Billabong Pro at J-Bay

For all my surfer friends, if by chance I have any and they are reading my blog, Im sorry to tell you but I was at the Billabong Pro last week. I say Im sorry becauseyou would know I dont know jack squat about surfing and it seemed the real surf fans were elated to be there...er, sorry, I meant, they were wicked stoked to be there, dudes!
It was a gorgeous day with a nice head breeze but there wasn't too much action. Swarms of surfers, surfer photographers, surfer wannabes, surf afficionados, surfer babes, and surfer groupies, and then a couple sort of random ones like Kourtney and I flooded the beech and the bleachers on top of the dunes. Basically there wasn't all that much to do besides eat, shop and watch surfing; there was a music festival that ended the night I arrived but everyone was wiped out and wouldn't come with me. Billabong abso-fricken-lutely cleaned up with the merchandise. Everyone there had a t shirt, wind-breaker or a hoodie. Admittedly, they were kind of cool but they were also prohibitively expensive. Wherever I go now I see Billabong this and Billabong that and think about how much dough they're raking in. Whew!
The surfing itself was pretty awesome despite the mediocre conditions. For those of you who are as new to competitive surfing as I was, the format is a four round, single elimination tournament. Surfers go head to head on the same break in a 30 minute "heat". The one who has the two strongest individual wave scores moves on. I saw Kelly Slater, 8 time world champion do some cool stuff that I didn't even know was possible; "bodacious whips" and "gnarly floaters" I soon found out.
Watching the pros make it look so easy and fun inspired me to try surfing myself...bad idea. With my gimpy aching wrists, atrophied shoulders and complete lack of know-how and confidence, not to mention instruction, it added up to a little more than a couple hours of paddling around, wondering why the waves weren't breaking where I saw them break on the shore and how long before the sharks came to get me. Kourtney had even less success. I can see her now, dragging herself from the thunderous foamy shore-break with the massive yellow longboard precariously in tow and a head of hair full of shells. I did finally get to try a wetsuit for the first time in my life. They're nice. Kirk maintains they are the single greatest accomplishment of human invention.
Kourtney, whose response to my question, "so where do you want to go this weekend?" is without fail "I don't know...J-Bay!?", is about hooked as you're average junkie. If she doesn't get her fix every couple weekends, things start to get a ugly. So when we heard from Kirk, our esteemed boss, that his fiance was coming to visit and we were welcome to come down and meet her it was already a done deal. Little did we know that her two sisters were there, as well as 2 Argentinian high school rugby players and 2 french ones, their mom, and three of the four South African brothers who live there. With Kirk and the mom, Shuna, there were 15 people in that house! its always an adventure when we go down to J-Bay. we never know who will be there or what crazy kids will be hanging around. Thats part of why we love it so much...that and the perfect tubes, dolphin sunsets, beautiful beech at the edge of the deck, and the best cappuchino in the galaxy.