the best thing on earth

Got a lot of stuff to post, but little time to do it.
Here we go, let's start with this surf session at my favorite spot in Maui on Sept 7th. The day before I got it even better and surfed it very inspired for a few hours. This day, instead, I couldn't tune in the sesh. My arms were tired and I missed the first four waves (I never do that!). Not only I had a confidence crash, but also I didn't get any more respect from the other surfers who consistently dropped in on me. That's the way it goes. If they see you missing a few, next time they'll paddle for it even if they don't technically have the priority to do so. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that. Waves should not go unridden when it's crowded, so I totally deserved the drop ins.
I decided to get out of the water and take a few pics, which are posted below. Enjoy them.

Let's start with a sequence entirely dedicated to Michelle (this is the pay off for the wipe out in the shore brake at Hoo in the previous post...). Here she is with a nice take off with the hand in the water to stay close to the breaking section and hopefully getting a little cover-up.



Nice top turn with a little spray on this other one.


Here she plays with the lip. I like the "rasta" hair...
Nice shot!


I like this guy's cut back with the hand in the water.


Just like this one.


Grab the rail, hand in the water and hope to get shacked.


Look at that wave!


The same day, at sunset, I drove pretty much to the opposite side of the island to surf another of my favorite waves. We're talking top 5 favorite waves in Maui. I got in the water at 6.20pm and it was very crowded. I waited patiently until my turn came (like, half an hour later) and I scored a great one. Head high, with a lot of different fun sections to make, almost dark, people cheering from the inside. I did three cut backs (or is it cuts back?). Now, three cut backs on the same wave with a longboard... that was a damn good wave!
Around 7 I had to come out because it wes pretty dark. But I knew the moon was going to be full. And I knew it was going to rise soon.
So I went to eat something (I even scored a free hula show at the mall), and one hour later I was back on the spot. The only car in the parking was mine. I entered the water at 8.10pm, with the moon still behind some clouds, but I could tell it was about to pop out. It actually didn't. Or, at least, not as soon as I hoped. So, finding the channel was a little adventurous.
I made it to the break, and even though I was trying to line up with some lights on the shore, the positioning was pretty much left to the luck.
I had to give up on some really good ones, just because I was a few feet off the take off spot. In the daylight, I would have been easy to paddle towards the peak, but with the full moon, you only see the wave at the last moment. But in the daylight, there would have been 30 more people too!
I got lucky a couple of times and took off in the right spot.
Let's see if I can describe how cool it is to ride a wave with the full moon. I'm not even going to mention how beautiful the waves look in the moonlight. I'm not even going to mention how great it is to be the only one out.
I'm just going to say that without the full help of the vision, riding a wave is a matter of feel.
It's the board that sends the feedback to the brain of how the wave is in that moment. You feel the wave is steep and you push on the rail to make the section. You feel the board is slowing down and you walk a little forward to push the nose back down the hill. It's a quite pure form of surfing. On an uncrowded day, I should sometimes try to close my eyes while riding and see what happens... Mmmm, maybe that would be a bit too much.
Anyway, here's another thing worth to mention about night sessions.
Even though I'm never scared by the fact that I know that when I enter in the ocean I'm not on top of the food chain anymore, at night it's a different story. Big fish eat at night, I know that and my brain can't avoid to go there. I try to relax. I try to think to the statistics that make me aware of the fact that big fish eat other fish and that the probability of a mistake and hence of an attack is extremely low. But it's a tough mind game. When the wave comes, all these stupid thoughts disappear. It's when you wait for the set that it's hard to get full control of the brain.
Anyway, I had to leave around 9.30, because the tide was getting too low and it would have been a little sketchy to get back in.
On the beach, a lonely local fisherman went like:"Eh brah, I saw you carving all da way out dere!"
"Me carving? You must have smoked da kine, brah..."
We laughed.
It felt good to know that not only I was having a deep connection with mother nature, but also entertaining the only witness.

I rode the snake again... I even carved on it!

Last thing I want to add at the end of this post.
The waves in these photos are close to perfect. The waves at night were pretty damn good too. But today, at Koki beach in Hana, the waves were all messy and disorganized. Guess what? Me and Michelle had a blast anyway. I couldn't believe we were having so much fun in such poor conditions.
I started surfing 5 years ago, when I moved in Maui. Since then, the level of stoke is constantly going higher and higher. I wonder if it will ever stop. I hope not.

Because surfing is the best thing on earth.