======== Newsgroups: alt.surfing Subject: The D.J.Files...oh no not more - djberbus.17 [1/1] From: dp025@seqeb.gov.au (D.Pritchard...Bear) Date: 3 Oct 1996 23:08:36 GMT Disclaimer : the 'Files are based on excerpts of various surfers' lives, including myself....but then literary licence takes over. The D.J.Files #17 A Wednesday in Wales... Dave-the-Rave's Kombi is old enough to have the 'split' windscreen, 3-up-front seating and hinged side doors. This particular day, Dave and 2 mates are all off due to rather short night shifts...about 4 hours, in fact. But the boss knows (he prefers em to go home when the work's all done. Rather than hang about bored and playful amongst a million dollars worth of equipment) so everyone's happy. Why are Wednesdays often so good for surf?? Obviously some sort of 'natural law' applies. This one looks promising. The weekend weathermap had a nice fat Low sitting off Ireland and they were pretty certain it would be pumping swell in by now. Best of all the day had 'summer' written all over it (it was June), with a very light offshore and just enough streaks of cloud in the sky to prevent a landscape painter from being bored. Three guys in the front: 'the Rave, Andy Nicholson and the Poser. The boards are all in the back, side by side across the dinette seats. They pull up at a beach they sometimes surf, sometimes use as an indicator. Yee-ha! There's more lines out there than a Hollywood coke party! The Rave slams the bus into reverse and they're off to a better spot. Getting to it entails creeping the kombi around a gate marked "Keep Out. Contractors Vehicles Only", which is currently locked, since the works the contractors were undertaking is complete. But you can just squeeze between the gatepost and the ditch along one side, providing at least 2 guys hang out one side to stop the vehicle falling over. Once negotiated they have a couple of kilometres of clear run on a beaut road built across National Trust land to allow huge dump trucks to carry huge rocks to build a jetty up at a nearby steelworks. They've been sneaking in and out of here for well over a year. Sometimes they have to use an alternative route across a golf course and a few farmer's cattle grrrrrridididids. They always wind the windows up when they go that way. Ever since that guy got knocked cold by the golf ball. Lucky he wasn't the driver eh? On the temporary road it's a breeze...just the odd honk and call of abuse/threat/friendly warning from a dumpertruck driver. But it's very quiet today, now the work's all finished. There's a rumor that the bitumen is to be pulled up to allow the area to revert to its natural state: dunes mostly. The guys are fully behind this in theory, but they're ready to continue using it while it's still there. The Rave's wound the kombi out to about 90kph when they spot the barrier... "Whaaaa!????" ...it's a huge 'levee', probably 5 metres high, built between two very big dunes. It wasn't there last time... "Dave!!????" scream the 2 passengers "I can get 'er over!" the Rave responds, and the others are so confident in his driving abilities they instantly panic and throw limbs out in all directions to obtain bracing holds. The Rave swerves across to try and use the slightly shallower angle between the barrier and the dune and plants his foot to the boards. Whoooomphh!, the kombi bottoms all its springs and points at the sky the way STOVL planes look as they leave the carrier. Nothing but sky in the dual windows up front. Amazingly the old VeeDub crests the ridge. Just as everyone's about to hoot in exhilaration, they realise that "what goes up....." and chorus an "Aaarrgh!" as the old bus now faces down at the bitumen. Kkrrumphsh!! IN a shower of sand the VeeDub makes it out and glides to a halt. "Everyone OK?" asks the Rave, casually. "Da-ave!" the pair growl menacingly back. "Well no damage done..I think" and he and Poser both reach for their door handles. But the doors won't budge. There's a two-way stare. "Um...." trails off Dave. He clambers over the back and has to work body contortions a burlesque girl would be proud of, to get the boards moved and get out of the side door. "Ah." he sees the front fender is bent way up on both sides, holding the front doors shut. No problem. He just stands on it, first one side, then the other, and jumps up and down until the doors can open again. The others get out. Everyone has a quick check around the kombi. Seems OK. So everyone's back inside and off the remaining few hundred metres. Woohoo! There are two peaks cranking throw-out overhead perfection in at a kind of corner in the beach. One favors a left; one a right. There's a light offshore. This little spot has some great banks from time to time, but Andy and the Rave have never seen it like this...it's literally peeling right along the sand in a hollow beach/shorebreak combo that has some of the lips hitting dry sand and the Rave wishing more'n once that he had a waterproof camera to get classic shots of Andy deep inside the rights. The Poser has only been surfing for a few months and can't put anything together. The Rave is goofy and is pulling into the lefts with varying success. Sometimes he gets totally creamed, sometimes he gets covered up and pops out of the end. Andy just seems to pull off one tube-ride after another. It's amazing. They've never seen such hollow waves here (nor will again,despite some great sessions). A vanload of surfers arrive down the road from the opposite direction. They've got in from their end and over a little bridge across a creek. There's some friendly banter along the localism line between the two groups, but there's plenty for everyone,with only seven surfers on two peaks. This is very much a one-off session. The waves have a lot of 'face', where the trough seems to be metres in front of the lip. So from the side the impression is of a very squashed 'almond eye', as if some ethereal elephant was sitting on them. When the lip threw, it did so waaaay forward to land between 1/2 way down and the trough and sometimes, like I said, even landing right on the sand where the previous wave's remnants are being sucked back by the ever-possessive ocean. Apart from a few sessions at Fresh'West, Andy and 'Rave have never seen whitewater throw up into the air at any British surf spot. But it was doing that today. The Rave finally leaves the water after one-too-many over-the-falls onto dry sand jobs. Poser's already out and a bit frustrated. They sit in the warm sunshine and watch the others. It's not too long before Andy is out with them. Top Day, they all agree. Now all they have to do is get the kombi back outa here.......... *** Btw, the bridge across the creek was blown just weeks afterwards; the ends of the road were properly blocked off and _some_ of the bitumen was broken up and removed. The dunes, the grasses, birds frogs and butterflies did get to resume ownership of the place. Surfers walked in from then on....and those that did were happy to do so. They included Rave, Andy and some of the characters mentioned in other 'Files stories....but not the Poser, he drifted out of surfing. Not enough pose value in it I guess.