 |
 |
| Surf's Up With Sven |
|
 |
| FREE YOUR MIND AND YOUR ASS WILL FOLLOW! |
 |
 |
|
 |
| Surftrips |
| The beginning(1997) - Le Porge à L'océan-France. |
| - We left Mechelen with a group of 10 people in the beginning of august. Jo & Eva, Jelle & Anneke, Bram & Ingrid + Merel, Sofie, Greet and I. After a week Johan also joined us . I took Jelle and An with me and so we left for what would be a holiday that I would never forget and would leave an everlasting impression. - After a good drive we arrived in Le Porge, Camping munnicipale "La Grigne". Mighty expensive, man. What a bummer. And the big chief, "lunettes", was one of the biggest loosers I had ever seen in my life. (and I've seen some) But we just didn't care about that. It was great weather. There was a good atmosphere. We had fun. Meanwhile I felt the preasure to try out surfing getting bigger and the second day, in the afternoon, I gave in. Jelle borrowed me his board and explained me what I should do. He walked in with me, showed me how to padlle and then it was my turn. A good, shoulder-heighted wave came roling in and Jelle shouted :" padle, padle!", at me. I gave everything I had in me an yes I felt the wave picking me up. I forgot to stand up, but just the speed I had, gliding on the water. It was so impressive. I screamed like a child on a rollercoaster. Also the fight with the waves was so appealing. Trying to control the uncontrolable. Something like that. The hard crashes made that you respected this gigantic opponent. Anyway, half an hour later I got out of the water and my first words were: "I'm going to buy myself a board! who wants to come with me? " So I took my car and drove to Lacanau. We went to a few surfshops to check out their stock. I had to find a good deal because my financial strength was limited. Finally, I found me a good deal. A new shortboard (ok it was an industrial one, but I didn't know better), a leach, a beachbag and a piece of wax for 12.000 Bef.( 300 euro) Everyone asked me if I was sick or something. And yes, I was sick. I was bitten by a surfbug. You don't feel sick, you don't look sick but you just start doing crazy stuff. It changes your way of life. -The rest of the vacation was superb. Every morning I got up, went running(had to get in shape for basketball-competition), bought croissants and bread, had a good meal and went surfing. We stayed in the ocean for as long as we could. Came out to eat something and went back surfing untill sundown. Then we went back to the caping-site to eat and more important drink a lot , untill we fell, very satisfied, still seeing and hearing the waves, asleep. A routine wich repeated itself allmost everyday. Off course we went to a restaurant a few times. But not too much, France, after all, is a very expensive country. That expensive, that on the way back we allmost didn't have enough money to pay for the péage and petrol. - The waves stayed clean for allmost the entire trip. With sunset and sundown we had offshore winds, during the day onshore. The last day the ocean gave me a gift.(It was not really the last day, but for me it was since i had to druve and rest the next one) The waves were a little less big, less powerfull and hollow. For a greenie like me, superb. And that final day I was standing for the very first time. I don't mean for two or three meters, no I surfed an entire wave. I shouted like I had never shouted before. Real cool, dudes. I took my first wave and surfed it. It was the begining of a new life............. |
| The first English Surf(1997)-Plymouth-Devon-UK |
| -The summer before that the others had met some English surfers in Le Porge. Greet invited me to come with her to those dudes. And great dudes they were. A bunch of student/surfers living together in what once was a house. Lots of smoking and drinking. I met Francis, Grendall(Jonathan for his parents and the English state), Ben and others. What a great bunch of people together.All stoked on the same thing: Surfing the waves of this globe. For me it was once again a special experience. I tought the waves in Le Porge were bgreatbut what I saw there was so amazingly beautifull. Long Clean 2 meter waves. Not in Plymouth off course. They took us at Penhale. Very steep dunes with a great view on the break. Those dunes would hurt me later. - I went in with them. In the beginning no problem the waves varried between 1.5 meters and 2. But after half an hour they suddenly got bigger. Man I got 3 of them 3 meter waves on my head. Every time I came up I got the next one. It depleted my energy so much that I had to run out of the water allmost trowing up from exhaustion. Afterwards when I was climbing back to the car I had to do it very slow because I had no energy left in me so everything went black before my eyes every 5 steps I took. When I got back I started eating, something I had forgotten that morning. I learned my lesson for the next time. Always take a good breakfast before you go surfin'.... The rest of the 4 days no more waves so no more surf. But I learned to know a whole lot of cool dudes, were I can allways pay a visit to when I go surfin' in Cornwall. |
| - Great expectations. That's what I had for this trip. And it was big fun. But no Surf at all. The ocean looked like a peacefull mountanlake with not a rimple in it. BUMMER!!!!! So I got Drunk and drunk and we smoked pot like regular hippies. But the reason why I went there, to surf. Nothing for an entire week. But.... Summer was getting closer and I will have two months of vacation.....Nice! |
| The Second English Surf(1998)-Plymouth-Devon / Falmouth-Cornwall-UK |
| Tha Real Thing(Summer-1998)-Le Porge à l'Océan-France |
| - Yeah!!!!! 8 weeks of vacation. Absolutely Cool Man! So I took my board, my tent and my wetsuit and drove to le Porge again. Great Man. Beginning of July. Absolutely NO tourists.(except for a few crazy Germans but you'll hear about that one later). - As I worked as a theatre-technician in those days I had a lot of overtime still standing on my tap so I decided to go on a long surftrip so I could really live with the waves for the first time. I went alone because Most of my friends or had to work or had no money. Five of my friends(all girls) would join me later for 2 weeks but they were the only ones who moved that year. - the first days I just went surfin' once a day because I had to rest a bit because the last weeks had been very heavy at worke but slowly but shurely I was in the entire day.The evenings I allways played basketball. That's were I met a bunch of crazy Germans: Alex, Thorsten, der Bohr, Barbara, Eva and Christina. Woops, I allmost forgot our high and mighty friend Lölle. That dude was natural stoned man. WOW. Alex was more of an intelectual type(at least he wants to be, but he's a very cool dude)., Der böhr was a German prototype, big big big and big and he looked like he could drink tons of beer and eat an entire field of 'Würst'.Thorsten is just a good guy who gets irritating when he is drunk or the other way round, but I like him a lot. Barbara is just plain NUTS. And that's what is so great about her. And then there was Eva. She is really cool. She was the one I loved to talk with. really an interesting lady. But shy as I am nothing happened alltough it could have when I look back and analyse it all( I'm a stupid dickhead when it comes to women). I still see them, they visit me in Belgium and I go to Merzig a few times a year. Really cool. -The effect was that I stopped living with the waves and I started living according to the beer-availabillity. Big fun yeah, but I wasn't surfin' enough. But they only stayed for another week so after being trashed for a week I picked up my surfrythm. Yeah...right. That's what I tought because the same day my newfound friends went home my 5 friends arrived. Lucky me, they came for surfin' as well. That was NOT teh problem but the waves went away for a week. So we took the car and went to Lacanau. We hoped there would still be something. And yes there was something together with 200 surfers who tried to catch that 1 wave the ocean left us. "right', I tought. " this is a good test for my surfingskills." So I went in. I first analysed the break because Iknew I wouldn't get too many chances to catch a wave and I wouldn't want to miss that opportunity. So after that I padled into teh Atlantic. I sat there for about 30 minutes talking to the other surfers. They warned me "Les Locaus" were really aggressive. No problem I wasn't goiing to do something crazy. at least to my standards that was. Finally a wave came curling my way. I started padling like crazy and yes I had him. He was mine. I was the first and closest so I was in my right. Then a Freaky French surfer dropped in on me. Yeah, man. Crashing time !!!!! We wiped out hard. Boards colided and stuff. You know. Comes that french dude yelling and screaming at me like a some fucked up speed freak. And what is more he tries to crash my board. Man I could kill the dude. But lucky me I keot my cool. I would have gotten trashed man. Better stay calm to a local. Anyway that was my last time I surfed at Lacanau. Those dudes are fucked up man. I'm a more relaxed surfer. Peace and all that. So NO MORE FRANCE. At least for surf that is. Next year(1999) I will go to Spain. The report will be written next week. - So we went back to our campsite. We had a party. Had a quarrel with some drunk french loosers on the beach who wanted to have sex with the girls, especially with Sofie. They told them they belonged to me and then I suggested we should leave the beach immediatelly and return to the campsite because I still liked my ass. After a week the waves came back but they sucked pretty seriously. Strong boardbreaking soup. That's the best you can compare it with. But I still managed to stay up. It was once again a great trip. And I finally considered myself a surfer. From now on I would go surfing whenever there were some waves in Belgium or Holland. The virus had finally become Chronic. Wich is nice................... |
 |
|
|