Around The World In 80 Waves

In some kind of preemptive ‘hair of the dog that bit me’ effort I have been drinking Great White beer for the last few days, which I am hoping will be enough innoculation against the Men in Grey Suits. I set off driving south with my new learn to speak Spanish CDs blaring on stereo. I have a month to progress beyond the current extent of my Spanish – ‘cerveza por favor’

Kevin’s local break is Ocean Beach where the city meets the sea. While I decide how keen I am on being shark bait I watch the locals catching some awesome rides.

I have to get in and am encouraged by the dolphins or porpoises which are hanging around just outside of the break. They know much better than I do what is under the water so if they are comfortable then so am I (he lied!) It is quite a tough paddle out and I really notice my winter suit compared with surfing in shorts in Hawaii, but I get out despite having made the schoolboy error of not changing the wax on my board from warm to tropical water to the cold water wax needed here. However the wrong wax hardens in the water and the top of my board is like greased glass. I really have a nightmare and the thought of the angry fish that are about is doing nothing to settle my mind. Loads of pelicans fly through the break inches above the wave which is very mellow, unlike my surfing. I am slipping off the board every time I take off and then am getting whumped by the masive surf. Time and time again it happens until I have had enough.

It is my first blank of the trip and I get out when the sun goes down conscious that it is when the fish are feeding. The gorgeous sunset isn’t enough to lift my spirits so after buying some cold water wax I head for the British pub a little further down the coast. Five pints of Boddingtons later all is good with the world.

If you are thinking of sending stuff home, DON’T unless you are willing to be financially raped! $50 to send a flag a couple of books and some paperwork home.

There are many ways to order eggs in the US. Aparently ‘Not Snotty’ is not one of them.

This gives a shark’s eye view of how things look on the surface of the water when the big fish are feeling hungry. It isn’t altogether surprising that occasionally they decide to have a nibble on a human popsicle to see what they taste like.

I am more than a little bit nervous of such things in this area, a situation which is not aided by my surf guide saying (and I’m quoting directly) that getting in the water here represents a “very real prospect of becoming a great white shark’s evening meal.” Hmmmm!!!! Apparantly it is even worse if you cross the Golden Gate Bridge and head north into Marin County and beyond. However the chances are incredibly slim of anything actually happening. Thousands and thousands of surfers get in the water every day here without incident, so it is highly unlikely anything will happen to me. But…

I found this online but am not sure it helps at all. Thankfully the further south I travel the less likely I am to see one of these. However once I get a roof rack swerving Northern California altogether may well be on the cards. The ‘Red Triangle’ as the area immediately south of San Francisco is rather worryingly known is not something I am finding at all appealing if I am honest.

The Aussies used to have a shark repellant surf wax which was guaranteed against shark attack or your money back, which was clearly of no use at all but it might have settled my mind a little.

It is New Year’s Day and I cant sort out most of the things I need to because it is a public holiday so I go for a ride in the Little Green Surf Machine up to the wine growing region of Napa Valley and Sonoma which are north of San Francisco. You are never too far from the Earth’s core in this part of the world and there is a Geyser at the top of the valley called ‘Old Faithful’ It isn’t the massive one you may have heard of in Yellowstone National Park, but it is impressive none the less even if it does smell of rotten eggs.

The valley is beautiful and I cant resist buying a case of its finer produce. Cynthia at Dean & Deluca has the easiest sale in the world persuading me to part with far too much money for 2 x Longboard Merlot (for obvious reasons), 2 x HDV Belle Cousine (I’m no slave to the works of Bacchus but I believe this is quite a nice drop), 2 x Chateau Montelena Chardonnay (famous for being the first Californian wine to beat the French in a taste test – immortalisd in the charming movie Bottle Shock http://www.bottleshockmovie.com/), as well as a few more to make up a case to enjoy on my travels. 

It has been a great day and I attach my Go Pro to the dashboard for the journey back to San Francisco. It is really too dark because the sun was going down by the time I left the Napa Valley but I got this funky shot as I crossed the Golden Gate bridge.

Happy New Year everyone. Hope 2013 is a good one for you.

I spent the turning of the New Year last night in the Balboa Bar and Grill which is one of San Francisco’s famous boozers, however as with home New Year is overpriced, overcrowded and underwhelming, even if the local tottie was looking magnificient in all their finery.  

Hope it is great year for you all. As you know I have one or two things planned myself.

🙂

The car I have bought is great but I need to get the board on the roof if only to create space for me to sleep in it from time to time. It would also be good to have some company at various stages of the journey so I MUST sort out a roof rack. However it is turning into a Grail Quest, and a painful one at that. Everywhere says they are open online but I drive halfway across the city to each vendor who is either closed, hostile, locking up having sent the staff home early, but most importantly for all of them unable to sell me the final piece of a three piece jigsaw which I must collect before departing. Sadly I will now have to wait two days until people start answering phones and I can even get an ETA on when I can lay my hands on the last bit of kit.

Having all that grief and having to do other very boring stuff like walking for an hour to find a post office which closed 10 minutes before I got there, printing off and finalising my limited company’s accounts for last year, etc means this is a really frustrating day. It is New Year’s Eve so I will have to go out and raise a glass to sooth my furrowed brow.

I did the test drive when buying the vehicle but need to open it up to see what it will perform like over the long drive I have planned for it. After taking some tips from this bloke (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuDN2bCIyus) on how best to cope with the crazy streets of San Francisco I originally plan to catch up with some of Kevin’s friends down in Santa Cruz.

However the pace of traffic and the number of Sunday drivers on the road are turning it into a painful experience. Due to havving the board squeeze into the Beetle with me I cant see the ocean on my right as I drive south which takes the fun out of things, so I gladly pull into a ‘British’ pub I spot at the side of the road near Half Moon Bay.

As well as Boddingtons on draft and serving a very fine bangers and mash, they also have a village shope stocked with British goodies. As you can see I have stocked up on the essentials.

I return to San Francisco and go out to enjoy a few beers in Kevin’s local ‘The Tipsy Pig’ where I am treated to my first bar room brawl which is strangely done in silence without reaction from the well heeled crowd drinking in there. Also meet a couple of locals Brady and Kat who were born just as I finished school. He has just come back from Peru and Chile so is a mine of useful information about the area. Another great day.

Now that I am back on the mainland I do not have anything at all planned until my flight out of Lima in Peru to Santiago in Chile at the end of May. To get to Lima I need a surf wagon of some desription and this picture on the box that my ukulele came in gives an impression of the carefree existence I am hoping for.

However anybody who knows me will tell you that I am blessed with a Leper’s touch as far as vehicles are concerned. In the same way that I have a talent for finding great surf lodges I can select the runt of the vehicle litter without even trying. These pictures show some of my more epic failures, but they are far from the whole story.

One shows the car which we got stuck and had to abandon in the Sahara Surf trip (a car after the original one that blew up before we had gone 20 miles in it on that trip) and the other shows the aftermath of my attempt at cornering the market for stunt milkmen back in the early 90s. I have also chased the surf bus ideal before with a 6 wheeled 3.5tonne truck which turned into a vast money pit, so am justifyably nervous about this shopping expedition.

I walk the length of San Francisco and back on one day trying to find second hand dealers. However almost all of them have been put out of business because the US, like the UK, operated a scheme through the credit crunch where decent old cars got scrapped by owners in favour of thousands of discount off their next car, which removed almost all the supply of saleable used cars from the market overnight. Consequently I walk for miles and miles without any joy of even finding more than one used car lot, but towards the end of the day I am directed over to Auto Row in Oakland, which is the nickname for a road of delerships who may have a bought old cars off buyers in order to sell a better vehicle to them, which they in turn may be willing to sell to me within my budget. It is on the other side of San Francisco Bay but accessible by the BART train so I head over there first thing this morning.

Another epic stroll up and down this road, ducking and diving, bobbin and weaving my way through just about every second hand car ruse known to man as I walk along and I realise I will have to spend a wee bit more that I wish if I want something half decent to be my lifeboat, my changing room, my hotel room, my shelter, my dining room, my safety deposit box and my board storage for the next five months.

I actually spot this beauty in the Mitsubishi dealership, which is the first one that I see on day two, but continue down the street and back to ensure I am not missing a different gem. However my scouting doesnt unearth anything worth shouting about, so I go back and haggle like a demon until this lovely VW Beetle is mine for the trip.

I’m not sure if it was the fact that ‘The Love Bug’ was filmed in San Francisco or if it was VW’s huge surfing pedigree but it felt right so I went for it and am now looking forward to kitting it out over the next few days. It looks much better from a distance than it does up close, but the chassis engine and wheels all seem good which is all I am bothered about for now.

Name suggestions would be very welcome, because I can’t think of anything straight away. Anybody?

A funky car for a funky trip. Wooo-hoooo! 

The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) trains are full of the homeless when I return to San Francisco in the middle of the night. It is the only warm place for them to get some sleep and I look distinctly out of place in the hula shirt I wore for the flight back from Honolulu. I see several gettinh hassled by the police and moved along.

All of which is quite a depressing return to the mainland. I head over to Kevin’s place near the Marina and half frighten Jenn to death opening the door in the middle of the night.

I see an awful lot of signs like this which suggest that living in the 21st century can be yours provided you are a patron of the fine establishment. However they dont tell you that you are sharing the net access with all the cheapskates in the neighbourhood who are too tight to pay for their own, and that is before you add the hostel or hotel full of travellers who are trying to download the latest pirated box sets.

My inability to sleep as much as most helps here until the slackers drag themselves out of bed chasing a free instant coffee, because I usually have it to myself for at least an hour. However ‘it’ is still pants, and at times equates to the dial up I remember from the 90s. I have regularly struggled to download a simple text based email, so think this sign would be more appropriate:

As a consequence it looks like my posts may well be feast and famine from now on, as I struggle to find a decent connection from time to time. My apologies for the periodic hits to your inbox when that happens, and sadly I can’t see that improving as I head south from the US.