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The Oahu trip was so fun. I’ve never been to the Northshore before so it was all new to me. Most of the people on the trip (12 dudes) had been there before and/or grew up there so we pretty much had the place on lock.

The one thing that wasn’t on lock though was surfing. Holy shit was that a humbling experience… I don’t think any of us were expecting to get barreled or anything but goddamn surfing on the Northshore is effing gnarly!

I paddled out at Pipe and realized i made a big mistake when i saw a bunch of pro’s that have houses about 100 ft away on the beach. But it wasn’t till i noticed the craggy, shallow rock reef that looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie that the mistake i’d made became completely apparent. The waves were something like 4-6ft Hawaiian which is like head and a half plus to us Warshington surfers. The wave size, shape, speed and the crazy-ass shallow reef all pretty much freaked the hell outta me.

Right away I paddled away from Pipe down beach to Off the Wall which is pretty much the same setup but it closes out a lot more. After a long time of just avoiding getting caught in the extremely shallow impact zone i picked off the smallest wave i could, got murdered and caught the white water back into shore. Beer drinking time.

Over the course of the week we surfed Off the Wall, Gas Chamber, Chums, Left Overs all of which had rock reef though not remotely as scary as Pipe. I think pretty much all of us hit reef at one point or another. I broke a fin and put a monster gouge in my board. Dax, Ki and myself all got some minor foot injuries. There were a bunch of turtles, some huge floating around in the lineups. I thought about trying to go pet one but didn’t.

The place we were staying was called the ‘Wave House.’ As in it was so sick that locals new exactly what house it was if you dropped that name. The house was literally right in front of Pipe. Tipp (the organizer) told me it was right in front of Pipe but it didn’t really click till i walked up to the house and went out to the beach side. The beach was so full of girls. I think being two doors down from both Volcom houses, next door to the Billabong house and in the general vicinity of a bunch of pro’s homes made for some prime bikini observation opportunities. The amount of hot, well dressed girls was not right.

On our way to Waikiki one night we got to check out Jason Tipp’s hand made skate park. The park is called ‘Graveside’ due to it being located right next to a bunch of dead people. Super tight transitions, pool coping and still dudes were destroying it. Damn…everything is gnarly in HAW.

The trip was so much fun. It was rad to see the mecca of surfing and get beat up by it.

Here’s the Gallery

Here’s Ki’s Gallery (which blows the nwBro out of the water.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 2:14 am and is filed under Surf, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.