Last Minute

"You made it," I yelled to Phil as he walked away from a dust covered Toyota Yaris, bags in hand.  In Nicaragua,  these subcompacts brave the dirt roads, in frequent, white knuckle passages from the Coast to Managua.

"Sure did. The flight was flawless. This place is gorgeous,"  Phil said, motioning toward the cabanas and palm trees.

"Yah.  Beats the shit out of  Jersey doesn't it?" Rolling out of the hammock I was rocking in, I set down Hayduke Lives and walked over to help Phil with his bags.

"Actually it was 70° yesterday.  We've had a pretty mellow winter, but still,  this is incredible."

"So I hear.  You ready to get in the water?"

Five days earlier, Phil and I were shooting the shit on Google Chat when I asked him if he would be interested in heading down to Nicaragua for a bit.  Fed up with the rain and mediocre waves of the Northwest,  I bought a ticket to Managua in a crime of passion a few days early.  My alternative employment allows me to plan my travels with a few days notice.  Few twenty-somethings have this same flexibility, so I often make journeys with the company of my camera and a book on tape.

"Let me get back to you about it,"  Phil said before signing offline.

"Just putting it out there."

Normally, a noncommittal line like that is a death sentence for trip but with Phil, the founder of the Madbury Club and The Award Tour,  I withheld judgement.  Twenty minutes later my phone buzzed with an email saying he was in for a week.

The Window Seat.

Quiver Me Timbers.

#vanlife Nica style.

Beach Cruisers.

Equipped to rip.

Kicking back.

Duck diving.

Stump town.

Sun bleached.

Selfy on the Nikon Action Touch with Portra 160.

Exchanging Phil's bags for a hand plane and a set of fins,  we headed towards the beach for a little white water baptism.

"The tides are wrong for surfing," I explained. "But we will have a blast with these," I said holding up the fins. "We'll get you on a surfboard tomorrow."

"Man, I'm just happy to be here.  It reminds me a lot of Haiti." Phil said as we walked through the hot sand

"It's pretty wild. It's tough to only come here once. I'm glad you could make it."

"Yah man,  the best stuff always happens last minute."

"Sure does."

Here are some more links,

Last Minute (Facebook),

Phillip Annand (Twitter).

Spring Break Snowboards

Corey Smith marched past, brandishing an exaggerated swallow tail with teal bindings. "How are you doing man?" he asked.

"Good.  Still adjusting to this 9,000 feet elevation shit," I said standing a few feet off to the side of the trail on a pass overlooking Lake Tahoe.

"Is it that high? It's tough alright."

Nodding in agreement,  I took off my gloves and shoved them in my pocket.

"Last time I hiked in the back country was... eight years ago almost to the day with Jarad Hadi and Nick Dirks.  Remember that winter when there was no snow on Hood?"

"That winter was a huge buzz kill.  Nowhere got much snow," Corey recollected.

"We came down here to South Lake and shredded pow and handrails for a week.  So fun."

The wind ripped a blast of loose snow down from around the group of trees on top of the hill.  Corey kicked his snowshoes into the next holes and continued up the grade.  Pulling my board from the snow,  I tightened the ratchets on my snowshoes and awkwardly side-stepped back onto the boot pack trail.

At the summit,  we regrouped and waited for the stragglers.  Despite having snowboarded only a few times in the last two years,  the motion of kicking my heel into the back of my binding and then ratcheting the toe strap brought back memories of countless days spent hiking out of bounds on Mt. Hood and other mountains around the Cascades.  Standing up with both feet strapped in, I shuffled the board into position in the lineup.

The sound of clicking bindings worked to a frenzy and then stopped.  Grabbing my snowshoes, I shoved them into my backpack and clicked the waist strap.

"You guy's ready to rip?"

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Corey cuts out the boards from sheets of plywood, shapes them with a sander and planes and then glasses the top and bottom with polyester resin, all in his studio in downtown LA.  Designed for powder, the boards ride more like a surfboard than a conventional snowboard.  No two boards are the same.  Check out  Spring Break Snowboards for more info.

Surfing doesn't just happen in the water.

Walking on the ridge line.  That's Reno off to the left.

Brendan Gerard hitchhiking.

Powder hoggin' it.

Erick Messier brandishing his sword.

With a hoot, Eric Messier and Ben Rice dropped in, leaning huge turns down the exposed face.  Their carves sent fresh Sierra snow shooting behind them like the wake of a water ski. Grinning with anticipation, I slid forward on my heel edge into position.

Next Corey dropped,  taking a different line towards a small group of trees to our right.  Leaning in,  he let his hand touch the snow, sending a wall of snow towards a filmer and photographer.

"You ready?" Brendan Gerard inquired, in a tone suggesting that I should shit or get off the pot.

"Born ready," I joked, transferring my weight to my right foot and kicking the nose of the board out towards the bottom of the hill.  With a crunch, I slowly slid forward.

Here are some more links,

Spring Break Snowboards (Facebook),

Spring Break Snowboards.

Spring Break Snowboards (Vimeo).

Travelers of Baja

A laundry list of potential obstacles including but not limited to banditos, food poisoning, crooked cops, car problems and drug cartels applies to the US/Mexico border. Horror stories echo around the internet and campfire conversations.  This cycle of truth and exaggeration keeps going until many travelers scratch Baja off their list of places to visit.  Some accept these risks in search of empty waves, cheap travel and a desire to see what the West was like before it was developed.   These are some of the vehicles of the travelers I came across in Baja:

Rhinolined from head to toe.

 Best it's ever been.

My Syncro.

Travels with Charlie.

Schooly and VW.  These guys are in it for the long haul.

Note the ninja turtle.

Shredded.

His and her campers and surfboards.

#vanlife.

Some travelers come for a weekend while others stay for months or years.  Their vehicles range in size and price but all enable people to explore a place that many avoid.

Here are some more links,

Travels of Baja (Facebook),

@Fosterhunting (Twitter).

Best it's Ever Been: Hunting for Waves in Baja California Sur

"You should have been here two weeks ago.  Twenty-foot faces,"  a voice behind us said. Standing in the sand looking at the ocean,  Dan, Trevor and I immediately turned to see a tan, fifty-year old man in a hooded sweatshirt leaning casually against a palapa.  He popped a can of Tecate stuffed into a black neoprene wetsuit glove.

"Best it's ever been."  100% Emphatic.

Dan and I looked at each other as if figuring out whose turn it was to clean the dishes.

"No shit,  really?" I said, answering the void.

"Yup.  A buddies coming by later with photos from the day. The wave connected all the way to the beach," he said motioning from the point left towards the beach with his beer in hand.  The fingers of the glove-turned-koozie jiggled in the light wind.  "I've been surfing here for thirty years,  hands down the best I've seen it."  He took a chug of the beer and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"Damn,  we rode that swell in California.  It was pretty fun there too."

"How were the waves this morning?"  Dan asked.  "Does it always blowout like this in the afternoons?"  Dan nodded towards the ocean.

"Yeah, pretty much. It has its days though.  Sometimes it holds off all day,"  he said looking towards his wind chimes made from beer cans and broken surfboards. He took another swig of his beer.  "The waves were fun this morning. A little crowded though, 'cuz it's the weekend and all."

Pausing for a second, I looked at my watch.  ST stands for Saturday.  After three weeks camping,  the days blend together with no functional difference between a Tuesday and Sunday.

"You boys staying the night?  I hear the swells building."

"Yeah we are thinking about it,"  Dan responded.

#campvibes.

Three benches with a view of the ocean.

Quiver.

 A deserted lighthouse.

 

A cacti forest.

 Handed-painted signs.

Red, white and blue in Baja.  The man with the neoprene koozie's boards.

Moo.

Two tents and a van.

Rocky coasts on the Sea of Cortez.

Endless deserts.

That night, the swell built as the man with the glove koozie had predicted.  Waking to take a piss a few hours before sunrise,  the pounding waves shook the ground and the moon light reflected off white water.  Debating if he was full of shit or not,  I lay in my sleeping bag watching the occasional satellite work its way through the clear night sky.  He didn't seem like a bullshitter,  but Baja sure does attract a wild bunch of people. "I guess the photos would leave little to debate," I thought to myself before slipping back to sleep.

We never saw the photos of him surfing, but the next morning, he was out in the lineup.  After kicking out of a double overhead right,  he paddled by.  "Twice this big,  and perfect."

Grinning ear to ear, he kept paddling.

Looking over at Dan, I conceded, "Maybe it was as good as it's ever been, but who cares.  This is as good as we could ask for."

Here are some more links,

Baja California Surf (Facebook),

Fosterhunting (Twitter).