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I just went to Indonesia on a boat trip with seven amazingly diverse, musically inclined, artistically talented funny chicks. If I could say all of those things in one sentence properly, they were all of the above. Kassia Meador and I planned a boat trip to Indo with a more diverse group of women than we’ve ever gone with before. Usually we go on trips based on who’s rated what and who’s killing it at that time and only for purposes of getting good photos and film. This time we didn’t really think about photos or filming as much as the good vibe. We just wanted to go on a chill boat trip with some talented women surfers in and out of the water. So we got together and this is what we came up with:
Lee Ann Curren (AKA charger and daughter of the infamous Tom Curren -- it was scary the similarities between her and her father). She was always charging and playing really good tunes on the boat. And I gave her mad props for cutting her bangs herself the morning of her departure for the boat trip.
Sally Fitsgibbons (AKA Giblet), official token grom of the trip who surfed better than just about anyone in Indonesia at the time and, might I add, has just qualified for the ASP women’s World Tour two weeks after our trip at 17 and halfway through the year. I feel honored having been able to go on a trip with her before she’s untouchable. Serena Brooke (AKA Tassie Devil), my bunkmate and hell charger did the biggest floater I’ve ever seen a woman do on this six foot bombie. She showed up to Indo without clothes -- only army pants and a puff jacket in hand so she had to do with an entire Megan wardrobe. It was funny, but for her it was only funny for a couple of days.
Then there’s Lyndsay Noyes who rode weird boards all the time. Despite the fact that she’s extremely talented on a modern day shortboard, she rode this thing called an Alea. So weird. Its what the Hawaiians used when surfing was first introduced. It’s about half an inch thick and five feet long -- a wood plank with no wax was her choice of equipment. Pretty amazing stuff, oh and she plays a mean guitar as well.
Stephanie Gilmore -- need I say more? World Champion, blues specialty guitarist, ear-to-ear smiles and maybe the best female to ever stand on a surfboard. Yes, it was a treat to watch her on every wave she caught. You can learn so much by watching Steph for a few hours, which I got to do because I was sick for the first week of the boat trip.
Last but not least there’s Kassia Meador, female surfing icon, the toes on the nose queen and one of the main faces of Roxy for the past 10 years. She was the only other girl besides me that doesn’t play guitar, so I didn’t feel that out of place. But she’s very artistic and was always drawing on her board or taking photos. She was on iphoto when she wasn’t surfing. She also had the biggest laugh on the boat. All around a really good, mellow crew.
I started off with super bad shoulder tendonitis and couldn’t even lift my arm to drink a cup of coffee. But it was OK, I was in good spirits and just went swimming and videod the girls for days. So at least I have a fun collection of footage. How bummed can you get in Indo? Then I got a mysterious flu and was out for a few more days. But the chef was making the best ginger, lemon and honey teas for me. This year I took it upon myself to invest in a really good camera and video camera so I can look back on my amazing life and never forget the beautiful people and the places surfing’s allowed me to share. At 30 I guess you realize that it won’t last forever so if there’s anything you can do to make memories last then I’ll preserve them. Our trip was hosted by the Indies Trader 2 and captained by Albert, um forgot his last name. But he’s a coffee connoisseur and gave us lessons on coffee every afternoon at three. He’s one of the very first Mentawai captains and has been working in Indo for a long time, his main goal was to always get us waves without too many people, which we succeeded quite often in doing so. We surfed so many different types of waves and used various types of equipment. I brought a red finless board with me to Indo and it was super hard to surf. I was a bit cocky and thought that I would own the thing. Well, it owned me and I looked like a crab doing five 360s per wave. Lynz, who at times looked just as funny as me, couldn’t stop laughing.
One morning we were surfing this little beach break and the captain wasn’t paying attention and thought we would do a floater over this wave with six of us in a tin boat, we went over with the lip. Sonny, Jeff, Serena and I all bailed out but Lynz stayed in and we thought she was done for and somehow Albert pulled through and she only had a few bruises. Even though I laugh it was one of the scariest boat incidents I’d ever been in.
I learned about coffee that is pooped out by monkeys and actually tastes like the best coffee in the world. People pay big money to drink this stuff they call coffee Luac. It wasn’t your typical boat trip. We surfed some pretty fun waves that allowed us to all try and catch up with Sally in the air department, but not really. She was doing two airs a wave, and I was doing crab airs. Never too late to try, I guess. I think what helped sally was she had so much energy from eating two plates full of food a meal so she had to burn it off somehow. There wasn’t much fish in Indonesia this time, but lucky for me I caught a hungry little sucker. Cook made a delicious meal out of it. Our cook was pretty insane and had been Madonna’s personal chef before so we all thought he was pretty much the coolest guy ever, plus he had the best Kiwi accent. One night I decided to have a few BingTang beers and do a solo INXS act and the groms had never witnessed this before. I grabbed Lee Anns guitar and played suicide blonde air guitar and they secretly filmed it. So when I’m old I can watch myself make an arse of myself.
We watched movies and jammed music when we weren’t surfing. We got quite a few waves to ourselves but here and there would be other boats and we would have to share waves. One day we ran into a cool boat full of Japanese surfers which was funny. Kassia does this really good Japanese impression so she decided to utilize it and speak to them with her funny accent. It was hilarious. Every afternoon we’d sit around in the lineup or the tin boat and talk crap and have a beer and just laugh at each other. I faced my fears and jumped off the top of the boat. I was so scared but glad I did it in the end. All the girls were yelling from Lances Rights calling me a wuss if I didn’t do it. So I had to. Poor Serena had to share a room with me and my bag somehow caught the same virus as me and vomited all over the room. She’s such a clean person too, it must have pissed her off. My bag exploded everywhere. I get so ADD that I’d go for a surf and go to change but want to rush upstairs so fast that I’d just tear my bag apart.
We watched a couple of super bad movies as well. One of the movies we had to hide Sallys eyes from. On the last two days of the trip we ran into another boatload of female surfers on the start of their trip. It was a pretty amazing thing. In all of the years I had been going to the Mentawais since 1997 there’s always been like the token female boat trip. Well it shows how times have changed because it was the first time there’s ever been two female trips in the Mentawais at the same time. It was a sight to see, 15 girls taking over perfect lances right. That last day was epic and we got to share it with a bunch of our other friends. We got barreled almost every wave and couldn’t stop smiling. We were trying to scheme a way to stay out another week. It was funny. But in the end, I got barreled on my last wave did I sick turn, kicked out and ended up a foot from the tin boat. They threw me a beer and I watched Steph get shacked, the sunset beautifully over the land behind us, and I just smiled cause it was the funnest trip I’d ever had to Indo. The waves weren’t perfect the whole time, just fun. But the vibe was good. The vibe. So now when I go back to Indo or go on another surf trip I’ll never forget it’s not the waves that make a trip , it’s the good times and good vibes. The end.
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