good evening. gosh, had an awesome day today. took the most poundings ever but still alive to talk about it. pulled up to pipe this morning and this is what it looked like…
the waves were 4-6′ with some 8′ sets once in a while. grabbed my 7’0 and jumped in. caught a few pipe waves and in between sets, some of the boys were talking about everybody getting hurt out there these past few days. guys like mark healey, jason shibata, roy powers, freddy patachia, wade tokoro, and many more. then i heard the ambulance siren going and it wasn’t even 8am yet. pretty freaky…. then here comes this 5′ backdoor double up set coming right to me. i took off, pulled into the barrel, and then end shut down and threw me over the falls. my leash wrapped around my 2 ankles and my board was pulling me along the reef for 20′ or so. it felt like somebody tied my ankles up and was dragging me from the back of a truck. i hit the reef on my arms and legs and got the leash rope marks around my two ankles. luckily i didn’t panic or i would have drowned. it was pretty scary…. i caught my next wave in and called it a day….
wanted to kill some time so figured i’d go shoot some empty shore break photos. gosh, it was nuts. actually more nuts than pipe. it was 6′ tall and 10′ wide. i tried to duck dive under a set and the wave picked me up like a rag doll and slammed me into the sand. it almost knocked me out and i could hear every bone in my body crack. my camera blew out of my hand and my 2 fins were hanging by the fin straps. lucky i had a strap on my camera or it would have been history….. imagine konishiki jumping 10′ in the air and landing on you. that’s how heavy the impact was….
when i was paddling in at pipe, i told chigusa i was going to shoot some empty shorebreak waves and nobody was going to be out. she jumped in her car and met there. it was pretty heavy out there and that’s the reason nobody was out when we got there. people break necks and backs out there all the time. but chigusa was charging the whole time and after getting pounded, she came up smiling and saying “tanoshi”, which means “fun” in english. fun? i told her she was crazy… she said “tanoshi” like 5 times after getting pounded and i told her she was crazy 10 times…. chigusa is crazy…. now that’s 11 times….
this is chigusa’s younger sister misako or “mitan”. mitan is following in her older sisters footsteps. she caught some pretty heavy waves too and came up smiling too. i don’t know her too well so i didn’t say “your crazy”. so now i will, “mitan, your crazy”…..
this is maho toda’s wife yumi-san. i remember seeing yumi for the first time at the women’s pipeline bodyboard contest last year. the waves were 10′ solid and yumi was charging. so bodyboarding the shorebreak today was probably fun for her too…..
so meet the 3 crazy bodyboarder chicks…. crazy, crazy, and crazy…. hope your body feels ok when you wake up tomorrow morning. i know mine won’t….
**by the way, got some better photos but will have to save that for later…. check your email….
