Still On Tour

Art, Santa Barbara.

It feels like this is all taking longer than the tour itself. At this point we've left young Andrew on the point at Rincon with Skip and run for home and a couple of nights in an actual bed. Not much time for relaxation as within a couple of days I'm heading back up for the show at the A-Frame Gallery in Santa Barbara. Kidman has actually done very well, he's shot rolls of film of Skip and crew surfing and Joe Curren has finished the handmade wood frames you see in the photo above. Joe has definitely inherited his Dad's hand for cabinet work- the frames really are pretty fantastic especially given the deadline we stuck the poor guy with. Show goes well and low key. Nice space in the middle of Santa Barbara with lots of pretty over the top Dan Merkel hypercolour photos and a couple of insane Yater boards that Kevin Ancell has done inlays on- one has a huge abalone shell somehow worked into the deck. My photo unfortunately came out horribly but it's worth stopping into the place to check the boards out if you're in the area. This was also the first of 3 times we wound up blowing off Scott Bass and his radio show. I actually feel bad about that as Bassy was being cool and trying to help us out. Bassy, if you're reading this sorry and don't you have somethng more important to do? Of great delight to me was the fact I got in the water this past Saturday. Santa Monica is never the best, especially with close period high tide windswell, but I wandered down the beach away from the crowd and found a sandbar throwing up the odd chest high and fast corner. I most definitely not 100% and had the paddle power of a four year old, yet notched up a couple of decent runs on the fish before the conditions went south. Crappy session yet I felt infinitely better afterwards for having simply got in the water. 9Fish were doing a demo thing too- sorry to say it but those are some shitty looking surfboards. If you're going to buy a mass market board, at least buy one that looks like it'll work.