Ke Nui Bike Path and a Late Afternoon shoot at Off The Wall

The Gitzo tripod after a pipe washup set wave snuck....sorry, raced up the beach and past the fence line I was standing against taking me and everyone else on the beach out.

I was in waist deep ocean for about 4 to 6 seconds struggling to hold on to everything and save what I could, and shock for about 5 minutes after that little episode, but as I said in a previous post. I got off lightly compared to a lot of other people who lost every thing they had down there.

A link to a Volcom clip of a few smashing wipeouts from the comp over previous days http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yvXZEAmBuSw

A locksmith had to come across the island from Honolulu and opened about 20 cars and cut keys to get them going again as the owners had lost all their gear in that washup....bags, wallets, phones, keys etc. etc, whatever they had on the beach was gone and probably sitting out on the Pipe reef somewhere. He was charging about $250 a pop to do the job so he had a very profitable little afternoon. I lost one thong that had pretty well had it's day anyway....I got camera gear and tripod damage but at least I still have everything.

Meta.....thats what'you call it. The shooter shooting the shooter shooting the subject.

Please tell me why !

Read the freeking blog if you want to know what I'm on about.

Hands up....who wants to be here !!!

Today was a bit of an R n R day, surf is small (by Hawiian standards anyway, the photos will let you make up your own mind about that) so I borrowed a bike and did the pedal from Pipeline west along the bike track as far as Sharks Cove to the surf shop which is owned by Liam McNamara as I wanted to catch up with him and let him know that I shot and filmed the wild ride Garrett McNamarra had at Pipe a couple of days ago in that huge swell.

All went well there and I headed back along the track and home to fix a scraping back wheel mudguard on the deadly cycle that was driving me nuts. I filmed the ride on the little GoPro camera (hand held though I have to say) and you can hear the back wheel scraping the whole way.

Got back to the house and fixed the wheel then hit the bike track again but this time up to the east to Sunset Beach and beyond (hand held camera again) no mudguard sound thank god.

Stopped here and there, nearly mowed down a bus load of pensioners at Sunset wandering all over the bike track and not looking around them (it was big time wobble cam around that area) and kept going until the end of the track.

Turned around and headed back home stopping at the Volcom Houses for a look at the beach on on the way......the big clean up after the comp was happening.

I ran into one of the girls there who is a good friend of Sion Milosky's wife (Sion died surfing Mavericks in California last year.... click on link below)

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=sion%20milosky&source=web&cd=6&sqi=2&ved=0CFEQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsports.espn.go.com%2Faction%2Fsurfing%2Fnews%2Fstory%3Fid%3D6226585&ei=AuY8T8i5I6H-mAXq2a3JBw&usg=AFQjCNEBjFHK3qoFoHjyq-rK41eiZgcVmQ

this link doesn't work, just GOOGLE Sion Milosky.

Had a short talk and then back on the bike (it's pink to would you believe, GOB....no smart ass comments from you) and on the track back to home.

I wandered down to the beach at OTW to see what was going on once I parked the trusty steed behind the house and it looked like a nice little arvo shooting session there would fit in well for late afternoon/sunset on my second last day, I love shooting Off The Wall, it's so " in your face" so to speak. I can set up right on the waterline a lot of the time on small days and shoot straight into the barrell a lot of the time, and with the 600 lens I can tell "if they've had a shave or not" as someone so apptly put it a couple of days ago after asking for a look through it at the boys out in the lineup, I thought it was a pretty good description of it actually....................which brings me to the question of why two beautiful young girls in G strings would walk up the beach (from behind) three photographers, all busy looking through cameras out into the lineup, and all with serious equipment for pulling images in close and doing it very well....continue straight past us for about 30 meters to line up perfectly with the surfers out the back and then proceed to drop towells and go and frollick in the ocean pointing their butts directly at us.....the whole three of us just looked at each other at exactly the same time in disbelief, smiled at each other all thinking "what the hell's this all about" and hit the shutter at 12 frames per second in unison and then got back to work.

They eventually went up towards the Oakley team house up to our right, and I'm guessing that they will be scanning the surf mags in the coming months to see thier butts starring in them.

Tomorrow is my last day on the island and there is another expected kick in swell overnight, so hopefully I'll get another day down the beach before I get on the big metal bird to fly home. There will also be packing etc to be done, so I probably wont get to post here again until I get home.

It's been the trip to remember in more ways than one I can tell you.

My dear mum has passed away and will be dearly missed, and I will remember exactly the moment I found out.

I've seen Pipeline at it's absolute epic best which has been a lifelong dream. It's even like mum "gifted" this too me as I was seriously contemplating cancelling the whole trip due to concerns about her health.

I'm coming home to have 9 hours at home if I'm very lucky and then get on another plane to go and do one of the hardest things in my life.

One very simple single thing that happened on the beach the other day on the final day of the Volcom Pro seems to put it all in some sort of frame for me tonight.

I got down there (to a new spot on higher ground up at Ehukai Beach Park after getting washed out the other day) set up all my gear and realised that I had left one thing at home..... my water bottle (in the rush to get down here for the finals}

The lady and guy next to me started chatting over the next hour (her more than he). She had recognised my Aussie accent and mentioned a house swap sometime as she always wanted to check out AU and figured out that I come here a bit.

In the course of conversation, she must have gathered somewhere along the line that I was waterless in the Hawaiian sun and on my own with equipment that I couldn't leave unattended.

I thought nothing of it.......I was just going to deal with it until I went back to the house. She said something as I was looking through the camera (I thought she was talking to her partner) and then she walked off up the beach and he stayed.

Ten minutes later she turns back up while I'm shooting....says something to her friend and I think nothing of it again. She waits until I'm not shooting and then holds out her hand with a smile and a can of drink for me...........I thank her profusely and offer her money, she refuses with a "hands up gesture" I thank her again.

Fifteen minutes later I feel bad about not paying her when I had only met her half an hour ago, I just go into my backpack and pull out two "greenbacks" and hold it out to her and say "please take it" ......she just looks at me and says "no.............Aloha"

And that my friends is the true Hawaiian spirit.

And on that note, it is 12.25am (my last day) and I can actually hear the swell building, so uploading photos may have to wait until tomorrow if I get time ........I suppose I had better put at least one up tonight in case tomorrow is all beach and doesn't happen. But that's all good with me I have to say.

Check in tomorrow or in a couple of weeks , but do come back as I will update on things that I haven't had time to do over here.

Thanks for tuning in on this trip.

Aloha and mahalo for the "big west".

Just Another Day On The North Shore...

One of the Gudinskis (I will have to check the spelling on that name) brothers taking a cusual drop from the ceiling of a nice one.

He's waving to the camera if you look hard enough. Or is it all the hot chicks on the beach !!!

Don't know, so please don't ask....just "pick up your rubbish and take it with you....Mahalo.

A real "smoker" this one, with a nice thick lip.

The boys and the camera rig on the ski going for gold outrunning one of the grinders that came through.

Mmmmmm....Yep, whatever !

More power from mother ocean.

My camera rig and video setup. The SLR hanging off the 600 L Series to the right obviously, the video on its bracket to the left, then we have the FUEL TV cameraman getting a low angle right in front of me on the beach, and the chick waving to the queen at centre.

Flynn Novak about to give a nice looking Pipe wall a real flogging.

Is this getting down to business or what. Flynn Novak, committed and focused ?

Instead of me just ranting on about everything I am including a couple of clickable links below to profesional video footage from days one and three of the Volcom Pipe Pro and a view of the place from below the surface. I know you wouldn't believe me if I told you how good it's been so I wont........someone elses footage can make my point. I have the same in my files but it's going to take me a while to sort through it all.

I never seem to have the time to go through everything and edit it down to put here so it will happen over the coming weeks when i get home. I will try and get some pics up tonight or tomorrow though.

The links are well worth checking out (even if you do not surf) and particularly so if you do. I've never had a run of waves this good all the time I've been coming here.

Yesterdays swell was a full west swell, which I have always wanted to get but never have. They have always been west/north west which are still really good, but west is the ultimate and they rarely come, maybe one per season....and it was a big solid one when it arrived.

It was a photo by Aaron Chang i saw years ago of Pipeline in a west swell that sarted all this thing with me (which by the way is still stuck up on my factory wall in A4 size at home as I sit here......now I'll be able to replace it with my own when I get home). Well now I have witnessed it live on the beach and documented it accordingly and I will say that I am coming home with a hard drive that is totally overloaded with prime images and video footage (thanks for getting me into gear on that side of things Derek and yes, there will be a movie/slide night a bit later after I get home)

The first link below is day three Of the comp, the perfect west swell day that I've been dreaming about for decades. If you take note at about the 1 minute 10 second mark you'll see the guy in red looking up at the roof of the wave. Above, is posted the digital SLR image of that same moment that I shot from the beach.

Make sure you click the "full screen"tab at bottom right of the youtube page to watch these.....enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7jRkNHHyaA&feature=email

This one is a view from under the break of what these guys are surfing over and it gives you a bit of an idea of the risks being taken......the water ain't that deep and the waves sure as hell are big, the reef is only a meter or so beneath the waterline. Full screen again please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKJl6qLZBOA&feature=email

I will come back later and talk more about the day of carnage on the beach that I mentioned in the last post a bit later, and also the OTHER big beautiful day before that that I've been talking about.....there's just not enough hours in the day to cover it all.

This last link will give you a bit of an idea of what I'm talking about when I was saying "carnage on the beach" and a lot of people lost a lot of valuables a couple of days ago. You can see in this footage talking to Dave Wasell (competitor and North Shore lifeguard) where the ocean just suddenly washes up under the TV crew and judges stands etc, and that wasn't even the day all the shit went down....the swell was only starting to build in this footage. All this happened 24 hours later after the thing got really out of control. I watched Stephen Koehene get carried of the beach after that injury and I can tell you the fin chop or whatever got into him left him with a gaping wound about the size of an orange . Full screen again !

http://youtu.be/-5gROzdYBa4

Ok.....photo uploading time. It's midnight here and I'm up for a bit of sleep, I'm that worn out I can hardly think....i mean drink.....I mean, I don't know what I mean, but before I go, two questions please.

Number one.......does anyone know how to make the photos upload where you want them to in "Blogger" I've tried everything and it seems totally random as to where they end up when I click "publish" as does my font selection and colour. I have never had this issue before on any of my other previous blog posts over the past years ?

Number two........how much do we pay in Australia for a 750ml bottle of Jim Beam Bourbon, isn't it around $30 AU.

Over and out for tonight. stay tuned for more tomorrow maybe.

One of my bits of footage of a booger dicing with death before I go.

http://youtu.be/g3sF5MCu6b0

The Horizon Is On Fire....Totally.

Working below sea level...!

And I mean that.

Pipe is not only showing her teeth as one of the previous posts said, but her gums and very gnarly and deep throat also...........and I DO have the proof !

I have seen some hardass shit go down here over my trips, but this one (and particularly Saturday and today Monday) are hands down "off the hook" so to speak. The place has lit up like a freeking christmas tree over those two days and I feel 100% honoured to have witnessed it.

Where do I start........... I suppose by admitting that I am a few days behind in blogging here.

You have to understand, that when it gets as good as this, it's hard not to become too feral....cooking, eating, washing, laundry, blogging, emails etc...etc all come second to downloading and backing up if there is time. It's hard to get everything done at night to be prepped up for the next day, the time is just not there to do it all, so the blog suffers when the swell is up, and just quietly..............I bloody well love that. Suffer a whole lot more I say.

This entry you are reading now by rights should be totally dedicated to Saturday if I can control myself ( but.....I'm typing it on Monday night, 8.30pm after witnessing and documenting Garrett MacNamara get the ride of his life mid morning here from second reef Pipe into just before the beach where he got nailed by the beast that is Pipe) as Saturday was such a mental day in its own right. The Volcom Pipe Pro started off in the morning in good solid surf. They pulled the pin on it mid morning as the general consensus was that it was getting too dangerous ?????? don't know about that.

Admittedly, it was getting pretty screwed up and evil around then, but about lunch time the magic started to materialise and when it did, by god, was it primo or what.

Before I left Australia as you know, I sent a lot of people in my address book a link to this blog. One of them was Doug from San Diego, whom Wendy, Samara and I met while we where in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico in '07 .

Well it turns out Doug has now moved to Oahu HI, and when he got my email, replied back that we should hook up while I was here. We organised it as good as we could via email and text to meet at "Pipe" on the Saturday as the Volcom comp was on and he was also coming across to the North Shore to have a surf anyway .

I had been back at the house for lunch and downloading and dumping CF cards and video hard drives after the mornings shooting getting ready for hopefully a good afternoon.

I figured Doug would turn up at the beach park so started wandering down the Ke Nui bike path towards there at the designated time. I came to the walkway between the two Volcom houses and thought I would go and have a look as the action would be well viewed from there.

I'm standing there looking at Pipe with my back towards the walkway for about 3 minutes thinking I had a bit of time up my sleeve when I get a tap on the shoulder....I turn around and it's Doug and Kristen. Doug had spotted me walking into the walkway, while parking up the road a bit.

After the initial greetings we just hung there looking at the screwed up surf for about half an hour, then realised it was starting to build and look really clean, groomed and offshore. We were still standing between the Volcom houses but decided to head down to the beach and just chilled taking it all in and it kept getting better. I couldn't help myself, and up and bolted back to the house to get the cameras, came back and set up beside Doug and Kristen and just sat there for the rest of the afternoon getting blown away by perfect Pipeline and documenting it all...it truly was something to see. It was so close to dark when we walked up off the beach it didn't matter, it was a full day. Every man, tourist and his dog was down there checking out the action.

I think I've behaved myself quite well here not talking about today, so I will sign out for now and try and stay awake long enough to post a couple of pics with this entry and hopefully post again tomorrow night on that very interesting subject.

A lot of people on the beach lost a lot of valuable stuff today.....phones, cameras wallets, handbags etc, and I was so, so close to being one of them, but more of that tomorrow (if tomorrow's not good at the beach, which it bloody well will be goddam it. I can't take much more.

Cheers.......

It's 11pm and the roosters are crowing... what's that all about, I'm just thinking about going to bed !!!!!

Video link from Volcom Pro Tuesday 31st Jan ....HI time. http://youtu.be/si32wAvEqis

Solid and Glassy Today By The Look Of It ......

Maybe tomorrow.............. !!!

They didn't call the movie Blue Hawaii for nothing...How clear, blue and glassy does it get . It looks like you could just stick your

hand into the face of this wave and grab the ocean floor.....is that

what he's thinking right here, or is he looking at a very pointy fibreglass missile coming at him !!!

Military touch and go's at Hickam Air Force Base.

Attack on the lip.

Doggy happiness is the beach............am I right ?

Shooting the shooter shooting the rider. The water photogs are a real part of it all and are right out in the middle of the action.

Solid.......yes it was, but not huge. Just nice and SOLID.

The view towards Sunset Beach with all that goes with it.

A quick look at the beach has got me running out the door this morning............happy birthday to me indeed. Talk later if it's as good as it looks. O and O.

Wax On.....Australia Day at Home, D Day Here....!

Decca.....before you go telling me off for not editing and adding music before I post, I don't have editing software on my laptop over here or the time and inclination to be editing. I just thought i'd get a bit of footage up just for you seeing you rattled me up to shoot vid. I'll edit and enhance when I get home.....soooooo I apologise for the heads etc wandering through but you'll get the general idea of how it's been (if it even works) and I've got plenty more of these top sort out. Check it out .

http://www.youtube.com/watch

Thick and meaty.....and hungry !

Speed on glass...doesn't get much better.

The spongers were having a ball out there this day...no holding back at all.

Sorry Wen..... I had to put one in here for the boys !

Is that a decent sort of camera rig or what.

Casualty.

I've called this post "WAX ON" as you can see, and for no more reason than I thought this shot just turned out interesting. It was just a random click of the shutter at zero notice when I swung my head around and looked up west in between sets towards Waimea Bay and saw this guy stick his board nose in the sand and do whatever he's doing. He also got heaps of good rides through the day by the way.

I have been down then beach a bit this morning shooting at Off The Wall for a bit of a change. A lot smaller than yesterday (5 to 7 foot) but perfect side/offshore winds grooming the wave faces. I've decided to give it a break this arvo and get some computer work done instead at long last instead of just throwing a few pics up at night after a monster beach day.

The big stuff is on the way again so there won't be much home time coming up. From what I can work out things should pretty well be lighting up again over the weekend....not huge but nice, and they may call the Volcom Pro...... then on about the 30th a fair beast is reportedly going to push in, we'll wait and see again on that one though.

I mentioned in the first post of this trip about SURFLINE forecasting rarely being wrong. I still stick with that theory and think that the 29 foot forecast I was mentioning was a rare stuff up on their behalf . A good solid swell did turn up, albeit a day late, it was still big and good, it just wasn't 29 feet. (thinking back though, it was actually 18 to 29 feet they forecast and there were some freeking big sets came through that day) anyway, as I said, we'll wait and see.

The images that you see above on this post are all from the one day and are a fairly hurried sort of a pick. As I get more time I will ad more images from the respective days.

The boys where all over it again yesterday in these waves, well and truly big enough but not killer size. There were quite a few standout moments with plenty of good rides being snaffled and the very occasional one sneeking through unridden.....pretty well unheard of for here. It would be like getting a wave at Snapper on the Goldy on your own without anyone dropping in on you....it's just not going to happen. The difference with Pipe and Snapper though is that here you just hang on and go for broke. It's quite simply balls out, make the drop, turn at the bottom as quick as you can, tuck up in the barrell and enjoy the warp speed 6 second ride and hopefully get blasted out over the shoulder in a big ejected pressure spray at the end a very happy individual. A Snapper ride can go on for about a minute some days with about 20 other dudes dropping in on you and sharing it. This ain't the place to be dropping in I can tell you that (and for more than just the obvious reasons) It does happen, but probably not as often as you would think given the size of the pack out there all floating around in a pretty rewstricted take off zone. There is actually a lot of respect here and plenty of aloha also if you do the right thing. Then everyone's happy.

On the subject of dropping in, I don't really know what goes on with the spongers, but as in one of the pics above, they do seem to appear in quite a few shots in very close proximity to board riders, and as in the above mentioned shot quite often get the same sort of treatment as this guy is copping. Anyway, it's pretty entertaining watching some of them and the shit they get up to.

Pipe Finally Bares Her Teeth.

And the boys are all over it.

I had this blog entry all written up at about midnight last night , then pressed a wrong key and apparently lost everything, so now I'm having another go after a nights sleep.

I was down the beach quite literally in the dark yesterday morning sitting on the rock wall with my coffee waiting for first light as I had heard the swell building overnight. As the dark slowly started to fade into day there it was......a good solid reasonably clean 8 to 10 foot Hawaiian swell had finally pushed in and the crew were already scratching around out there in the dark waiting to attack it. By the time I got back to the house and then back to the beach and set up it was game on.

It's not quite the 19 to 29 foot I was waiting for but it's still Pipeline/Backdoor in all her powerful glory, and quite capable of doing damage....fast and hungry for flesh, and she got her fair share over the course of the day .

As soon as I had set up down there this morning some poor casualty went staggering past towards the lifeguard tower clutching his head with blood running everywhere and two halves of a broken board under his arm, 10 minutes later he was getting helped off the beach with a heavily bandaged head presumably heading off to Waialua hospital to get sewn back together.

There was some truly monster sets creep in through the day catching a lot of the pack off guard and giving them a good old flogging and sending boards everywhere. That's just par for the course out here. There was also some really weird/odd shit going down out there that I can't explain .

One such incident that I caught through the lens a couple of times and thought I was seeing things was of Jamie O'Brien actually charging along the face of a bomb literally carrying another shortboard in his hands/ under his arm. I thought at first it must have just been one of those freekish things where a loose board had come at him as he was dropping down the face and somehow he had grabbed it to stop himself getting scalped, but no.........that didn't turn out to be the case.

It was a planned event and I saw it happen a few times through the day, there were water photogs shooting it all from out in the lineup. He was taking off while laying on the shorty on the longboard, making the drop down the face and setting up for the run through Backdoor........then, he would quite casually get up and hold the shortboard out with two hands towards the face of the wave, bail from the blue longboard and go charging into the pit on the shorty. Five minutes later I'd see him on the beach in front of me picking up the obviously unbreakable blue plastic longboard. This did happen a few times through the day and really was a piece of work to witness. Please don't ask me the reasoning behind it as I have no idea. If I get to catch up with him before I leave I'll let you know.

Anyway, the rest of the day consisted of whales breaching and playing out behind the break, a big yacht disappearing up and down into the swell troughs just behind the break also, choppers buzzing around over head and the usual array of strange sights on the beach....the beautiful right through to the downright wrong (shouldn't be out in public with so little clothing type wrong I mean) and just the plain odd sights. Bodysurfers in dickstickers out in the break taking on 10 foot pipe. Three of those guys plopped themselves right next to me later in the day and I ended up chatting to them. They were from San Diego, Calif and had been out here for an annual bodysurfing comp that had just run over the other side of the island....they thought they'd give Pipe a crack while they were here.

OK, I'll post a couple of pics and sign out for now and go and have a sniff around. The swell is down considerably today I do know that, but theres more on the way and they are setting up all the staging/scaffold, cabling, etc for the "Volcom Pipeline Pro" which will probably run in the next pulse of decent swell to hit........charge batteries, format CF cards and get ready to go again.

See ya and talk again soon.

Cheers,

Mal