July 4th, 2010. See you there again!!!

good morning. first, wanted to congratulate my nephews who surfed the local motion surf into summer contest this past weekend. seth won the menehunes, josh got 3rd, and isaiah got 5th in the juniors!! way to go!!! as for the waves this morning. it’s 5:10 am and it’s pretty windy outside. the waves are small around the island but if you know where to look, you might get a fun wave. bowls only has 2 surfers and one stand up paddler now. looks chest high on the sets. i surfed head high diamond head yesterday afternoon and had a great time. going to look for somewhere different today. see you in the water….

oh my gosh!!! look at this!!! kelia got the roxy jam poster for the second straight year. the roxy jam is a huge event in france and who ever wins the contest will be world champion. kelia’s been practicing hard and if she becomes world champion, that would be so cool!!! the contest is on from july 10-14 so stay tuned because you probably can watch it live!!!

this was last years event. kelia’s poster was all over town, all over the internet, and all over the contest site. i remember my sister telling me the story of all the coverage that one photo got….

this year isn’t any difference. the posters are already going up and internet sites are flooded with the new roxy jam poster. the only difference from last years poster and this years poster is:
last year, uncle jim russi took the photo.
this year, uncle kirby took the photo.
haha… i’m so stoked!!! i shot that photo of kelia at bowls this past winter and when i downloaded it, i already knew this was going to be big. not this big, but big. look on the left side of the photos, that’s my name. this is probably my biggest accomplishment as a photographer and for it to be a photo of my niece, that makes it even better!!! thanks ROXY INTERNATIONAL for using my photo[:?????$B!x(B???:]

padang, indonesia is the epicenter of many big earthquakes. the big ones hit, the buildings crumble down, but they get right back up and rebuild. the indonesian people of padang must be strong inside. just by looking at their smiles and their daily activity, they look much happier than people in places that never get hit by big earthquakes. last time we were there, i seen this banner “AWAKING OF PADANG.” i was glad to see the people happily running around like nothing bad ever happened there….

looks crowded? look again. this is HT’s, one of the best world class right handers in the whole wide world. look closely. 8 of the 8 guys were from our crew. on a normal day, there would be 50 surfers out there. i’ve seen it before. but on this day, there was just us. our crew surfing big barreling right handers that most surfers in the world only dream of. gosh… i want more!!!

and last, isn’t this photo awesome? i was thinking of chartering this boat for our next mentawai trip. wanna go?