new surf dialogue

January 30^th, 2010:

Spent the day in Gisborne City.

Making contact with potential farm hosts to show us around their fruit tree, shorn sheep and bee hive lifestyles.

The library is a noisy adventure with no restroom. Have to head next store to the police station. Put 20 cents on the counter and pee away.

At Woolworths we buy real, authentic New Zealand minced lamb for pan fried burgers. Silver beets for vitamins and ruffage. Mineral waters for drink. Cheese is already in the chilly bin.. Whittakers chocolate for pre-dreamstate indulgence.

Head down a dirt road, north of town and on the beach. There is a nice grassy knoll off to the right, just need to scoot our house across a patch of sand. Steady. Steady. Tires begin to bury themselves. Chassis sits up real nice and comfortable on a patch of grassy hard pack. We are fuckin’ super stuck.

Dig and dig and dig. Shove timber under the tires. Punch the van and scream obscenities. Repeat. Back door lock seems to break. Continue the madness for one hour. Bloody knuckles and hungry bodies.

The sun begins a final descent beyond the hills. We are debating a hitchhike into town or a night buried in the sand.

“Someones coming…,” Christine says, “…pickup truck…yep, GDC on the side.” Gisborne Dept. of Conservation. Paid land stewards and enforcers of law and order amongst the sand dunes and tide pools.

Curly haired beer belly man gets out of his government vehicle. Che Guevara’s face printed on his red t-shirt, ‘Cycling Revolution’ printed below.

“Looks like you could use a hand. Thought I’d come down, take the dog for a walk  and pull you out. Been watching you from town for awhile; from the camera up there,” he mentions as he points out the survelliance machine up on the hill, pointed right at us. Big Brother here to save the day. “You got a tow hook under there?”

Christine blushes, thinking to herself of how she had changed her top awhile ago, hoping he hadn’t been zooming in for a closer look. “You guys ever see the movie Whale Rider,” he asks, while reading my anti-capitalist punk rock t-shirt, “filmed right around the corner here. Pretty good film I reckon.”

We kept busting knots and rope braids, the bastard van acting like a rock wedged between two boulders. Our angel drives off to get reinforcements, as darkness blankets the day. The stars come out and unseen waves break gently on the offshore reef. Somewhere near here Moko the dolphin patrols the Gisborne coast line.

With crayfish rope procured from a buddy’s house, the van is ripped from the granulated stone, one pedal to the metal surge that sends the van in a mad fishtail. Up and over the ditch, wanting to tip over as I struggle to control the unexpected herky jerky climax from the drivers seat.

“Yeah! Just a little bit of fun for the night in Gizzie for ya.”

“Yeah, piece of cake man. Nice and smooth. What was your name by the way?” I’m a bit stunned really, so is Christine.

“Jamie.”

“Cheers Jamie. Thank you so much dude.”

“Ah, no worries mates. I had a good buddy driving round the states once. He broke down and some good folks took him in, fixed his car for free and gave him the keys to their cabin. I reckon that’s what people should do for each other.”

Off he drove, leaving us to calm down and figure out the rest of our evening.

“Holy shit. I can’t believe you didn’t tip over. The van was like a feather in the wind. Jesus Christ.”

“I wasn’t expecting that. At all.”

We pulled around the gravel cul-de-sac, a few meters from where we were. Cheese, bread tomato and mustard. Lamb burgers will have to wait. The chocolate doesn’t. Swatting at a handful of mozzies diving for our earlobes, we pass out in exhaustion.

Daniel Duane was right, the surf trip story lies not within the details of ridden waves, but of the rides to those waves. He says, in his novel Caught Inside, “The broken truck axle and the six hour hike through the Baja desert for help are far more likely to be repeated years later than how “I made this superlate drop, and then the wave hit that inside bowl and just throated me.” The story is imbedded in the people, places, and things one encounters while on the search. I’m getting a bit frothy though, as we continue to search for those superlate drops and inside bowl sections.

morning after getting stuck...view from the van