Road Trip!

This is the quintessential road trip picture. You're cooking bangers and onions on a portable gas grill that's not yours on somebody else's homebreak, not really caring that unridden head high machine lefts break off the point in the background. You think to yourself, "this is a pretty good surf trip."

What is so special about the surf road trip? Is it chasing swells, or arriving at the beach before they come? Surfable waves are elusive. They come and go like emotions, and they have a profound effect on us. Strange how that works.

New Zealand offers some California point wave perfection minus 250,000 surftech longboards and spring suit booty men, and L.A. pretense. Every drive is scenic. The landscape is gorgeous: a throwback to pre-industrialization and untended American blight. The surfers are friendly in NZ. They are cordial and efficient. They don't care about image, and they kill it out in the surf. We had the fortune of stumbling onto Manu Bay on the last 2 days of our trip. Surf was initially double overhead on the sets and firing off the point. After a fun evening of surf, we returned the next day, only to find a local club surf contest. The surf was still firing, and we were saddened we would have to go elsewhere. But low and behold, The Pointriders Surf Club invited us to participate in their contest, and by that night, we had more friends than we could count. We left the next morning, feeling quite satisfied. Where else in the world can you find a surf club that is sponsored by Lion Red Beer? That's me, at the contest's end, toasting a Lion Red to Ray, the winner of the men's mal division.