Get ready to spill your beans.
Watching adult learner and Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton discover how to surf, get barreled, have good style and foil board (so far) while on vacation has been a revelation for all of us or it least it has been a revelation for me. A beautiful, beautiful dance. Now, I don’t follow Formula 1 though I would like to. It feels like a sport for the upper upper crust. For those better than you and I which is probably exactly why I don’t follow. Because I haven’t been asked and the powers that be know that I don’t belong.
Those powers are right but let’s get back to vacations here.
Have you ever gotten cornrows while in Bali? Be honest please. What about a henna tattoo? Honest. What about your name written on a grain or rice that you wore around your neck like a magical talisman?
Seriously. Be honest.
Because my worst ever vacation mistake was to buy and wear a pair of hot pink and teal Teva sandals when my grandma gave all the grandkids the option of either going on a snorkeling trip to Molokini or $50 cash during a family reunion to Maui when I was thirteen. I took the $50 cash and bought a pair of hot pink and teal Teva sandals and have basically regretted it for the rest of my life.
Thirteen.
Old enough to know better. Still too young to care.
But now cough yours up. It is no more embarrassing than hot pink and teal Teva sandals over a fantastic snorkeling adventure.
Trust me.
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At least my mistake is bigger than old mate’s in the photo.
Don’t forget Donnybrook.
Needs the puka necklace
There were two 5’10 G&S twinnies at the shop in Goleta – a white Mark Richards, and a funny red round pin with parallel (?!) white fins. And in some hormone-addled fit of non-conformism, I bought the red one? Oh Christ, I bought the red one, didn’t I. Fuck.
Red does go faster.
They do
Walking south along Kuta Beach as the sun rose sometime in the year 2000 after an all night party at the club that was on the beach back then a bit north of Kuta – I can’t remember the name of it, but pretty sure it had a pool. Was in a pretty excellent mood as I was wandering along enjoying the buzz and the sunrise. An older Balinese dude approached me saying he was an art teacher from somewhere up in the mountains and he offered to swap my purple Quicky tshirt I was wearing for a painting he’d done of a warrior with a sword fighting off a god that has bird like features. I gave him my tshirt and took the painting. Somehow I had also promised to come back with $10 or $20 Aussie for him. Anyway the hot tropical sun was high in the sky by the time I found some money then trudged back up the beach and he was hiding in some bushes or a house along the beach so I waited for him to emerge and finally gave his cash to him. I’ve unrolled the painting a few times over the years and dragged it from house to house, had it in storage for years, but never put it up, ever.
I have several close friends that holiday in Bali each year, all non surfers. All have what they call their Bali family. They visit said Bali family and take them gifts (mostly cash) and delight in telling me how they’re making a difference.
Cunts are getting scammed big time and have absolutely no idea
I wish I had been invited.
My uncle got an entire group of friends and family to go island hopping on a giant tall ship in the Caribbean. Because our last name is “Lynch” he made everyone white tee shirts for the trip that said “Lynch Mob” on them. It was carnival in Trinidad and because it is crowded and wild and can be a little dangerous, we were advised to all wear our matching tee shirts so we could be easily spotted. Wow, yeah. A group of 50 or so drunk. white assholes showing up into an entirely black crowd of carnival goers, wearing white tee shirts that said “Lynch Mob.”
My sister and I grabbed each other and said,”holy shit this is insane!” So we started buying feathers and pieces of costumes off little kids, and hugging them to get glitter all over to try and disguise our tee shirts as best we could. I’m completely surprised and impressed nobody got beat up that day.
Gotta love a family vacation.
Wow. Now that’s a mic drop.
PS – we’re all a bunch of Formula One fans. So much for your “upper crust sport” theory.
So apparently the first Lynching has nothing to do with race, it happened at Lynch’s castle in Galway Ireland, the local warlord – Lynch – discovered his son had murdered and raped a peasant girl, he brought his son to the top of his castle, threw a noose around his son’s neck and threw the bastard over the wall! Justice 1500s style. When I see the term Lynch used out of context I think either Wayne or Barton, or else I think cultural appropriation!
well that is very interesting! Thanks Jimmy, you’re a saint!
The term “boycott” also comes from the same area, a British cunt – “Captain Boycott” who wouldn’t play ball with the locals was sent back to England with his tail between his legs in the 1880s!
Do you think that little history lesson would work once they’ve decided to kick your teeth in?
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Was it in the late 80s/early 90s?
Late 90s or early 2000s –
got shitty on the first flight, got more shitfaced in a bar talking shit with a hottie … puked in the john while they were taxiiing.. they put me in a seat next to the stewardess, woke up at the final landing. that was fucking embarrassing
but if you set the stage ahead of time and stay with it.. you get to surf whenever the fuck you want..
First trip to California got separated from family and lost walking trail to Lowers … lifeguards picked me up and drove me down to beach : (
Ha! How old?
12 and unda !
My compadres and I have a little term we call “gringo excess”. Basically, when you’re on a surf trip and you leave your smartphone, camera, binoculars, etc…out on a table or by a hammock or whatever, you say, “your gringo excess is showing.”
Was a period of time when I first went to London that I wore embarrassing levels of fluorescent clothing to raves.
I blame LSD, ecstasy, Ketamine and my dyed red dreadlocks… I blame that hair dye the most.
The dye or the hair itself????
I had hair once…
Never blame ectasy
If the marriage of all these elements got you a few roots then the whole package must have been greater then the sum of its parts ? Even the red dreads ….
That is the most glorious photo!
meeting noel galahger in hotel bar and not punching him.
It’s Gallagher you cunt!
Trip to the Big Island with future wifey. On the plane we sat next to a local who informed me that he could score me some great Kona vegetation. Sounded good so I dropped wife off at the hotel and headed back to meet my new bro, but with strict instructions to be back before sundown. Wife loves the Mai Tai sunset thing but doesn’t do the pakalolo deal so I was on borrowed time as it was. Long story short, I got lost. I finally found the guy but the romantic sunset was long gone by the time I returned. Opened the door to a pitch dark room and her sitting alone on the patio in front of two empty Mai Tais. Needless to say, I heard about it the whole trip.
at least she didnt tell you about the dude who drank the other mai tai
ha
How about the worst image ever put on breachgrit…ya this is it!
Went to Waikiki on a Hail Mary vacation. You know, that vacation you take with your significant other to see if you can rekindle the romance or if you are going to call it quits for good. If you ever get to the point where you need to take a Hail Mary vacation just end it right there. It never works out well. I took a longboard so I could surf Threes. That didn’t help matters any. She wanted to try and paddle my board and couldn’t even balance on the board much less paddle. The small waves washed her and my board into the cement jetty and bashed in my tail. I showed more concern for my board than I did for her and that didn’t go well either. Yeah so we stayed broken up.
Better than a Hail Mary Baby. I’ve heard of people ‘well things aren’t working out…maybe a baby will bring us closer.’
Fucking idiots… anyone who says kids are the best thing that ever happened to them, never had shit, never did shit before they had kids… (on a side note, my kids rock and i can’t see my life without them.. but the little rugrats are a pain in the ass, take all my money and cause stress between me and the wife, like I don’t get laid nearly enough kind of stress, so there) But i would never ask for anything more than what I got (besides for a little blow job now and again.. but… I am married)
for sure, I dodged that bullet. I do have three though, and the boy surfs, so it actually gets me to the beach more. I lucked out.
a good portion of waikikis economy depends on people with intentions like yours.
its a trap
True that! I keep going back without a companion though, and its glorious. I just laugh now when I see those guys there wearing their dad cargo khaki shorts and new Hawaiian shirt heading out to dinner at Cheesecake factory as I’m paddling in from Threes. You can see it in their face, trying to make the best of it.
2004. First official surf trip. Started surfing the year before. Flew from East Coast to Northern Cali to surf down coast to Santa Barbara. Parked at Steamer Lane. Frothing. Out of the car, wetsuit, board out of the bag, wax, leash, walk to the cliff, jump into the water. Sat for a few minutes to get my bearings. A peak comes to me and I’m in position. I turn, take off, stand up and spin around in circles down the face before the wave closes out on top of me, washing me and my board into the cliff. Forgot to put my fins in.