Ror Parker writes with all the innocence and wonder of a child!
The hell wind died last night. Unfortunately, the swell did too.
Not totally. It’s a fun, overhead day at Backdoor. The odd bomb rolling in. Good waves, great surfing. It’s not a day that’ll go down in history, but more than worth pointing your eyeballs toward.
The wife arrived on island yesterday, we’ve got a room booked at the Turtle Bay for the weekend. Ocean view, which means it overlooks the pool and points toward shore. You can’t see the horizon, but you can see Kawela Bay. So it counts, barely, I guess.
Not that I really care. I’ve spent my time watching the ocean, don’t need to sit on my balcony and do it some more.
I do care about the toilet paper. Single fucking ply at $300 per night! Outright criminal. If I wanted to bring my own lovely Kirkland brand ass wipes I’d stay in a fucking hostel.
Ditto for the shuttle to Ehukai. I’ve been hearing about it for years. Always used as yet another example of the WSL’s dedication to eco-consciousness. I was thrilled to have access. Meant I didn’t need to wake up early and battle for a parking spot on the side of Kam Highway. Housekeeping came banging on my door at eight am, didn’t get much of a lie in anyway.
Drank some coffee I brewed in our in-room Keurig. I wonder how many plastic cups they dispose of each day. Called the concierge to find out the shuttle schedule. She couldn’t tell me, I’d have to go down to the lobby and ask. Thanks for the help!
The next one leaves at 12:30, the last return is at 4 on the dot. If you miss it you’re pretty well fucked.
It’s $20 per person. Sixty-dollars total for the wife, myself and a friend.
Just more green-washed bullshit. A cynical cash-grab masquerading as altruism.
They smelled smoke on me at the check-in desk. Kept repeating the $300 charge if I smoke in the room. The balcony counts as the room. I’d love to toss a trio of c-notes in someone’s face, light up in the lobby. But I realize it’s probably cheaper to pay housekeeping to ignore the smell.
Sundown drinks at the pool bar is always great. Sucking down rum punch, the wife ordered a martini. Received a glass of chardonnay with olives in it. Both drinks are equally foul, in my opinion.
The first four heats saw the end of each wildcard’s run. Beschen didn’t do great. World-class barrel rider without a singlet on, but he’s never been much of a contest surfer.
Finn fell out too, but for a second it looked like he was taking down Parko. What a thing that would have been! Joel’s last wave was a hair over-scored, in my mind the match up went to the teen. But Finn don’t care. He nearly beat Joel, at sixteen that’s as good as actually doing it.
Bruce failed, as always. Got taken down by ADS at Backdoor. Jeez…
Fredrico Morais is out as well. Not sure what it does to his Triple Crown hopes. It obviously doesn’t help, but I have no idea whether he’s still in contention.
So no wildcard spoilers this year. That’s too bad. But it’s no accident.
Overlapping heats all day. A necessity based on local regulations. But it’d be a good format to adopt year round. Push through the loser rounds quickly. Shorten the length of the event. A lot of people don’t like the repechage heats, and I understand their reasons. But they do a good job of removing some of the luck element. Gives guys a do-over in case a heat goes flat. Or just straight sucks.
They do make the events interminably long. Running in tandem brings a conclusion about a little quicker.
Which, today, is something I’m feeling. The surf is great, there’s magic in the water. Flashes of it, at least. But I just can’t get into it. I don’t know what the problem is. Probably something wrong with my head. Maybe just sick and tired of Oahu. Over the crowds, fighting for parking, sitting in traffic. People people people.I’ve been here too long. Couldn’t pay attention, couldn’t make myself care.
The pool bar sounded better. Overpriced piña coladas, sunburned tourists, mobs of flailing kooks at the point. It was a tempting option. Drive back toward Kawela Bay, order a few cocktails, stream the event poolside. Retire to an a/c chilled hotel room, watch guys fall off from a cushy bed with the comforter pulled up around my neck. Toss a bone at the wife with the curtains open. Stare at everyone below. It’s like I’m fucking them too!
Also, she is not interested in surfing at all. Dragging around a bored spouse isn’t the best idea. And I’m gonna do it tomorrow too.
Turned around, headed back to ersatz paradise. Made it in time to watch Igarashi knock out Wilson. Second time Kainoa has made it past round three this year. First event and last event.
Slightly bummed I missed Slater putting on a Backdoor clinic. Which is the name of my favorite imaginary porn flick. Or maybe not imaginary. I’ve gotta check my external hard drive.
Conner nearly stole the win with his last wave. Came up just short. Double bird to the judges. Do they fine for that?
Honestly, I’m giving it to Slater.
That’s it for the day. Hopefully tomorrow finds some fresh motivation.
BONUS FEATURE!
“I am really happy with my year,” said Medina. “It was a good year and I want to thank everyone who was involved. Now I am off to Brazil to relax with my family and friends. It is going to start all over again pretty soon. I am going to start training and will be back next year. I feel really good and confident for next year.”
“It was a fun year for sure to be a defending champion,” said De Souza. “I’m excited for next year. I think it will be way different for me because I’ll have way more time to prepare for the season. This contest is really special for me and every time I come to Pipe I’m so grateful to everyone for their help. When you’re not winning contests it’s frustrating, but I just have to enjoy being here. I’ve been coming to this contest for 10 years so I’ve been learning from the best.”
Monday will see an easing trend, although fun to mid size surf looks possible through the day (favoring Backdoor). Surf in the head high to a foot or two overhead range on sets looks likely.
We continue to monitor a new swell for Tuesday from a storm now over the Aleutian Islands. This storm and swell are much better aimed at areas north and east of Hawaii, with this looking like more of a glancing blow for the islands. It appears that our Surfline swell model is too ‘hot’ on this swell right now, so the surf size for Tuesday (above) take that into account and is very conservative as compared to model guidance. As we gather further data on the storm and swell we’ll adjust as necessary. Stay tuned.
Billabong Pipe Masters Round 2 Results:
Heat 1: Kolohe Andino (USA) 12.50 def. Gavin Beschen (HAW) 3.60
Heat 2: Adriano de Souza (BRA) 14.67 def. Bruce Irons (HAW) 11.30
Heat 3: Joel Parkinson (AUS) 11.74 def. Finn McGill (HAW) 11.00
Heat 4: Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 12.76 def. Frederico Morais (PRT) 8.17
Heat 5: Bede Durbidge (AUS) 8.29 def. Adrian Buchan (AUS) 5.17
Heat 6: Ryan Callinan (AUS) 12.16 def. Caio Ibelli (BRA) 4.43
Heat 7: Josh Kerr (AUS) 14.50 def. Adam Melling (AUS) 7.00
Heat 8: Kai Otton (AUS) 4.93 def. Stuart Kennedy (AUS) 2.73
Heat 9: Conner Coffin (USA) 15.10 def. Jack Freestone (AUS) 13.93
Heat 10: Wiggolly Dantas (BRA) 5.93 def. Davey Cathels (AUS) 5.90
Heat 11: Nat Young (USA) 11.27 def. Jadson Andre (BRA) 6.00
Heat 12: Keanu Asing (HAW) 10.50 def. Kanoa Igarashi (USA) 8.26
Billabong Pipe Masters Round 3 Results:
Heat 1: Jeremy Flores (FRA) 13.84 def. Matt Wilkinson (AUS) 7.43
Heat 2: Filipe Toledo (BRA) 10.44 def. Wiggolly Dantas (BRA) 4.13
Heat 3: Kolohe Andino (USA) 10.83 def. Kai Otton (AUS) 10.07
Heat 4: Joel Parkinson (AUS) 12.10 def. Miguel Pupo (BRA) 8.74
Heat 5: Michel Bourez (PYF) 12.16 def. Itala Ferreira (BRA) 10.34
Heat 6: John John Florence (HAW) 15.27 def. Bede Durbidge (AUS) 9.94
Heat 7: Ryan Callinan (AUS) 15.34 def. Gabriel Medina (BRA) 11.43
Heat 8: Josh Kerr (AUS) 7.33 def. Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 2.94
Heat 9: Nat Young (USA) 8.00 def. Adriano de Souza (BRA) 3.34
Heat 10: Kanoa Igarashi (USA) 7.50 def. Julian WIlson (AUS) 3.60
Heat 11: Kelly Slater (USA) 15.27 def. Conner Coffin (USA) 15.20
Upcoming Billabong Pipe Masters Round 3 Match-Ups:
Heat 12: Jordy Smith (ZAF) vs. Alex Ribeiro (BRA)
Billabong Pipe Masters Round 4 Match-Ups:
Heat 1: Kolohe Andino (USA), Filipe Toledo (BRA), Jeremy Flores (FRA)
Heat 2: John John Florence (HAW), Michel Bourez (PYF), Joel Parkinson (AUS)
Heat 3: Ryan Callinan (AUS), Josh Kerr (AUS), Nat Young (USA)
Heat 4: Kanoa Igarashi (USA), Kelly Slater (USA), TBD
“Hopefully tomorrow finds some fresh motivation.”
Ooo, eerily prophetic. You go girl! If you need money I could use you to write pick up lines for me.
Has somone been drinking again?
love the hotel bashing. too good. oh and keep the country country? is that everyone drives lifted, gas guzzling trucks on the north shore?
Screw that. I just bought a beater ’98 Nissan Frontier for a cool C-note. Of course I had to pay 4 years back registration, ouch! But it’s a far cry from the M3 I drove when I was keeping up with the Joneses in LA. Never again!
As for the surfing…Slater won the heat. I credit Conner’s passion (for fuck’s sake…that sounds like Turpel!) but his two best waves were not as good as Slater’s.
I feel something is brewing. The WSL would love us all to believe that 3 billion tune in and 120% of them are sharing it via social channels and they all have Samsung phones which don’t turn into mini jihadi’s.
Instead people seem to be losing sponsors left, right and centre. It turns out no one wears surf brands and maybe, just maybe watching surfing is as thoroughly fucking boring as we all suspected.
yes tell everyone you know don’t surf or quit it’s boring
Literally the toilet paper issue got me more excited than this comp.
Recently stayed at a Ramada resort – 2 Bathrooms sleeps 6 – 1 roll of 1 ply paper at half full and the other had 1/4 roll – WTF. None anywhere else.
Went down to reception to complain, they handed me 4-5 rolls 1 ply over counter while other guests checking in.
While 10 other guests checked in, I asked if they had free condoms so I could try and bang any of the young students staying there, where I could get drugs, where the closest brothel was just to fuck them over.
They attempted to move me along pretty quick, was pretty funny – the wife enjoyed the antics!!!
Coffin is clearly engaging in behavior damaging to the WSL brand. Appalling.
How long do they continue giving Bruce Irons a walk up start? Make him earn it through the trials.
Hey Rory. Remember when Hunter S. Thompson missed The Rumble In The Jungle?
I hope the same happens to you. At the very least please do something outrageous. You lazy fuck.
Hunter missed the Rumble in the Jungle and faded into oblivion soon after. Meanwhile, Mailer and Plimpton cemented formidable reputations. Watch our boy get off the ropes in rounds four and beyond. Ali-esque!
He missed the ultimate moment of Coffin letting loose with double birds, it could very well be the last tasteful outburst known to the W.S.L.
I am truely displeased.
Although I don’t doubt a possible redeeming comeback, his wife may well be proof reading to prevent any incrimination. Which will surely deprive us of entertainment.
good point. Although I loved the decline of Hunter S, especially those Hey Rube columns he wrote for ESPN
Is this the lamest pipe masters in history?
Seems like half the tour is just fucking over it and surfing half asleep
Real pipe is all that is missing… oh and muffin throwing, blood feud’s and punch up’s in the competitor’s area. https://www.facebook.com/Te…
yeah, I’ve never seen a professional sporting event with such a damp squib of an atmosphere….even the guys getting booted off Tour seem like they don’t really give a fuck
I agree, somethings just not right… I’d rather read about Rory trying to drink the entire cocktail list at the poolside bar.
tough break for Rory, wife arrived and he’s forced to write copy about a comp that’s quite clearly boring him senseless.
maybe he’ll go rogue tomorrow
I’ve got a sneaking suspicion his rogue days may be coming to an end… he may be being head hunted by either Curl or Surfing magazine, I always get those two confused.
Great to see you back Neggie. I hope you and yours were OK in the quake. I hear it’s been good for the surf though. A new town break. How’s Mangas?
We’re fine, just busy with the repairs… surf hasn’t really changed to much but early days. Haven’t had a range of swells to test the breaks out and still can’t acess the coast where the seabed lifted 5.5m.
Thats waht you get when you script a world championship.
I like how they scripted Adriano out today… pretty clever how they made the Ocean go flat for him.
Yes, let’s talk about Adriano and avoid the real issue at hand.
Mick Lowe’s wave is the best ever.
That is why kai retired….couldn’t get it in
I lived in the bush at Kawela Bay for months.
And we have… again… another heat with… Bro C A Rooms
I fear 2017 we have to see it… again… and again…
Can we leave this guy beginning another carreer?
Nightclub doorman or DJ? Bartender?
Can we leave this guy beginning a tv show with Ry and Lock T?
For God’s sake!
My man…you shouldn’t be hitting the egg nog this hard.
Did you knwo the Turtle Bay used to be called Del Webb’s Kuilima Resort? And that in 1976 it cost $36 a night??
I think the real question here is. Which Pro-surfers mother did you take to that fateful night at Del Webb’s Kuilima Resort in 76 Mr Carroll?
Nat Young just gave an interview during the Kanoa vs Joudy quarter. In case you missed it, consider doing an interview with him.
was it about the Jewish conspirators who have been planning the course of modern history behind the curtains? Because if it wasn’t, I’m not fucken interested!
Nah. Nat talked about problems this year & taking next year off. Just giving you the heads up (the same as the heads up about the future of your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, whatever).
I’m always interested when pro athletes decide to take a year off, they often come back better. Speaking of nieces and nephews, I have a niece and a nephew who are both born into an Orthodox Jewish family.
Orthodox Jews have quite exceptional family values. Plus most Orthodox Jews have given up their historical adversarial views towards non-Jews found is all of their historical religious texts, including the Old Testament. Many Orthodox Jews are Anti-Zionists. You can confirm with your niece & nephew if they have adopted a secular approach to the world at large. However, that does not change the reality that Trotsky was a Jew and the Boshevik Revolution was primarily a Jewish revenge action against the Russian Empire they were shut out of for hundreds of years when forced to live in the Pale Of Settlement. It also does not change the fact that Zionist Jews are currently pulling the strings of the US govt. It does not also change the fact that Orthodox Jews suffered during WW2 due to the actions of their non-religious brethren who still claim to be “Jews” despite not even being religious. There are numerous texts written by Orthodox Rabbis attributing some blame to the Zionists for what happened in WW2. This link: https://www.nkusa.org/pdf/T… Therefore, your niece & nephew are even more imperiled if it is ever found the Zionists planned 9/11 & thus fail in their quest for another world dictatorship. Jews flourished in Germany. Germans had no racist issue with Jews but an ideological issue, since Jews represented both post-WW1 international financial interests & Communism. The Jew control of international finance & mass media today is the same as in pre-war Germany. It is important for your family to know that “Jewish” history if the masses of the West again turn against the Jewish financial & political interests. Lol. I am a Semite. This 1920 essay by Winston Churchill is very insightful: http://www.fpp.co.uk/bookch…
Holy shit I found Mel Gibson!
To summarise as succinctly as I can Gotz Aly’s brilliant 2014 book “Why the Germans, Why the Jews”, the rise of the Nazis was predicated on deep seated German Anti-Semitism growing inexorably in the 100 plus years preceding 1933 that was built primarily on economic jealousies and a sense of national insecurity.
The better educated and more socially [upwardly] mobile Jews out paced the ethnic Germans in a time of industrial revolution when a shift from an agrarian to an urbanised society meant that intelligence, education and the ability to socially adapt became qualities that were better rewarded economically than the ability to stolidly toil in the fields.
Suddenly, in the space of a generation or so, the grandson of the Jewish milkman was now the engineer, lawyer, doctor, banker or professor of literature. What’s not to hate about a people that leapfrog you in social and financial terms even if by by dint of intelligence and application?
The years between the two Wars were not when Anti-Semitism sprung de novo from an ethnic German reaction to their ideological repression by Jews that were parachuted into positions of influence and power by their coreligionists at the expense of more worthy ethnic Germans.
It was when the Economic racism building over the previous century snowballed due to a surfeit of Weimar Republic educated 20th century millenials finding that the catastrophic devaluation of the Mark followed by the Great Depression left them educated but unemployed and impotent and looking for someone to blame.
And guess who they chose. And murdered?
Dude with Nick it’s always ze jews.
I asked if I could rent a bike and ride to Ehukai and they basically laughed at me. They do realize that there is a bike path almost 2/3’s of the way there, right?