Category: surfing

Hanging in Moz

I was on my way to South Africa and it seems they changed the visa requirements for NZers. I have been to South Africa plenty of times before and always got a visa at the airport. For some reason, this time, I check ‘just in case’ – and find I have to apply at an Embassy for a personal interview and the visa processing would take a minimun of  7 working days and the outcome is not guaranteed.

So, I miss out on the Decolonising the Internet conference my buddy Anasuya is putting, on also the Shuttleworth panel we were going to be on at Wikimania. Sucks. But, its one of the few times I have had visa hassles as NZers are seen as ‘mostly harmless’ – so I can’t really complain. Except I really wanted to be there… ah well…so, last moment reschedule lands me in Mozambique for a 2 week holiday. Now I certainly can’t complain about that and I’m not even going to try…

Rented a small apartment on the beach and a surfboard… if you want to find me I might not be so easy to find for the next wee while…

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A day in Northland

When in NZ, I often have meetings at 1am, 2am, 6am… since most of the team is ‘somewhere else’ 😉 That can be pretty tiring but a bonus is that if I can muster the energy I can sometimes slip away on a weekday, during the day, and enjoy Northland. Some photos from such an adventure today. I took my neighbor Mike out for a day’s surf’n at Ahipara.

The first two photos show a car we passed that had tried to get around the rocks (we drove around there today – it needs a good 4WD). The car broke an axle and then the tide came in and wrecked the car… it was a sad sight to see and a sober reminder of how treacherous the coast can be.

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dsc05407 These photos of us returning to the Hokianga on the Rawene ferry. The end of a great day.

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Wooooo

I have had a bit of a frustrating time with surfing these last months. I haven’t been able to get out much and when I have, the conditions have been kinda rubbish. But today I had a good 3 hours at Mookies (secret NZ spot), and finally was able to put it all together to catch a couple of amazing waves… it was a breakthrough moment for me. I was kinda thinking I was just getting worse at surfing and feeling frustrated for it… but today was awesome…each time I surf I learn something new… today it was that you can’t sit off the shoulder of the wave and be worried about getting out of peoples’ way… if you do that you won’t improve as there is no power in the shoulder of the wave, so you’ll just flounder around and not catch many waves and not learn much…you just have to push your way into the lineup and commit…. worked super well for me today… wooohoooo!