Last Wednesday through Friday we travelled the coast of Florida hunting the best of the Hurricane Irene swell that came through. Here’s what that looked like.
Yes, This is Florida – Surfing Irene
Category Archives: VideoHurricane Irene Caldera Jetty, Costa Rica Before we get onto the matter of the Hurricane, currently a few hundred miles off the coast of Florida, a quick update on the results of the Costa Rica trip. 12 hours before we actually left, all of managed to talk ourselves into going on a hunt for beautiful waves in a beautiful place. That night visions of epic swells and deep barrels danced in our heads – as that is what we expected to find in that little Latin American paradise. While are expectations were far from met, let alone, exceeded, we still did what we could to make the most of it. Me behind the camera, sweltering on the hot beaches, and the Matt Bender and Mike Cao out on their boards, we traveled up and down the coast, trying out different breaks here and there. I am currently working on a little segment called The Costa Rica Experiment with the footage we compiled on the trip. Hopefully later next week I will have that ready for you bored, yet anxious eyes. At the moment, I’m all packed up and ready to go on another hunt. This time much closer to home. As Irene makes here way up the eastern seaboard, so will will we. The first stop, Miami. Following in the wake of this Category 3 beast, or expectations are even higher than for Costa Rica – likely partially so in response to the results from Costa Rica itself. Possibly the best conditions on Florida’s Atlantic coast should provide us with some pretty beefy clips. Sta tuned. Team Scum Homegrown Video Contest EntryA friend of mine, Joe Barkley, has a friend that runs the shop known as Team Scum (seen at http://teamscum.com/). Team Scum puts on a video contest in the fall called Homegrown. I re-cut some of the footage of Joe and Tommy Yon at the NOC store wave on the Nantahala as an entry for the contest. Check it out below. Costa Rica, 12 hours from now2 hours ago I was thinking about going out for a quick drink. As fate would have it, I ran into Matt Bender at the surf shop, and now I will be in Costa Rica in 12 hours working my way to film these boys surf an epic swell coming in on the Pacific coast. There are many reasons I shouldn’t go right now, not excluding my bank accounts, the recent demise of the Subaru, other things to do, etc.. but I guess that’s what makes me different from you. Oh, and also, I just finished up a new photo sharing game for the iPhone called Kept – i guess it will be released when I get back. For absolutely vague info about it, see here. Much needed update and a new fancy pants gallery!Ok, so it’s been a while since I updated this thing here. I’m back down in Florida – resetting and looking for some ways to make some money. The first longterm run in the XVan is complete, and all-in-all, I would say it was a huge success. I met so many awesome people, and got to do so many awesome things. I cranked out several videos, pulled a 5000 lb, 32 foot trailer from upstate New York, and even got called the devil once (in a good way). The XVan held up to it all, and I grew very fond of living out of it and being in a new place virtually every night. A few stats about the first run:
I’m going to stick around Florida for a month or two, and then head out again. North and then west will be the directions taken on the next run, gradually working my way to Vail, Colorado, where I will winter. Yes, I will be wintering in Vail. I like saying that. In the meantime, please enjoy my new and improved fancy pants gallery, showing off my works:
Over the next few weeks I will also be producing a handfull of new videos, so keep them eyes peeled. They will include my own submission to the Octane Academy (to be hilarious, I’m sure), an entry for a kayak video contest and maybe even some soothing sunset shots backed by a little Enya. TTFN. 2700 Miles and an EpisodeA few days after the last update, I embarked on a little bit of a road trip – which, upon completion, landed me here in the nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C. A buddy of mine, Alex Tate, and a fellow live life by your own terms kind of guy, made the first serious step towards establishing a brand new rock climbing business with the purchase of a 28 foot mobile climbing wall. Alex, residing south of Atlanta, and myself, still in western North Carolina at the time, met up and made the hike up to upstate New York in the XVan. In a little town called Scotia, just above Schenectady, we took transfer of the wall and later that night began the 1100 mile journey back down to Atlanta. 4 days round trip at a cost of about 350 gallons of gas, if you were wondering. Muther trucker! – is my favorite way of summing up that experience.  Now, on to the big news! I am finally releasing my first episode-style, feature length (25 minutes) production. A little piece I like to call Tommy and Joe Try to Cross the River – Episode 2. This narrated video shows off the skills of two super talented white water kayakers, Joe Barkley and Tommy Yon, playing around in the Nantahala store wave at the NOC. I ended up deciding to host on youtube still, and thus had to split the fella into 2 parts, due to youtube’s 15 minute limit per video. The two parts are both embedded below, so find yourself a sufficient amount of time to truly enjoy these boys kicking some ass in this wave. Getting to know Western North CarolinaIts been about a month or so for me up in western North Carolina now. The focus, as far as filming, ended up being kayaking, in its different forms. I eventually whittled down the hours of filming at the Nantahala store wave into a little piece I called, “Tommy and Joe Try to Cross the River, Episode 2″. It’s a solid 25 minutes of sick play boating footage, “comically” narrated by yours truly. As soon as I figure out where to post that big boy, I’ll release here on the blog. In the meantime, here is a nice look at the Green River Narrows. Joe Barkley was also kind enough to strap on a headcam on a recent run down the Raven’s Fork to capture some of the intense rapids there. I tried to hike in to get some shots of my own, but I thought I was lost, had no water, and found some fresh bear tracks – so I did not make it. I hope to put some of that footage together at some point. Other than filming and editing I’ve also had the chance to meet some real good people and learn new things. For example, I pulled and replaced my first well pump 200 feet under the pumphouse at Joe’s cabin way up in the mountains. Only took us 12 hours. Finishing at 2 AM, the joy brought upon by the return of running water was palpable. The well-pulling team below:  That same night, I also had another first. Got to watch Cicada emerge from its slumber and crawl out of it’s old shell.  Western North Carolina Kayaking is a wrapRidiculous amounts of footage of ridiculous kayakers. There are days of editing ahead of me, and thankfully the good people known as Alex’s family have been kind enough to let me hunker down in their cabin for a while so that I can cull through this footage. Last week I put up a gallery of some of the stills from the Nantahala store wave – take a look (click on it).  If you’ve never seen the Smokey Mountains, this be what they look like.  Before heading to the cabin I spent a weekend biking over at Tsali with a couple friends, to get warmed up for the hours ahead of me, I cranked out this little video this morning. It’s laughable. First full segment completed – Matt Bender wipeout, Waimea Bay, January 11, 2010I’ve been filming with Matt Bender in New Smyrna Beach for a few weeks, but we just weren’t getting the kind of waves that he wanted or the kind of surfing that he is capable of. Anxious to produce a real story, we set out on creating a greatest wipeout segment to submit to Surflinefor their greatest wipeouts series. Matt had a few old clips from the wipeout, so we sat down and did some interview work and stitched this whole guy together. We will submit to Surfline soon, and possibly some other sites. Enjoy. A treat for a couple localsAS you know I am currently down in New Smyrna Beach, Florida – and besides just enjoying the crap out of this place I’ve been filming with a couple surfers. We were going through some footage today one of the guys I’m filming with, Matt Bender, spotted a couple clips of some locals that he thought I should share with them – so I put together a mini-overly-dramatic clip for them: Soon I’ll be finishing up a big wave wipe out segment for Bender with some footage he had from Hawaii – stay tuned! |
I know nothing else except that I just bought the plane tickets, the rest is a mystery. Be back Thursday… I think.| Get Some More |
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