So the waves have been pretty shit the last couple of days and I have the family with me, so what to do on the glorious Gold Coast? Go to Sea World that's what. My Daughter Jazz was so excited that she didn't take a breath the entire drive from Cooly to Surfers and I think Marli was just happy to get the hell out of the car. Anyway we had an amazing time and Jazz pretty much blitzed it, going on water slides by herself for the first time, and Marli learnt how to stand on my hands in the pool and act like a dolphin. Worth every last penny, every last one of them.

Oh and this, I think, is the first time I have blogged images from my phone.

Photos: Hopefully Marli learns to soar like these majestic marine mammals.

Well I am up at Lennox Head shooting 'Project Air' and have been having a ball launching off the custom built ramp into the foam pit. Mick Fanning, Jordy Smith, Sally Fitzgibbons and the rest of the elite surf team are here training with the sports team from Red Bull and aside from dud weather it has been pretty awesome, and when the sun finally popped out everyone had a go at the air training on the skate ramp. You can see updates on Jordy's site and the Red Bull site.

Photo: The custom skate ramp.

This should be fkn hilarious......ILAHRIOUS......

I have added a download section in the website. At the moment there are 8 different desktop pictures ready for download. I will be putting more up at a later date, but if you are keen for some fresh new images on your desktop, hit the download link in the menu to get one.

VH1 Reality Show Bus Crashes In California Causing Major Slut Spill

Visited my brother today and he showed me this video on Onion News.

Doherty arrived at my place with my fresh copy of Parko + Friends last night and I cracked the good rum to celebrate, needles to say we got fairly pissed and solved the problems of the world, again. It has printed up amazingly and should be on the stands around the 18th of Feb. Get one.

This footage looks to me to prove that the crew of the Ady Gil have no case to answer in the ramming by the Japanese whaling boat, Shonan Maru No.2. Other angles alone are a little inconclusive, although this vision, especially veiwed in conjuction with the other vision of the incident shows that the Ady Gil was stationary when the Shonan Maru No.2 sounded alarms and set a collision course with the Sea Shepherd's High Speed Tactical Weapon for protecting whales.
 

 

Well, yet again it has been a while between drinks, well not really, but metaphorically speaking. So basically I have been enjoying Hawaii with the Family, when I am not sitting around for work or surfing or shooting or whatever, and have just received the final PDF files of the book that we are doing with Parko and it looks mental.

Have been working for Rip Curl over here as well and good friend Matt Wilkinson has, in his words, "hopefully, definitely, maybe, sort of qualified for next years ASP World Championship Tour". But apparently Al Hunt, the ASP's stats guru has spilled the beans and given the nod to Wilko as a starter next year.

Any way, the waves have been ok the last couple of days, but we really need some sand movement and less rain before we will see any true gold. I'll try not take so long to blog next time as well. Ha. Whatever.

Photo: Matt Wilkinson celebrating with a few mates at the big house at OTW.

Well, just been going through files and getting images ready for the book we are doing with Parko and I had another look at this monster that Mark surfed in WA earlier this year. I have put the whole sequence up here (with a full screen option as requested by Kelso and Kellie), so you can see just how critical he got himself in there on this thing as well. Haven't had much of a chance to shoot with Mark this year as I have been busy with so many other projects and assignments, but I was lucky enough to be involved in this trip. There is also a Gallery up here from the trip as well as the Rip Curl trip I did earlier this year and a bunch of black and whites from Europe.

Also check this guy out, Remi from France.... He's a lunatic........ There's a bunch more on youtube as well.

 

Well it's been a long break between blogs, and the reason I titled the blog "Welcome Back, Kotter" is because of the break, and the fact that it has been my ringtone for the last few weeks and I am diggin' it. I really have no excuse for the lack of blogs seeing as Europe was mainly flat the whole time I was there, that is until the final two weeks, although that is when things got busy, doing reports for Fox Sports and Fuel TV every day and trying as hard as I could to sneak a surf in between work, beers and sardines. Peniche´ was my final destination in Europe and definitely didn't disappoint on the waves front. The surfing on the second last day of the Rip Curl Pro Search was phenomenal, and took place in some of the heaviest beach break conditions I have ever seen on tour.

I have updated the Recent Images gallery with images from a couple of surf trips and some travel images from Paris, Pamplona and San Sebastian. Enjoy.

Photo: The Rat, stalefish styling in the home of the Sardine, Peniche´, Portugal.