Bitter sweet

Sweet - on friday night bought a brand new longboard, 9'0 x 3' x 23', deep concave under the nose, psychedelic graphics, super duper 10mm Creatures slimfit boardbag (Nat's very jealous) and a couple of blocks of sexwax. By 7am on saturday morning, I was in the water at Currumbin with Nat, the new board paddles so much better than the old thing, and I was catching waves. Two dolphins even surfaced right next to us - and I mean right next to us. Stunning. We took my new GoPro Hero waterproof camera (a snip from eBay at $45) and took a whole roll of shots, almost all of which turned out really well. We even managed a couple of classy action shots, and I took one of Nat while we were both riding the same wave. All good.

Bitter - after the lengthy surf session, I was knackered. So knackered, in fact, that carrying the board across the carpark I dropped it. On the bitumen. It bounced on it's rail, then on it's deck. I had such a sick feeling in my stomach - horrible. I've caused a shatter in the fibreglass at the nose, and another at the tail, and scratches along the rail. Nothing horrific, but the board was only 12 hours old! On the way back to Brissy we stopped into Noosa Longboards to get them to look at patching it up. Keith, the same guy I had bought the board from, was working - so after telling him that the board was great, I told him what had happened afterwards. I didn't know the other guy in the shop, but we all had a bit of a chuckle about me being an idiot - only then did I find out that the other guy was Josh Constable, the bloody world longboarding champion.... Oh - and there were loads of blue jellyfish in the water while we surfed. Nothing worse than a stinging nettle kind of sting, but made me feel pretty uneasy and squeamish.

So my brand new board's at the shaper's being fixed to the tune of $90 (ouch) and Skye's making jokes about me having used up my birthday presents for the next 10 years - I don't think I'll ever drop another board! :)

Couple of other bits of news - the birthday balloon ride over Brisbane planned for for Skye and Lyn was cancelled the night before due to bad weather. That's a real shame, but the weather's so poor at the moment that it's almost better that we'll have to reschedule and have a chance of a clear day. We did go and see Mojo Webb last night, though, and he was fantastic. He's got a weekly solo gig at Satchmo's on a sunday - I can see us taking visiting Poms along there too :)

Last but not least, Nat and Al have a new puppy :) Luca is a Kelpie cross, very cute, evidently very intelligent and it's easy to see that he's going to grow up to be a great dog.