Home stretch...

Sitting here by the pool of our posada its hard to imagine a place I'd rather be. We are on our last full day of Jericoacoara, and have a big day / night ahead of us. We'll probably head down to the windsurfing area in about 20 mins, hit the water / waves for a few hours, have lunch, then maybe wander around the village a bit for some souvenir shopping, happy hour, etc. Later on we have a big bbq / party here at our posada, then down to the beach for fireworks and the big fiesta. Unfortunately, we have an early departure tomorrow morning at 6:30am (ouch), which gives us two clear options... option 1 = party all night, option 2 = back home by 1:30am for 5 hrs of sleep. I think AP and I are on option 2, Mario-Betto-Rob (all the same person) will probably be on option 1. Tomorrow we travel by 4x4 along the beach and then thru small villages to Forteleza, then to Sao Paulo, then SF. AP and I will stay in SP for a day to visit w/ the Prado familia, and Rob is going to head straight back... so Rob will arrive on Jan 2 in SF and I'll be back on Jan 3. We have a ton to be thankful for this year and look forward to having a great 2006 w/all our great family and friends.

Update from afar... Fernando de Noronha (Brazil)

First few days in Fernando have been very nice, not much happening on the wave front, but we had tons of other fun things to do, including a great scuba trip, hikes to remote beaches, snorkeling, little partying / dancing, eating out, etc.

Today the swell finally bumped up and we had shoulder / head high little barrels on offer down at the local. We both got a few, then I made a bit of a tactical error by dropping in on the one guy that you probably should steer clear of. I'll save the rest of this story for when we get a better connection, trust me though, you will be entertained.

Two more days of great surf ahead of us... keep checking back and we'll update again.

Countdown is on...

Its that time of year... sun, killer food (churrasco), cold beer, beautiful beaches, hammocks (rede), and great waves... where else but BRAZIL! This year two destinations... Fernando de Noronha and Jericocoara.

Unfortunately right now all I can think about is my list... sunblock, first aid kit, cameras, power adaptors, PC cables, white clothes for new years eve, vitamins, duct tape, surf wax, extra leashes, hat, shorts, flip flops, sunglasses, iPOD & speaker, blah, blah, blah. One thing I won't be bringing is my down jacket.

Hopefully we are going to do some posting from the road, we'll see how it works out.

Short vid from Sunday

Here's some footage from Sunday, most of the really big ones didn't hold up so the rides are on the medium sized waves mostly...December 11th, 2005.

Tough Love

Big, clean, gentle off-shores... pretty much perfect I'd say. Saturday started out in the 1.5xOH then hit 2xOH by lunchtime and just got bigger from there. Somewhere around 11am I think I hit my big wave threshold. Hard to say for sure how I know when I've hit my size limit, but somewhere around 2xOH I start surfing 'defensively' instead of 'offensively'. Another indicator is that I start thinking about how the hell I'm going to get in. At the local you'd think its no problem, sand bottom, right? Well, strictly speaking, I guess that's right... but speaking from first hand experience, you can really get stuffed if you don't pick your exit time wisely. AP shot these pics on Sunday AM at the south end, so these are after the swell had completely filled in. There were around 15-20 guys out just going for it... some got glory, some got a heaping spoonful of tough love. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pradoteeple/sets/1567239/

From the streets of outer sunset to the cafes of Milan

Pronto!! Last week made a departure from the mild Norcal winter weather to make a biz trip over to Europe. Normally when I make these trips I hit multiple cities and customers to get more of a cross section of what is happening in the European market... this time we were 100% focused on a single customer in Italy so we just went straight to Milan.

If you haven't been to Milan I'd definitely say it is worth the trip from a tourist perspective. Didn't get much time to kick around, but between the Duomo (pictured), the charm of the older sections of downtown, and the swankiness of the fashion district, its an interesting experience.

I think this is my 3rd or 4th trip to Milan on business and my favorite part of visiting is getting to interact w/ the Italians. What an interesting bunch. First of all, the best thing about Italians (IMHO) is their true appreciation for the good things in life... specifically, great food, fantastic wine, and perfect coffee. Its not just the wealthy upper class either, the appreciation of food and drink seems to span the economic classes. The other thing I always notice when go to Italy is that it seems like every Italian has a sense of personal style that can range from a barely noticeable fashion accessory to full on branded clothes from the latest designer, hair, shoes, etc. Very cool country and great people... ciao!

Retrospect...

Hard to believe this pic is from exactly one week ago today... we were drinking beers at the beach w/ 75F temps, completely surfed-out.

Today the beach is mess, so lets talk a little more about last week...

There are several shots that AP took that are amazing, and really need an audience. So, we've done some editing on a few shots and pulled together the best of the best. You'll be able to tell that the camera likes the barrel shots... we are calling this our 'greatest hits' collection... some nice waves and a few guys were really killing it (Brian or Ben recognize yourselves or any of your buddies in these?).

Click on the below shot and tell me your opinion... is this guy claiming, or is he just trying to keep his balance? Eitherway, you don't see too many standup barrels like this around here... Enjoy.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/byana/67333365/in/set-1453277/

Back to normal, sort of...

Well, looks like things are headed back to normal around here. Last night heavy condensation coated the car and house as the onshore flow returned, bringing cooler temps. The waves have dropped off completely and it really isn't even surfable. Funny thing is that there were several hearty souls out trying to force one last day of surf. The most telling moment came when AP commented, "hey it looks like Pacifica out there"... in other words, knee-high waves with bunches of surfers catching them and going straight.


The next 6 weeks are going to be crazy, we have trips to Italy, NYC, and Brazil, family is visiting, and a huge product launch at work. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it together...

Thanks OB for a great week of surf!!

One for the record books...

How about these past 5 days? This has got to be the best stretch of weather and surfing conditions for years!! I haven't been around that long, but in my 5 years here, this is by far the best I've ever witnessed. Anyway, lucky enough for Matt, he showed up on the very first day and left the last day. Not that I killed it or anything, but even I managed to score a fewe during this stretch. These pics were taken today by my lovely wife... I suck at surfing, but these photos make it look like I might know a little bit about what I'm doing. Go figure. There is a link below with a few others, mostly of me so if you want to see ripping surfers, you won't find it here...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/byana/sets/1417736/

Not bad...

Pretty fun out there this AM... had Gassle and a few pals from OR along. Sort of had to choose if you wanted to sit in the pack on the main peak that was working or hunt and peck in other parts of the beach w/ less crowd. We opted for the later and didn't get REALLY great waves, but got quite a few nice ones and no hassles from drop-ins.


For all the times we complain about surfing here, it only takes a few days like this to make you forget. Here are some pics that AP took...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pradoteeple/sets/1393493/

WTF..?? Offshores!!!!

Check this out... 10mph EAST wind!! Thats offshore... oh yeah, did I mention that its sunny and 74F outside? Get it...

Mulligan

Wasn't Woody Allen the guy who has that quote...'90% of success is just showing up'? I'm sure the quote has some good applications in life, but probably not so much for surfing. Saturday ended up peaking around 13' @ 16 secs, which is a hair smaller than the big day that Joe and Rob killed it on 10/23.

So I showed up and had a pretty successful paddle out.. but from here it gets a little confusing, for some reason I managed to convince myself that I'd get my share of bombs by hanging on the shoulder. The results of my strategy are well documented in the video... anyway, BIG thanks to AP for waking up at 5:15am and driving down w/ me and to Rob for doing his very best (unsuccessfully) to drag me out to the main peak. Nothing left but to take a mulligan on this one and see you guys out there next time.
JT

Friday glide

Hey don't these guys have jobs?!! Nothing like cutting work a little early on a Friday to get in a little surf.




Here's Betto on a nice forehand... we paddled out a little too far north, so didn't manage to get any of the bigger ones, but these were fun.











And finally JT, once again the camera didn't fully capture how much I killed it out there today... somehow in photos I always look like a flailing, stiff, 40 year old... wait a minute, uh never mind.













more pics here... http://www.flickr.com/photos/pradoteeple/sets/1346410/

Swell approacheth

10 years ago I used to be into whitewater kayaking up in Oregon. It was a great way to experience the outdoors and have fun w/ good friends. Photo to the left is me on the White Salmon River... must be at least 12 years ago. We started out doing pretty mellow rivers, but it was only a matter of time before we began pushing ourselves into more and more challenging runs. Of course it depends on your skill level, and its not like we were cheating death on a regular basis or anything, but we were running class IV rapids pretty regularly. Anyway, when we would come up on a difficult rapid, usually we'd pull off, scout it, then get back in the boat and run it.


The thing that used to really get to me was the 'butterflies' you get when you are back in your boat, have you spray skirt sealed, helmet on and ready to shove off. While you are sitting there, a measure of how difficult the rapid was, had to do with how many deep breaths you need to take to get your nerve up... one deep breath, ok, two deep breaths, pretty serious, three deep breaths, do I belong here? The pic here is of my buddy Grant (I wasn't on this trip) but clearly the tricky thing here is to make sure you clear the spout enough so you don't get pulled back behind the curtain... looks easier than it is I'm sure. I wonder how many deep breaths he took? Maybe none, who knows.


Fast forward 10 years, completely different sport, but if you have an idea about how swell size and periods work (bouy data), you can see that we have a monster swell approaching for Saturday. This thing should result in 18 - 20 foot faces... Mavericks will be producing 30 foot waves, helicopters will be buzzing the coast, wave-ski and surf-tow crews will be cruising the coastline, etc. The butterflies are back & I may need a few deep breaths before the AM paddle out.

SF Native

Samba is one of the few in the Sunset who can claim to be a SF native. Most who live here in the Sunset are Chinese, followed by Russian, then American transplants. I'm not sure at what point Samba stopped being a cat and started being a member of our family, guess it was probably somewhere between when we picked her up from the shelter and when we got home. When we let her out of her cardboard box, she didn't run and hide under the bed, didn't shake with fear, or anything else that you might expect of a cat going thru relocation... she jumped up on my chair walked up my arm and said hello.

AP thinks Samba likes me more than her, but I'm not so sure. I think it just seems like that because AP is home most of the time with Samba and when I leave for work and come home, she (Samba, not AP) follows me around the house for the rest of the evening. I think Samba and AP get along just fine.

Generations

Chet Helms. After my morning surf on Sunday, AP and I decided to have breakfast down at our favorite organic cafe Feel Real (4001 Judah). This place is amazing, besides tasting great, the food just bursts with nourishment and all things good. Over breakfast I noticed in the Guardian that later in the afternoon there would be an event in GG park that was some sort of 'tribal stomp'... and then there was something else that had to do with commemorating some guy named Chet Helms (photo on left is him) who just passed away (he was only 62). Since it was just a few blocks away in speedway meadow, we decided to go check it out. What an interesting experience. I don't think either of us really fully understood what the whole thing was about, but apparently this guy Chet Helms was some sort of activist who organized several of the biggest and most impactful demonstrations / music events in the 60s in SF area. To learn more about Chet helms, go tho the Chet Helms profile (published by the SF Cronicle), what we learned was that Chet was the real deal, a SF original and one of the people who had a huge influence on the development of the whole 60s movement. The weight of the event really started to hit us when we had a closer look at the profile of the crowd... and it was a BIG crowd.

Think original hippie... average age in the crowd was easily in the 50s with tons of people who were well into their 60s, all clad in funky tie dye, glitter, and general 60s style hippie clothes.


The really inspiring thing was that they not only showed up, they were dancing, partying, and having a great time! We were sitting on the grass while these 60+ year old hippies were smoking weed, drinking beers, and enjoying the hell out of the day! At one point this guy with a thick gray beard, tie dye, etc., comes along with this giant conch shell and started blowing it in front of us, generating this low vibration you could feel all the way to your bones!

Grace Slick was on stage singing 'free your head' or whatever the name of that famous song is, the sun was shining, and everywhere you looked were old hippies getting their groove on. It got me thinking... I hope there is some sort of common element to my and AP's lives that will allow us to reunite with like minded souls in our sunset years.

Weekend Warriors

One week later and another nice well hits...this one isn't nearly the swell event we got last week... last week was something like 14' @ 17 secs, this week I think the SF bouy maxed at 8' @ 16 secs... but plenty to get all the local spots producing well OH surf. After spending last weekend behind the camera, I was keen to get in the water and somehow convinced my beautiful and charming wife (are you reading this AP?) to shoot some footage. Of course just as Brando and I cleared the rock some fog rolled in and pretty much made it impossible to see how much we were killing it!!!! Well, sort of anyway. With the reduced swell, the rock was still in play (suprisingly so) and hassled everyone to varying degrees. In the first minute of the video Brando starts way right and gets swept quickly left... same thing happened to me. I know my day is coming when I'm going to be upclose and personal w/ the rock, just a matter of time. Sunday saw some very, very nice conditions at the local... featured riders this week include Denton, Rob, Jeff, James, and Rock-on Randy.

Burning Man

Burning Man. It was a while ago, but since I'm catching up on posts, figured it would at least be worth a segment. The 2005 event was my second and Ana Paula's first burn. I tried my best to prepare AP for what the whole experience would be like, but in the end, I think its just one of those things that you have to see first hand to really understand. In fact, I'm not even going to try to describe it here other than say we had a small group of friends that all pitched in on an RV and had a fun 4 days of partying and taking in all the sights and sounds of a fantastic annual ritual in the Nevada desert.

Some photos mostly taken by AP... http://www.flickr.com/photos/pradoteeple/sets/1229800/

Singapore Ultimate

Ultimate frisbee. I haven't been active in the Ultimate scene for several years primarily due to age, but also due to getting more into windsurfing and surfing in SF area. So when I got the call to join up with a group of ex-singapore-ultimate players for a team in the upcoming Singapore tourney, I was a little unsure about how this would play out. In fact, it wasn't until I realized that the tournament was the weekend before an already planned work meeting in S'pore that I was even confirmed to play.

The above photo is of one of the original 'Angmo Freakshow' teams that traveled around Asia to play in Ultimate tourneys, this one, I think was in 1999 and was from a tourney we put on at Sentosa. I remember Dennis (second from top left) and Kenny (far bottom right) were two of the best players I'd ever played with at the time.


So 6 years later... I'm back. Having hardly touched a frisbee for the past 3 years, I had some definite kinks to work out of my game. The team name 'been there done that' was very fitting and had some really great players... the photo to the left includes Paul and Mark who I played with when I used to live in S'pore. Great to see those guys. The team organizers, Yayoi and Yohan matched their great on-field talent with a fun (yet competitive) spirit. Our first game was a sort of get-to-know each other game, then from there I think we just got better, winning our next few games, until we ran into the Manila team. These guys were almost entirely made of up local players (unheard of in my time) and totally kicked our asses! They had all the throws, well organized offense and defense strategies, and most important, ran us into the ground. We hung in there and I think only lost by 4 points or so, but they handled us pretty well. We finished day 1 with a 4-1 record, pretty good!

The next day I could barely walk. My legs more stiff than I can ever remember, almost laughable in fact. Anyway, we loosened up and played pretty well (except we lost a game that I think we should have won) for the rest of the tournament finishing I think 11th out of something like 25 teams. We easily beat the HK team, which was sort of satisfying since they were our main rivals in the old days.

Click here to see some great photos that Ana Paula snapped...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pradoteeple/sets/1216314/

First swell of the season...

Sat out this sesh, so unfortunately can't claim any of this wave riding, but few of my buddies can... nice work Rob & Joe! Lots of carnage on the beach, broken boards, several narrow misses w/ 'the rock'... lot less intense from the safety of a 100ft cliff wall. Hope you guys enjoy this.

Photos from the same sesh can be seen here...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pradoteeple/sets/1217022/

Summertime in the Sunset

Ok, the first thing that should be obvious about this picture is that there is NO WAY this pic was taken in the Sunset during the summer... shorts in SF in August?? This is AP in the middle of a huge water fight at our family 4th of July picnic up in Oregon (Columbia River Gorge). These guys look pretty fierce, but its for a good reason... on the opposing side is Benjamin!! We took two trips up to Oregon this summer, the first for windsurfing and the 4th of July picnic, the second for our wedding party / reception (also managed to squeeze a little windsurfing!). The Columbia river gorge is absolutely one of my favorite places on the planet... for soo many reasons... whitewater rafting, hiking, windsurfing, winery tours, cherries, Hood River, and of course relaxing with the family.

Maybe part of the reason we love (pretty sure AP is w/ me on this) Oregon so much during the summer has to do with the weather we have in SF during the summer. You'd think that living in Northern California would be fantastic in the summer, which it probably is in most places... except in the Sunset district of San Francisco. We were expecting some gloom when we left the Mission and into our home in the Sunset, but July and August were simply depressing... I guess I shouldn't complain too much because I was able to get several days of windsurfing at Crissy field, several of which I was on the 5M sail (means good wind), and we took lots of fun trips to south to Santa Cruz and north up to Sonoma. But really... its crazy to think that I regularly had to use my windshield wipers driving to work (due to the fog), and wintertime jackets in the middle of August if you want to hang out in your back yard. Last comment on SF summer temps... average temperatures in August in SF were LOWER than Anchorage, Alaska!

Here is a link for more pics... http://www.flickr.com/photos/pradoteeple/sets/1216335/