Future Champions

It had been a year since our last decent holiday and we were getting a little vague when Tiff discovered that the Kirra beach shack we hired last year would be available once again, we didn’t hesitate and it wasn’t long before we were packing the essentials into the ute and wagon to head down to the cost. Only important things like a large array of push bikes, surf boards, skate boards and a small convection oven just in case we got hungry. We only had a week not nearly enough time to recover from the year that was but enough time to get in a stack of surfing, cycling, body boarding, Chinese and Spanish language study and skate boarding. We had our good friend Noah come to stay with us for the first few days we were there. Although the conditions were a little choppy when we first arrived we were blessed with a storm on the second day that evened out the waves making them a pleasure to surf and they just got better each day from there on out. Here are a few of the adventures that came our way while we were down there.

Mark and the lads overlooking the surfers at Duranbah Beach.

A Skype Session with Diego

I have been attempting to learn Spanish for the last few years and over this last year I have been speaking with my language exchange buddy Diego from Colombia. We usually talk over Skype once a week spending some of the time in English and some in Spanish. It is cool to think how far technology has come, when I was a kid, apart from having to walk to school in bare feet up hill both ways through the snow whilst dragging a rock and being chased by a bear, making long distance phone calls was a big event, cost a fortune and limited to special events like birthdays and Christmas. Not only was I able to call Diego from the beach shack using Skype on my mobile phone but it was a video call as well and I was able to show Diego and his family around the shack and walk across the road with them down to the beach, Very cool.

After another amazing surf session at Currumbin

I got to play the hero of sorts

I have a black belt in Tae Kwon do, however thankfully I have never had the need to use the skills outside of the training arena, although it came uncomfortably close on this particular occasion. We had just pulled up at Currumbin for one of our early morning surf session when through the window of the car I could see a cyclist standing in the middle of the road flagging down a white 4wd. As I climbed out of the car things turned progressively worse as the rest of said cyclist’s lycra wearing mates arrived on the scene and started hitting the windows and kicking the panels of the vehicle. By the time I had reached the 4wd a group of about 4 or 5 blokes had managed to pry open the door drag the driver out onto the street and were pinning him to the road. I am not sure what the bloke’s crime had been, perhaps he had giggled at full grown men wearing hot pants, but either way this is not generally how we sort out our differences over here in Oz, as I ran into the madness I decided the best course of action was to rouse on the blokes and so in a voice loud enough that everyone might hear me, I advised them to back it up and act like adults, as suspected this took the wind out of a lot of the lads sails and they backed off like a bunch of naughty school kids who had been caught stealing candy leaving only the initial trouble maker and the bloke from the vehicle, who without the weight of the crowd was able to get up and start looking for answers . I was then able to position myself roughly between the two remaining blokes keeping my guard up remembering that it is often the person attempting to defuse the situation that gets injured the worst, and once again advised them that there were other more suitable ways to sort these issues out. Thankfully this had the desired effect and apart from a few more exchanges of words and a bit of pushing, things were basically at their conclusion. By this stage a few of the surfers who had already been out for a surf and were kicking it at the undercover section basking in the post surf feelings of awesomeness had wandered over to see what was going on, they advised the cyclists that perhaps it was time to get back on their bikes and move along.  In the end the driver of the vehicle had a quick check over the outside of his 4wd hopped in and drove away. We continued with our surf session and had a great run.

Glorious conditions

Surfing Kirra

For the last couple of years we have been hitting the surf break at Currumbin beach as no matter the conditions we are fairly well guaranteed that we will be able to catch something. It was the last day of our holiday and Noah and his family had come around to the beach shack for lunch after their surf lifesaving training. After lunch Noah decided that he really wanted to go for a surf, now at this time of day it was highly unlikely that we would get a car park at Currumbin, also we were on a time schedule as these guys had to get back to Brisbane for a meeting with someone in the afternoon. I suggested that we could potentially try Kirra as it was only just down the road and only Noah and myself were going in. Tiffany offered to drop us down there and collect us afterwards that way we wouldn’t need to find a car park and Noah’s Dad Anthony said he would come down to watch Noah catch a few waves, to see how he is going. Thus we found ourselves paddling out close to the rocks at Kirra, there weren’t a great deal of surfers out there as at this time of day most of the locals would have long gone home to have a siesta, perhaps venturing back down latter in the late afternoon for another surf if the conditions held. There was an awesome sweep to the north and row after row of breakers leading out as far as we could see. The first time we paddled out we had been pulled around 100meters to the north before we knew it. We caught a couple of decent waves that took us a further 100m or so north and landed us on the beach. We walked back down to the point and paddled out again. All in all we repeated this about three times and caught a few great waves which was an awesome way to wrap up an awesome week. When we were done and hitting the showers, Noah was suggesting that we should start planning our trip to Mexico to catch some Mexican barrels.