“Let’s Do A Trip”

Hello, lovers.

Are you waking in your belle and/or beau’s warm, mildly hungover embrace? What morning wreckage are you handling, dear?

Weekday holidays are for the birds, but I’ve been distracted as of late, and owed my Missus some quality time and a night out.

See, the last few weeks have been busy ones here at Stab HQ, production on a few of our year’s biggest projects getting underway, and requiring every bit of our admittedly divided attention, leaving no wiggle room for afternoon grovels, let alone quick strikes somewhere ripe. Meanwhile, the surf here in Los Angeles has been positively non-existent, not one single solid NW delivering the goods south of Point Conception.

One of our new projects’ Premiere Talent (PT) has been holed up in Ventura, the area still very much in the weeds of the devastating season, maybe a handful or really rippable days the last month, and little to no opportunity to get any work done filming.

“This winter sucks,” PT says, and we agree. We’d brought PT the project knowing they’d most likely be unable to travel—what with landslides and fires and floods and also Family—but really, we only needed a few solid runs of swell to film the project in Central California.

But almost two months in to 2018, and with a sad forecast looming the next two weeks, it’s getting ridiculous. Without any serious deadlines approaching, we could wait it out, hope for some late-season magic….

Our phones light up: a late-night text from PT, featuring every surfer’s favorite four words:

“Let’s do a trip.”*

And just like that our minds are a-reelin’. Where do we go? Oh, the options! Daily, our phones have buzzed with snapshots of Gold Coast dawn patrols, Moroccan points lit up with groundswell groomed thoroughly by desert winds, heart-wrenchingly hollow Portuguese slabs, warm Caribbean dreamscapes from Costa Rica and Panama alike.

A spin of the globe, a few calls in to our most swell-savvy smooth operators, and we’ve got options on the table already, and that old familiar feeling that’s kept us awake since we booked our first International flights twenty years ago: we’re going fucking surfing.**

This last week we all found our new favorite surf podcast. Kanoa Igarashi defected. Timmy Reyes and Jake Kelly dropped a chilly one with Taylor Curran, while we all enjoyed Storytime w/ Wassel. Jake Howard got all sentimental over the terrific new doc, “Great Highway.”  Rory Parker doesn’t care what you think of his longboard lippers. (In fact, we hear Hayden’s got something light, long and strong shaping up for him.)

The commenters got all riled up, over two female-centric posts. Mikey C. and Michael Newman reminded us the Dantas paddling steez runs in the family. 

Morgan Williamson passed on the hard-earned lesson from a childhood friend, on how to make it in the surf industry. The …Lost team made me want to order a new rocket fish. Mick Fanning and Conner Coffin reminded us how to drag ass on our backhand. Dusty Payne’s on the mend, and already paying it forward to the lifeguards that helped saved his life, while Capbreton said goodbye to one of its favorite sons. 

This week, we’ll be getting a peak inside the colorful life of Michael February. The black South African’s more than just knocking on the ‘CT door; with Julian most likely out for Snapper with a gimp shoulder, and Mick Fanning rumored to be stepping away from tour post-Bells, Mikey’s got a foot over the threshold. Rory Parker’s been meticulously digging through the details of the Quiksilver/Billabong deal, when he isn’t hassling State Employees for supporting documents, and the details are revealing. 

With that, I’m throwing the 11′ NOS Scott Anderson glider I nabbed last week on Rocinante’s cab and going for a rinse, a paddle, whatever—just don’t call it a surf. ‘Cause it ain’t that. 

Keep it cutty, Stab. 

Sincerely,

SlashNBurn Smoggans

*What’s the old Hemingway saying? “Always do sober what you say you’ll do drunk?” Stab Law: You call the trip on, no backing out. Maybe it’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut, maybe it’ll get you very barreled.

**Writing this, I realized it had been almost a year since I went on a proper surf trip, a mission to the Canary Islands with an epic international crew, which Ardiel Jimenez sent an an edit from over last week, as seen below (4:39 for a Bograil cameo).

God damn, that was a fun trip.