lefts and a conveyor belt rip, a golden sunrise and ahhhh!  Surfer heaven.  A thousand miles made worthwhile in two wonderful hours before the first breaths of the sea breeze stirred. 

I headed towards home.  I'd passed the Ruahines on the way East and thought they looked like there'd be a cool spot to pass a night.  I puled into a campsite at three, which was deserted, miserable, and felt like nothing so much as the kind of place you go to get axe-murdered by bogans. 

Ruahines, beautiful but spooky.

I had an uneasy couple of hours nap, then, sort of refreshed, I looked at the map and figured I was about three and a half hours from home.  I pushed on through dusk and reminded myself again, that this year, at last, I really must get the bus's headlights resilvered.  It was a magic few days away, I fell in love with the bus and surfing all over again, and it'll be a small price to pay.  However, that's for winter.  I'd like to keep her busy this summer....

Pushing through the night with epic, epic headlights.

Jobs for Winter, part one of...

The last race of the season is tomorrow, and there's a storm raging outside.  This means two things - firstly, that I'll soon be having a few weeks with a bit more time, and secondly, having dropped my daughter off to a friend's house, I've been given a timely reminder of two of the jobs I've been promising the bus this winter - one is to clean as many of the electrical contacts up as I can, in an effort to improve the frankly abysmal performance of the wipers whenever anything else is on - like headlights, for example - and the second is to install a new heater cable. 

Grown men cry at the prospect of installing a new heater cable on these things, specifically because of just how much fun it can be removing the old one.  I'm going to have to think of something cleverer than the next sentence to accomplish this:  I've had a good tug (well, the nights were long and there was nothing on the telly) with a pair of pliers (ouch) and vice grips (double ouch) bracing my feet on the wheels and heaving for all I was worth (mustn't boast, and all that) and nothing showed even the slightest sign of coming.

If this storm produces a bit of snow, I might even manage to put it off until next year.

Speaking too soon again...

There I was congratulating myself on having a thoroughly reliable bus: result?  Oil all over the garage floor, skinned knuckles (my hands actually start leaking blood as soon as I touch a spanner), and just a little swearing.  It's nothing too serious, but fixing this leak still requires the removal of the exhaust which is, on these vehicles, an utter pain in the arse.  But I suppose it's good for me to keep my mechanical eye in, as it were, and on the way I'll get the chance to do a few bits of preventative maintenance that should keep her purring happily for a few more years' yet.

And there I was too, saying I was putting down my second draft and moving onto something else.  Well, I suppose that was half-right - I did put down my second draft.  I moved instead, straight to the third, without pausing to finish.  There was, as I've said previously, a spark missing, and I was never going to find a spark by mechanically flogging a dead horse.  Far better to cut the losses and proceed straight to the major surgery - a rewrite, changes of viewpoint and tense, deepening and turning of the plot.

If any one element does such a thing, then plot keeps readers turning pages: so I'm devoting more and more time to making sure I understand what's going on.  I'm not in the business of drawing up a rigid scaffold and sticking to it ruthlessly, that's an approach I've tried before and that yields the stiff, joyless results you might expect from a process that removes, at a single stroke, much of the impetus behind discovering new and interesting turns in the story - namely, language.

I'm a firm believer that language on its own can be a powerful agent of creativity.  Words suggest others, changes in tone and viewpoint suggest other words that lead, in turn, to other places and different stories.  Cutting myself off from that removes much of the fun of the creative journeying my writing takes me on. That's not to say I don't have to exercise restraint or discipline - of course I do, otherwise I'd never get anywhere.

Which, to complete the bus/writing allegory, applies to fixing oil leaks too.  Because at times like these it's restraint and discipline that keep me from smashing the thing with a sledgehammer, or worse - taking it to a mechanic.

Sunny days and creative delays

Since the house has been on the market bus trips have become more frequent: the sense of impending departure, even in the absence of any kind of done deal, has given us the impetus to try and get out into Otago more.  And it's beautiful, although I knew that already.  Wildlife, crazy beautiful beaches...

Hooker's sea lion in the dunes, Sandfly Bay.

Further up the road than I've been before...

Sandfly Bay, Otago Peninsula

The bus has been running better than it ever has in my ownership.  I'm trying to figure out exactly what I've done differently, but I can't actually see anything.  It's another example, if I needed one, of the organic contrariness of these things.  I'm convinced it's running better because I've finally convinced it I have some clue what I'm doing with a spanner in my hand (something, I admit, that has not always been the case.)  And I finally arrived at that happy point, where I looked at the service schedule in the Bentley manual (the knowledge), and found that there was not. one. single. thing. that was left wanting or of which I was uncertain. 

The writing, on the other hand, could be viewed in another way.  I've decided to put my completed first draft to one side - the second visit seemed too soon, too mechanical, too joyless - and am spending my writing time revisiting an idea that's been brewing, in one shape or another - my file history tells me - for nearly five years.  I'm putting no guns to heads, having no expectations: because the genesis of this story has been so long I'm reluctant to call it over.  The process is different too - I have no plan, I'm letting the language lead the way.  So far, I've always had something to write...so far.

Roadtrip time...

Loaded the bus with the whole family and camping gear for the first time in too long, and headed for central Otago.  Hot days, cold nights, and some special places...

Above the lake at St Bathans

 

It's called the Blue Lake...

There's worse views to have upon rolling back the side door from the comfort of bed.

Another river full of trout that stayed there.  Bastards.

We went over the pig route, State Highway 85 from Palmerston to Ranfurly - an old wagoner's route from NZ's pioneer days.  Coming over some of those hills with a team of horses must have been unimaginably hard - places like Dead Horse Pinch got their name for a reason.  It's amazing how western humanity has largely become a race of total pussies in just a couple of generations.

Good times, and good dubbing country...

Exhausted exhausts, knackered shoulders...

The second draft is coming on nicely.  This is obviously good, but is even better because I hadn't even planned to start on it until yesterday - I just couldn't wait.  Hopefully, that's a good sign.  I'm still building a list of things to revisit - it's feeling more refined, more polished, more unified - but it's still a way from being a finished article.

I've been buzzing around a bit in the bus this last fortnight - it being the back end of the school holidays.  The weather here has been predictably unpredictable, and there's really been nothing you'd want to go camping in.  But there's been a few good day trips around and about, plenty of ice-cream being eaten - that kind of thing.  When I got back from one the other day, though, a new noise  accompanied the roll up the drive, and that's never good.  The tailpipe end of my muffler had decided it had had enough, and the rattle I was hearing was the tailpipe bidding for freedom.

Which is fine - you expect that kind of thing on a forty-year old car.  But replacement exhausts are
a) shit, and
b) stupidly expensive.
For reasonable money I could always put an EMPI muffler on, but the internet is awash with tales of how something more durable can be easily constructed from a latticework of melted gruyere and dried-on weetabix, in which case the reasonable money suddenly becomes very unreasonable indeed.

So after a quick phone around for prices, I did what any sensible person would do - I got it welded up.  It doesn't matter that it now looks a little - well, used.  It's serviceable enough for now, and it's going to be better than anything I can acquire this side of five hundred bucks, and right now, with daughter number one starting high school...that much just ain't an option.  Plus, of course, I kind of like my bus being - well, my bus.  Part of my jag about bus ownership is seeing just how far along the road I can persuade this old girl - as much in her entirety as possible - to go.

There's been a few waves on offer this week.  I've just come back from a - not exactly a slab, more a slabette - down the coast.  Shifty, kelpy and a few good beatings, one of which left me wondering if I still had a full complement of teeth. I snagged one good set wave and surfed it as well as I ever do - joined the turns, snapped the snaps, kept the speed, and it all felt easy and right in the way one only dreams of when it's all too hard (which it was for the rest of the session).  Might have only been the one, but once I've played it through in my mind a few times it'll keep me going until the next time.

Not today.  Or even where I surfed.  Same colour, though...

Bumping along the bottom...

I've recently been debating - although not very seriously - whether or not to sell the bus, mostly because of the speed with which my offspring are growing.  With four and a small dog up, all required camping gear; with the heavy, german-made (and therefore heavy, like their food) camping interior that weighs more than I do, plus the antique dresser of indispensable camping accessories which my wife insists on while wondering aloud how I ever managed without them, it's safe to say that the performance isn't exactly sparkling.  After all, it only made 66 hp when it was new and even if it's still churning that out - well, you can see why it struggles, and that's before you even get to the fun part, of four people actually trying to live out of one of these things.

This weekend has reaffirmed the faith and squashed any such nascent thoughts.  I packed Jay in and set off for some father-and-son time down south, sans mother, sister, or surfboards.  It's easy to forget that the bus has always been in his life - we've always just gone off.   Spending time with Jay in the bus this weekend, I watched him unwind and chill out, and forget the stresses of being nine.

Between Kaka point and the Nuggets, finding sea lions to hassle.

Purakanui falls.  Pretty, eh?

Papatowai beach.  Spooky, cold, shadows in the water.  Can I not surf here?

Catlins rain forest.  Smells even better than a similarly themed toilet freshener.

Pounawea sunrise.  I take pictures while Jay gets to do star jumps.  Character building, see...

So we did bus things: we explored, we tramped, we read.  We forgot about modern things like computers, fuel injection, and overtaking.  I drank beer, he ate his own body weight in ice cream.  Complete strangers wander up and talk about the bus, and then other things.  I can fix any problem short of major catastrophe with my own brain and hands and the tools I carry, and problems are well - expected.  That big front window displays the whole world in glorious panorama, accompanied by the warm bus-sell that only buses have.  And we finished the trip, as usual, with the bus running better at the end than it had at the beginning -  like the bus enjoys it too, and doesn't want to be consigned back to a nice warm garage.  Travelling by bus is a journey, in the truest sense of the word.

And so, the Catlins duly scoped out for further adventuring, we returned home in glorious, faintly dirty triumph, which is of course exactly how fathers and sons should return home.  Tales to tell, hot baths to sit in, more beer to be drunk. 

Bus adventures rock, and so do the Catlins.

Spring shoots...for a day.

After what seems like an epoch, I finally packed the family and the camping gear into the bus and headed off for a night away.  We were going to go camp at Kakanui, but there was a blustery north-easter blowing, and I decided that discretion being the better part of valour, (and in the interests of a good night's sleep) to go camp in the shelter of the forest instead.  It was getting late by the time we pulled into a deserted campsite, and we'd just outrun a long, low cloud bank into the last of the evening sun.  Food, bed and books - that was about it.

In the morning the forecast sun was hiding above said cloudbank, which had advanced further north during the night.  So after breakfast we packed up and headed inland, up towards Kurow.  We checked out some mental rock formations, the Elephant Rocks, where parts of the first Narnia film were shot. 

Long lazy lunches, ice-cream stops, and a minor emergency involving a frayed throttle cable and a hunt for the right sized hex key ensued - a typical day back in the kombi saddle.  We cruised back down a coast with surf not quite worth getting wet for and found the beach camp where we were going to stay, where my wife took a leak and came back wearing an expression that said very clearly, "We are never staying there..."  

A few miles down the road we found another site which was wonderful - all good intelligence for the summer ahead.  New Zealand is, at times like this, a very easy place to be.

Dusting off the sun-cream...

It almost feels as if winter has passed:  there's been more that one consecutive day when I haven't had to have the heating on for more than an hour in the morning and the surf report is telling me that the water temperature has now risen to a balmy 10.4 degrees.  Some of the snowfields are delaying opening until later in the day to let the spring snow soften, and my garden is looking less like a weed-strewn liability and more of an asset.  Hopefully, this will mean someone will buy it.

Of course, now the house is on the market the south island has never looked lovelier.  At the weekend I fired up the bus and drove thirty kilometers up the coast, on a winding minor road perfect for slow travel by dub.  The swell wasn't really doing it, but there were glimpses of perfection.

The forecast looks good for this weekend, too.  It's still on the cold side for me to persuade the rest of the family that a night in the bus is a good idea (although I'm dropping hints almost daily about the effectiveness of merino and the joys of late-night beach fires), but day trips can now be undertaken with the almost certain knowledge that "day trip" might now mean "day trip" as opposed to "drive for an hour, jump out of bus, freeze ass off for ten minutes then spend an hour in a cafe trying to get warm again while everyone glowers at Dad."

So I'm looking forward to a weekend out and about somewhere in Otago.  It might not feel like home, but there's no denying:  it looks bloody good.

Dangerously close...

The cold water awaits.  My injury is now at the point where I can contemplate getting back in there - in fact, I've tried once.  I paddled out down the coast, thinking here was a nice, if a little junky, two foot day to ease myself into it, when in fact it was probably pushing five and with a strong side-shore sweep. I haven't worn hood and gloves for years, and I don't mind admitting I got totally freaked: way heavier that I was expecting, the eerie silence of a neoprene enclosed head and, in my gloves, feeling too far removed from what was going on around me, and ever conscious of my back.  I lasted about ten minutes, and never caught a wave.  But after a month out you expect the first few to be crap, so I wasn't too fussed.  On the upside, I was pretty snuggly warm in my polypro hoodie - if I pick and choose my days through winter, I should manage to keep the motivation up.  The Osteo has got me doing core exercises for all I'm worth, so hopefully some of the benefits of that carry over into my surfing, if I remember what that is and how to do it.

The bus is almost back together, but I'm none the wiser at the moment as to what exactly is causing that CV noise, because it isn't the CV's.  I took them apart, inspected them minutely, and there's no real discernible wear at all - not bad for joints made in August '72, as these are stamped.  Ah, the days before built-in obsolescence, when they used real metal and real rubber, and built things to last.  I'd be interested to figure out exactly what the bus's carbon footprint will have been over its lifetime - cradle to grave - build costs and recycling costs chucked in.  Even though the fuel economy isn't exactly fabulous, I bet the figure's still better than if I behaved as the auto industry would have me and recycled my car every five years.

The writing is progressing in fits and starts. I can see no finished story at the moment, rather I seem to be putting together discrete, loosely-related sets of chapters that will, eventually, find a common tie - something to bind the whole together in one recognisable story.  It's another way to work amongst this infinite variety of stories.

Slowing down and waiting

I seem to be waiting a lot this week:  waiting for my back to get better, waiting for bus parts to arrive, and waiting for clearer decks all round so I can get on with some writing, and on a more positive note, waiting for the NZ ski season to really get underway.

My back is improving slowly, although I'm still unsure as to whether the last episode marked a permanent shift in the severity of the spondy - it certainly seems to be more prominent at the moment, but that could also be because the spine's still being pulled out of alignment by muscles in low-grade spasm protecting the injury.  I'm still keeping up the cycling and yoga, though - bizarrely - as I get fitter, the cycling seems to be more a hindrance than a help.  My current theory is that as I get fitter I tend to spin the pedals faster, so using my hamstrings more, which then shorten and place tension on my spine.  Maybe tomorrow I'll just go for a steep uphill grind and see where that gets me.    I still feel a way away from surfing, although I seem to have arrived at a certain level of sanguinity (?) about the whole thing now, as I'm managing to stay fit (ish) in other ways. 

The bus has decided that 107,000 miles is as far as at least one and possibly two of the original CV joints are going to go.  Driving under load the clanking resembles nothing so much as a knight in armour out for a morning jog.  So I've got that particular delight awaiting for me, just as soon as the parts get here.  Doubtless I'll find something else to do while I'm under there too, although I'm shocked that, just for once at WOF time, I don't have a sidelight bulb out. 

I'm still enjoying working my way through this previous half-finished novel I talked about last time.  It's a nice retreat after the thriller, not least because it doesn't have the same restrictions on prose that the thriller genre does - I can walk round the whole carnival of language and take it all in if I want.  It's fun, challenging, and going well. 

And last, Coronet Peak opened this weekend.  I'm wearing my ski boots of an evening to bed them in, gazing longingly at my K2's in the corner.  The kids are nearly fully equipped - when will they stop growing? - more snow is forecast for this week, and I reckon the back will stand up well to a couple of days skiing as long as I don't push it too hard, and the chances of getting the opportunity to do that with an 8 year old in tow are slim.  Bring it on!

Getting ready for roadtripping...again

I had another OK day of writing today.  I'm still at a point where I'm going over what has gone before - no teasers yet - but where I'm laying foundations for what's happening next.  Seeing as how I really haven't mapped this bit out, it's exciting, although slow writing.  The plot as it stands so far is pretty detailed and intricate - there's a lot of historical references, which I hope both add interest and authority.  The need to appear authoritative isn't a vain thing in writing, it's essential - it establishes the trust the reader has in the author; and also, as Flaubert said, God is in the details.

I picked up some oil and bits today for servicing the kombi.  I'm planning a roadie on my own down to the Catlins sometime in the next couple of weeks, should the surf and weather co-operate.  The days are pretty short and the nights long, so it'll probably be a one or two night deal, I think.  I'll take the laptop and write while the battery lasts.  My writing career began travelling: I consciously started pursuing this writing dream when I worked out at sea as an observer on Spanish fishing boats on Newfoundland's Grand Banks.  Over four months I penned the bones of what is probably the world's worst novel.

I vividly remember taking this photograph after a morning's writing; on the morning of the first day of the new millennium, feeling the ache of missing my eighteen-month old daughter and wife. I finished that novel two years later, and it occupies a proud position on my bookshelf from where it never moves.  It sits there taunting me really - I am your work.  As a motivator it's quite powerful:  there's a strong sense that in this awful work is something I have to atone for. Yet I'm equally proud of it: it's the stamp that marks the beginnings of my apprenticeship.

The first sketches of that novel were done a couple of years before, on my own again in a plain pension on the small island of Graciosa, just off Lanzarote. In between picking urchin spines out of my feet and trying to stem the flow of blood from scalp wounds - all marks of honour from tackling a heaving left-hander five miles daily walk away - I started writing out characters.  I would never have thought then that Graciosa would be the birthplace of something that would stick with me and possess me like writing - trying to tell stories - has done ever since.  Funny and powerful things happen on the road.

So when I travel solo I always look for and make room to discover new things in my writing.  Hopefully it'll be the same going down to the Catlins.  I'm timing this because I think that I'll be running into blockages soon, and the trip might just head those off.    But before then, I need to change the oil, adjust the valves, fix a couple of leaking pushrod seals and change the dipstick boot, a task which promises to have me swearing in new and interesting ways.

Unsatisfying interior adventures

Yes, that title's just one of the many reasons I should never try writing erotica.  Went for a spin on Sunday looking for inspiration.  Drove through a beautiful landscape, so different from what's outside the door, only an hour from home.

Gravel roads, beautiful hills, almost no traffic - it was old volkswagen heaven.

Except you can't go near any of it.  We drove for nearly a hundred miles through stunning scenery and saw not a fence, not a lay-by, not one foot-track - just mile after mile of barbed wire.  Finally got to a place called Middlemarch and found a footpath, but couldn't take the dog on it.  Maybe the Taeri council - if there is one - might like to put up a giant sign that says simply: Fuck Off.  It's in the subtext anyway.  If I had an ounce of her talent I'd be doing a kiwi version of Fay Godwin's Our Forbidden Land - someone needs to, before it's too late.


On a happier note, the book's been going very well.  I haven't felt any of the symptoms of running out of steam: I still know where I'm going tomorrow.  I'm annotating my first draft with comments in Word, highlighting all the little things I'm spotting as I'm going that I need to do better or find out:  do Royal Jordanian Airways, for example, serve Alcohol?  (I doubt it.)  Is all their in-flight food halal?  Have I shown my hero's back-story enough - shown that he's made of the right stuff?  (Not yet...) As it is, I'm currently confining my research to establishing the points without which I can't move the story on.  It feels like the right thing to do - to keep the flow going...

Jelly-shouldered and running out of steam

More waves today. I felt tired as soon as I woke up this morning: I think I must have - quite uncharacteristically - caught so many waves yesterday that my arms and shoulders did their week's quota of paddling in one hit. In situations like this I can usually expect the sympathy from the rest of the family to manifest itself as an evening of being called upon to change light-bulbs, fetch things off high shelves, or serve tea with my feet while doing a handstand - anything for the thrill of watching me cry, in fact. I'm not the world's fastest paddler - in fact it's safe to say that if you ever find yourself being out-paddled by me, you need to get your fat arse in a swimming pool, pronto. As for me, I'm not fat. Just insulated.

I don't feel as if I'm running out of steam with the novel, exactly - more that I'm hitting the technical bits which have got to be got right, inevitably making the going somewhat slower. So my word count for the day is pretty modest and I'm going to have to find some time this weekend to ensure that the momentum that I have is conserved. I'm not working to any hard and fast deadline for the first draft, but I want to have the luxuries of putting it away between drafts, of taking breaks when it gets a bit much. If I'm going to get to the final finish line of a finished article within the year, hitting walls is a luxury I can't afford.

I can afford to run the bus, though. For some reason, after having the rear suspension set, it's decided that not only does it enjoy keeping up with the other traffic really, but that it'll do so while doing 23 to the gallon. For an old VW bus, that's almost the height of parsimony. Of course, it's made up for this by springing another oil leak, but with a sheet of newspaper and a squint I can be in denial for months - not a strategy that works for premature ejaculation. Apparently...

On a lighter note, the main highway in and out of Dunedin is closed by the city's second bomb scare in 24 hours. I wonder if it's anything to do with the latitude - do Dunedinites have the same kind of pull that leads Swedes to kill themselves like lemmings, or Finns to drink more meths than water? Well, there'll be plenty of material for another book, anyway...

Not the day I expected...

There I was expecting a beautiful, sunny day - like yesterday. I had visions of hiding from the sun in the van after a nice, sunburney-face kind of a surf, willing myself to get something done before I reluctantly trudged home.

Instead it was grey and cold, and I had the heater running at full blast in the van, which is to say that I had a faint trickle of warmth on the downhills and a blast of the good stuff on the ups. I found a little right point down the coast with one guy there, getting out pretty much as soon as I arrived. The pictures are from later on once it got a bit of wind on it, and you can't really tell that it was nicely overhead. But when I arrived it was sheet glass perfection, zipping down the sandbar. My backhand's usually left on the beach, so it was a double pleasure to actually have it in the water with me today.



Then afterwards, I drove down towards Taeri and found a beautiful place to park up and write. I poured myself a cup of coffee and that was that - next thing I knew I'd knocked out a thousand good words and left it right where I knew I could pick it up. How's this for a view from the office?



I thought today was going to be a good day, but it was better. It was one of those that'll have an index card all of it's own in the surfing ledger, to be pulled out and enjoyed again and again. Suddenly, the homesickness for Taranaki and warmer waves I was feeling seems to have dimmed. How much are those electric suits again?