spray

There are three sets of local twin brothers who surf regularly along this strip of beach from Seminyak into Legian. They all rip. There's Deduk and Dedik, Bleronk and Tonyo, and Daniel and Damien. This is either Daniel or Damien, though I'm pretty sure it's Daniel. He kept flying down the line after I shot this.

five-two

Fresh from the bamboo hut. 5'2" x 19 3/4" x 2 3/8". This one has a mellow double concave running the length of the board, to slight v in the tail. Glassing, fin box installation, and sanding by Redz in Bali. Tried this out for the first time on cold clean Lake Michigan waves last week, and it goes good.

under a bamboo hut

We set up a shaping bay under the bamboo hut behind Deduk'

s bamboo house. It's lit up only by the sun. And there's no electricity in there as of now. Geckos fall from the thatched ceiling onto my boards sometimes while I'm shaping. And then they scurry off. After we shot these cel phone photos, I pulled in the tail a bit more on this twin fin.

BARREL!!!!

Entus, Abun, and Hambali were busy playing chess and kicking back some beer that Timmy brought on the trip. They were the three crew members on the small wooden boat we took out to the island. Every once in a while, they'd look up, and yell out with a rolled double r, "BARREL!!!!!!!!" Then it'd be right back to chess and beer.

This is Daniel Jones on this recent Surfing Magazine cover. I remember this wave well, it's burned into my mind forver. But not burnt onto my film...I finished my roll of film on Timmy's wave right before this one. Dustin Humphrey was ill, and in the water shooting. And he got this shot. It was the most beautiful wave I have ever seen. And I kid you not, it actually got bigger and hollower moments after this was shot. This wave grows in size as it speeds down the reef.

I first met Daniel and his brother, Mikala, on Christmas Island, Kiribati, a year and a half ago. Since then, they have both become a big part of this film. Youngest brother, Keoni, has joined in recently too.

Hangs Upon Nothing got its first public mention in the article that went along with this cover too. Thanks guys!

Samoa tsunami

Tim Southall has a pretty amazing tsunami story. I have asked his permission to post it here, and will if he is ok with it. To briefly sum it up, he was in the water with six other surfers at a reef break off the south coast of Upolu, Samoa. Apparently they were not aware an earthquake had occured. The reef breaks are almost all quite far from land around there. When the water began draining off the reef, they all knew what was happening. Four of them including Tim were able to paddle out to deep water as the Tsunami came through. The other three surfers headed towards shore and got pummeled by the waves from the tsunami. They all survived. Thankfully all staff and guests at Maninoa Surf Camp survived also. Sounds like the south coast of Upolu got hammered pretty hard though.

glassy empty waves

poster sketch for the film

A few days ago I went with Mikala and his right hand man, Koming, and friend Scott, looking for waves to surf and shoot. At sunrise we ended up at the same secluded spot we went to the day before. It had been overhead and barreling, and was looking quite good the day before. I shot from land and Mikala surfed alone. The plan was to shoot in the water on this, our second day there.

It didn't look quite as perfect this day. And the swell had dropped some. Still, where I'm from, it would be considered epic. Koming didn't wan't to come out, "Its not that good," he said. If I grew up in a land of perfect waves, I might think the same.

"He just doesn't want to go right!" Mikala said. Mikala and I paddled out, and the bumps disappeared. It was total glass. Rice fields and temples could be seen from the water. And a few fishing boats out beyond us. The water was clean, and shined a beautiful silver blue in the morning. The sand below was black.

As beautiful as this sounds, there was a surprising amount of plastic rubbish on the beach. Like most empty beaches I have been to recently.

Looking to the north there are miles and miles of peaks that probably no one was on. I'm sure soon enough these will see more people. But there are still uncrowded waves to be found.

Samoa

Here's hoping that Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga recover quickly from the earthquake and tsunami that just hit them. Pictured above is Fale of Solosolo, Upolu, Samoa.

staring into the sun - pt. 1

I sat alone in my apartment in Chicago six years ago, staring at my computer screen. My eyes weren't focused though. I remember the warm orange afternoon light shining through the window, and reflecting off the screen. And it hit me like a train, what on earth was I doing with my life? I was 24. I had recently gotten out of my first long relationship. I had quit my full time job a few months before so that I could pursue creating my own art and music. I felt like I had grown up quicker than I expected. My dad used to tell me as a kid, "enjoy your youth, you're only a kid once." For the first time ever, I felt like I was aging. My hair was even starting to thin a bit on the top of my head.

I remember that at that moment I decided I was going to learn how to surf. I came up with the plan right there. I would buy a surfboard and head to Samoa. I had read about Samoa a few years before in an old National Geographic, and of anywhere I had ever read about, Samoa sounded like paradise.

a month later

"Where are you going?" she asked, smiling. She was carrying a cardboard tray with seven paper cups of coffee on it. She was quite big, darker skin, and had black shiny hair pulled back into a pony tail.

"Suhmoa," I said.

"SAHmoa." She quickly replied, correcting my pronunciation. "That's where I'm from!"

"Who's all the coffee for?" I asked. She looked down at the tray, then looked back up and grinned bashfully.

"Me." she said. She then offered me one of her cups of coffee. Akanese was her name. Her and her older sister Liz had come to the airport in Honolulu for the departure of the one flight a week to Samoa on Samoa's one airline, Polynesian Air. They had one plane. Lounging around there, I had never seen people so big before. Everyone. They were almost all huge. And everyone seemed really, really kicked back. The plane was hours late, and no one seemed to care. Pretty much everyone waiting around here looked Polynesian. I remember an ukulele version of John Lennon's "Imagine" was being played in the airport. And I remember the warm evening breeze.

Liz and Akanese were looking for someone to take a large cardboard box full of gifts back to their family in Samoa. They couldn't find any takers. So Akanese asked me. "Well...uh, sure, I'll do it. can I take a look inside the box?"

to be continued soon...

Hangs Upon Nothing

Welcome to the blog for my surf film, Hangs Upon Nothing.