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I'd like to know how many surfer are here?

 

Where do you surf?

 

What's it like (particularly those who live in Japan)?

 

Do you snowboard or ski?

 

If you were given a perfect powder day on an untracked mountain or a empty line up at one of the worlds best breaks. What would you choose?

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Well, by my all-or-nothing ethos I'm not a surfer because I live in Germany and haven't even seen the ocean in 4 months. I have surfed since I was very young so for the sake of entertaining myself, I still call myself a surfer (but I'm not)

 

To the Mantas Q's (but I don't live in Japan)

 

- Last surf I had was in Portugal, three week road trip along the coast in May this year. The previous week I was snowboard mountaineering. The week after the surf trip I was back doing descents in Switzerland. I'm not saying that to big note my small world. I'm saying it because I went from mountain free ride to surf and back to mountain in a month. It was unique.

 

- When I lived in Japan I surfed mainly near the Chiba/Ibaragi boarder. It was a morbidly unappealing environment that sometimes had ok waves but generally not. The environment was so bad that it needed consistently great waves to compensate.

 

- I snowboard and am also taking up skiing.

 

- I would choose "empty line up at one of the worlds best breaks". But that is an isolated question. More generally, I'd take mountain life over beach life if forced to choose. I have thought about this a lot, especially last May as I jumped from snow to ocean and back.

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I longboard and i snowboard.

My wife and i just returned from Tanegashima yesterday.

Tanegashima is littered with nice breaks, beautiful scenery and nice clear water.

I have surfed Shizuoka's crowded beachbreaks for 7 years now, and we occasionally get nice waves here, but the water is not nice, and the beaches are full of garbage, concrete and aggressive surfers.

Nothing beats a good consistent reefbreak, especially when you try to reach the nose on your longboard. I was reminded of that this weekend

 

My wife and i have been thinking of leaving Honshu, overtime and busy life for a while.

This weekend we agreed to make the move.

 

So, that will probably be the end of my snowboard career. I will do one last season this winter, but who knows, maybe i will be able to get a job at a snow resort in the future.

 

(sorry, i don't have any nice pictures to post right now)

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 Quote:
Originally posted by le spud:
I'm not a surfer because I live in Germany
What do you mean? There are great waves in Germany! (Taken a week and a half ago in Munich)

MunichRiversurfing1.jpg

MunichRiversurfing2.jpg

I still haven't tried it but can't wait to. I was with friends in Munich for Oktoberfest and we were pressed for time. Next go around I'm taking a board down.

I don't know if I would consider myself a surfer but I sure lived the life for 7 straight years and got more waves than you can shake a stick at (Coastal Oregon, North Shore of Oahu and then living on the beach in Japan).

As for Japan, I lived on the Pacific way up in Northern Honshu. The waves were nothing special but we were out in them as much as possible. Loved the summers and the 3:45am sunrises - now that's a dawn patrol! 'My' beach, like most Japanese beaches I visited, was disgusting. Concrete, jetties that served no purpose, garbage from the fishing boats, etc.... It really is a shame that the beaches aren't treated with more respect, but I digress.

Oh, and give me that perfect powder day, sun shining, nobody else around, not a sound to be heard except the tree tops rustling in a light breeze, a 360 degree view of snow-capped peaks, two feet of fresh snow and a 10 foot drop in to a sun-kissed tree-lined chute............... \:D
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[censored] off Mantas ;\)

 

(Nice banks, no crowds. You got it good on the coast. Try living in Sydney if you want to be put off surfing)

 

Plucky - I wondered if you had hit up the river wave yet,

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Don't I know it Spud. You couldn't pay me eough to live in Sydney or any city for that matter.

 

 Quote:
- I would choose "empty line up at one of the worlds best breaks". But that is an isolated question. More generally, I'd take mountain life over beach life if forced to choose.
I agree with you on that one. i've been surfing since the age of 5 and I still live the surf life, my house is 96m to the beach. The beach scene is no novelty for us.

we love the mountains and snow. i read with great envy what you hardcore guys do in those mountains, i've only done a fraction of that stuff. Most of my younger carefree days were spent chasing waves not snow. No regrets though, you can only do so much in one life.

 

Something about cruising along a wall of pristine clear water at high speed, almost naked, that tops it for me. No boots, bindings,helmet, goggles backpack ect.

 

Still. If that's the toughest choice in life i have to make then I'm not doing to bad. \:\)

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I surf, same as you guys all my life.

Mantas, I grew up in SA surfing mainly from Yorkes - the west coast. I'd love to relocate there but the lady's not keen on the weather.

 

In Japan I surf in Irago and Shizouka and consistently its [censored]ing crap. There are a few good days here and there but I'm talking in a year, not a month (or week) like at home. So by the end of autumn I am really looking forward to that line of soft white powder (under my board).

 

I've done some intense runs but still for ME nothing comes close to pulling into a grinding pit over dry reef and getting spat out anywhere from 3-12 seconds later.

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Geez I’ve thought about this a lot. For me there are two pairs at each end of the spectrum:

 

(Remote coastal surfing and back country snowboarding)…….(crowded city beach surfing and resort snowboarding)

 

Starting at the dark end of the spectrum: I consider lift based resort skiing/snowboarding to be as unappealing as city/big town based surfing. I would turn to regular drinking within a year in either situation. Many snow resorts are artificial crap buzzing with competitive image driven types and full to the brim like a shopping mall. Equally unappealing is crowded surfing venues which are over run with pro obsession, attitude and greedy competitive surfers. I’ll be blunt: I don’t even like knowing gold coast or Sydney type surfers, or surfers from any other crowded surfing setting. Surfing has become so chronically popular that I honestly don’t think meeting a surfer is in any way an assurance that you have met a good fella. I’ve never much liked the narrow minded Aussie yobbo culture of surfing (in Australia), but mostly it was pretty harmless. When I was young you’d met a surfer and 9 times out of 10 he was a good guy because of the fact that he surfed. Not so these days. Surfing has become a cross section of society as much as any other popular thing. Some of the young really good surfers today are first class dickhead image merchants. It seems more and more that performance in surfing is paramount: who’s hot, who did a trip to what perfect reef for a sponsor shoot before the next comp. That isn’t surfing, it’s a by-product, a deformity. It would seem that sponsorship and pros are more important to surfers these days than the old fashioned objective of catching and riding a wave. Most magazines have forgotten that if pros died and surf companies went bust… surfing would still exist. You get the same rot in snowboarding, but it is so much easier to escape.

 

The brighter end of the spectrum to resort skiing or suburban beach surfing you have back country touring/riding and remote coastal surfing. Firstly, there are not many people. Secondly, it is pure and real with no hype, no competition, it is very real: Just you and a mountain. Or you and an isolated point break. Risk and return. Nothing else. You learn about yourself and your mind finds something happy that is impossible to find anywhere else, and I mean that seriously, not said as catch phrase. I scoured the coast or Portugal by myself finding waves and surfing every day for weeks. At the time I believed I would happily do just that for years (although I would pretty quickly need to focus on big wave surfing).

 

Searching for the wave, trying to know nature and riding perfect wind-brushed energy on the margin of the massive ocean is like nothing else. Riding a perfect wave is beyond compare. Yet I would choose the mountains over it. Even in remote places, in the 100m wide coastal strip of waves there is still an element of who’s-who, whilst in the mountains away from the resorts nearly everyone is nobody. Also, in the mountains you can do so much more as a human than we can do at the edge of the ocean. The mountains offer endless challenges and adventure all day every day. Imperfect conditions or perfect, there is always something to do. After comparing the two, I quickly noticed that I can find more fulfilling experiences in a given period of time in the mountains than I can from the same amount of time spent living an ocean life, although the rare high in surfing is higher than on a snowboard. When you score in the ocean, it lasts from 6am to 9am, then that’s it for the day, maybe even the week. As a surfer all there is to do is sit around and drink beer (or get stoned) and surf a wind blown mush session in the afternoon after driving bored up and down the coast in your car. Mountain life is more dimensional than that: you can actively live it in a bunch of different ways nearly every day from dawn till dusk (remember, I’m not talking resort life here, I talking the long days and physical effort of back country touring, ‘mountaineering’ etc). I have also found that mountain people are reliably pretty good people.

 

Ultimately I would like to dedicate my remaining life to ‘big mountain’ exploration and descents along with riding empty big waves like I did when I was a kid. But that is a just a useless dream.

 

As usual, that was way longer than I had in mind when I set out to write it.

 

Cheers if you bothered to read this far.

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Spud, sounds like you have found ya calling in the mountains, but when I can surf a 3 hrs session of great pits by myself, my wife or even with a few others I'll be happy to jump in my hammok and wait till the arvo glass off.

In surfing it's impossible to be going all day like in boarding so to compare the 2 is pretty hard.

 

LE spud" Even in remote places, in the 100m wide coastal strip of waves there is still an element of who’s-who"

 

Yeah, that's called respect. Respect the old bastards or you'll cop it. That's how I grew up learning and what I expect to end up getting! Spots like the goldy or city locations lack any respect and that's what make them so [censored]ing shait. Pro's will rock up to any spot thinking they are the shait and in some parts it will back fire. Just look at cactus, that's pretty much the whole od SA! The pro's rocked up, the locals said no picks, they took pics, camera was taken & film destroyed with a few verbals in between.

 

one day spud, you'll get back to the beach, get that session by yourself that will put the smile back on ya face...

 

like Billabong said " only a surfer knows the feeling"

God bless them!

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 Quote:
Originally posted by Indosnm:
Yeah, that's called respect. Respect the old bastards or you'll cop it. That's how I grew up learning and what I expect to end up getting! Spots like the goldy or city locations lack any respect and that's what make them so [censored]ing shait. Pro's will rock up to any spot thinking they are the shait and in some parts it will back fire. Just look at cactus, that's pretty much the whole od SA! The pro's rocked up, the locals said no picks, they took pics, camera was taken & film destroyed with a few verbals in between.

like Billabong said " only a surfer knows the feeling"
God bless them!
Getting beaten up doesn`t sound like fun to me. It sounds like juvenile macho shit. I enjoy the surf, but I`m glad to say I don`t know the feeling.
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Soubs, cop it can mean an earful too! I don't think fighting has any part in surfing exept for the guys that dropped in on purpose 3 times in a row.

 

The feeling I am talking about is taking off on a wave seeing the inside bubbling on the reef, bottom turning setting your line and having the "silence" of the tube engulf you before being spat out. Not to mention the view from inside looking out.

Do that and you'll know the feeling I'm talking about.

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Don't be defensive Indo, I wasn't rubbishing surfing. I'd take a day of perfect waves with two others over a week of perfect powder. But I won't suffer the negatives in surfing these days to get that day of waves. I'd rather just disappear into the mountains for a few days: back pack, tent, snowboard. Over those few days I can simply do, see, experience, learn and buzz more than I could with a few days of typical beachbreak surfing, even if the snow was shite. And I would be in a place accessible to a very small percentage of people. On the other hand, 100m off the beach is accessible to everyone, and as in your example, everyone is turning up wanting their bit of it (note that big wave surfing doesn't fit into that box. Its different, but also getting aggro and attention driven)

 

You and I know that riding a good wave can offer an experience like none other, better than powder. But for me the mountains can offer opportunities to take it further and deeper every day: its there right now, all I have to do is pick up my stuff. There is a mountain right now saying "db, if you want to give it a go, come and get it. You'll have me all to yourself". And it will fill every consecutive mental and physical minute of my life for a few days getting it and getting out again. If I could find an easily accessible yet uncrowded place where surfing offered that complete fulfilment and involvement I would be once again torn between the two. As of last season I am no longer torn (although there are moments when I have my doubts). I'm sure such a place is out there, so I better not look to hard.

 

I’m not so much referring to what happened at cactus but Soub has a point: surfing can be aggro and abusive and especially intolerant towards people from another place or lesser skill, big time for beginners and women. A lot of the surfer spirit isn’t creative anymore, it’s destructive. At any easily accessible beach you hear the phrase “[censored] off kook!!” and they really mean it. In the easily accessible mountains of Europe people teach, share and guide each other.

 

Like I said, don't be defensive: I love the act of catching and riding a wave more than anything. I just don't like what surrounds it these days. Mountains offer a more constantly active and community friendly way in which to risk my a life.

 

>>one day spud, you'll get back to the beach, get that session by yourself that will put the smile back on ya face...

 

I don't surf much, but I've had that smile twice in the last year. Enough to know exactly what you are talking about.

 

(both times the smile was stolen within an hour as crew turned up on the rocks and paddles out in a frenzy and took what was my little moment. I hated that, it was pretty sad both times. I hate paddling out when a guy is already out on his own. first thing I do is apologise 'cause as soon as two are in the line up, 20 will follow. Surfers are like flies, they ignore empty waves and swarm as soon as more than two paddle out)

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Like I said before Spud, you seem to have found your Nirvana in the mountains! Which is great because it's one less in the water.. Now if only we could just tell the sheep how cool the mountains are we might have the oceans to ourselves!!

 

Agro is the downside of surfing but it's not everywhere, more so in the cities, but that comes with the crowds and lack of waves for the masses.

Go surf Vic to WA coasts and you will often have to look for crew to surf with. Though after listening to the tune of your posts over the last few years I'd probably guess that you'd be more than happy to just surf by yourself rather than inclined to paddle out just by yourself. Are you willing to share a line up? My recent impressions makes me think not.

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>>Go surf Vic to WA coasts and you will often have to look for crew to surf with.

 

I grew up surfing the west coast of Tasmania and the Great Ocean Road. 15 years ago the gor was uncrowded in winter and also on any relatively unknown beach, of which there are loads. West coast Tassie is as remote and empty as you can find.

 

>> one less in the water.

 

Yes, there is one less in the water on a regular basis. And you've lost another good guy and doubtless gained 10 arseholes in my place.

 

>>Are you willing to share a line up? My recent impressions makes me think not.

 

I love sharing with people who also love sharing and I would rather enjoy with them than surf alone. Having a good surf is a massively rare and special event for me. In my annual surf trips I have randomly met people in the water who were great to share the waves with on the same basis. In some instances after several sessions together I have thanked them over a beer for adding to what was already a really special event for me (cause I never get to surf). I also find swarms of greedy wave thieving wankers. Most surfers I encounter in my infrequent surfs are only interested in getting as many waves as they can and being seen. I'd rather surf by myself than surf with them.

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 Quote:
Originally posted by le spud:

>> one less in the water.

Yes, there is one less in the water on a regular basis. And you've lost another good guy and doubtless gained 10 arseholes in my place.
Probably very true mate!

 Quote:

I love sharing with people who also love sharing and I would rather enjoy with them than surf alone. Having a good surf is a massively rare and special event for me. In my annual surf trips I have randomly met people in the water who were great to share the waves with on the same basis. In some instances after several sessions together I have thanked them over a beer for adding to what was already a really special event for me (cause I never get to surf). I also find swarms of greedy wave thieving wankers. Most surfers I encounter in my infrequent surfs are only interested in getting as many waves as they can and being seen. I'd rather surf by myself than surf with them.
and the greedy bastards usually come from a non wave starved locations...

didn't know ya grew up tas, saw an awesome line up in the latest tracks mag.. Full of Tassie.
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Indo, have you surfed Omaezaki (shizuoka)? I entered a contest there 4 years ago whith another Hawaiian mate. People from all over the world showed up to be dazzled by 1 foot waves. ;\)

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Ha! I surfed in 3 international contests and pretty much went there every weekend. It gets good and when it get too big there are many other spots to hit up.

Compared to Irago, there are way less crew out there and level of surfing is much better.

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aaah, this old chestnut. having done a couple of seasons in the snow (which admittedly is not much, and a far cry from a pristine backcountry alpine lifestyle) and been surfing for aaaaggges aaayyy, i'd have to say i'd rather live the surf lifestyle and go for snowboard trips than the other way round.

mostly it comes down to the fact that i enjoy the beach more than i feel i can enjoy the snow. its warmer, its cheaper and i find it easier to go off and do my own trip than i would in the mountains. that last bit comes down to surf experience vs relative snow experience i guess.

as much as i love doing both, i just reckon i prefer living on a beach.

just gotten back to oz a month ago and the waves have been cooking! been surfing 5-6 times a week, and that's in sh1tty old perth.

 

as far an an ideal run/surf would go - how about dropping into a epic untracked run, with couple thousand metres of vert, hitting a huge kicker at the end, doing some crazy board transfer mid-air, and dropping into a nice big pit! we should get those flowrider guys to start work on something like this

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hey dude! Fair call.

 

I have found my inner harmony zen thing far more balanced and steady ever since I stopped enduring constant exposure to untouchably hot chicks on the beach wearing close to bugger all. Its like, seriously unsettling for a devo guy like me to see that kind of thing all the time. I'm glad I don't live my old Sydney beach lifestyle anymore. Sure, I had my own cute skinny piece next to me on the towel, but so what! All that friggin tit and arse laying a few feet away from us on the sand did my bloody head in.

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summer onshore 2 foot slop can be fun, especially if you are coming from a long stint in Japan!

 

Spook, I get a totally different buzz from a snow line to a pit, different intensities I guess, but that flowrider at the end of your suggested line sounds good!

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it's hard to compare the buzz and intensities you get from the snow and the surf. i mean, pulling into a big pit gets you pumped, but every now and then you get a mental deeeep one, and your board just hits warp speed under your feet.

i get the same feeling on snow riding fast through glades, picking tricky lines and banging out big turns.

 

arrrrghhhh, enough talk. some surf porn from vicco last weekend:

 

http://www.swellnet.com.au/sessions/Weekend_waves_in_Victoria_111006.php

 

and this weekend in margarets in gonna be BIG and clean.

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