My Hero

Wasn’t going to let another morning sesh pass me up…even though I snoozed it a couple times.  My friend lent me his GoPro Hero and I had batteries, a new SD card and sort of figured out the basics of how to use it and its different settings.  At least so I thought.  It was freezing cold, but threw on my suit and ran out to the beach with sleepies in my eyes.  I didn’t really know what it would be like since the swell was forecast for a slight drop, but the previous day wasn’t showing the 13 ft or so they had forecasted and so It could have come in late or not at all.  Turns out it was a bit bigger than the previous morning with a good high tide…almost 7 ft.

The crowd was right, no one in sight and the waves were glassy and overhead on sets and so it would be the perfect stage to test out the camera.  I did a couple weak stretches, made sure the camera was on securely and paddled out.  The waves were breaking fairly close to shore, relatively speaking, but with lots of water and so I was taken pretty quickly in the rips.  First north and then south.  I only had about 3o minutes or so before I had to head off to work so I had to maximize time.

Once outside, it was a pleasure to see how perfect the waves were.  They were chunky but slow and just peeling.  I played around on the inside a bit and caught some whitewater on the head.  Just feeling out how I would best capture my adventure.

Within the first five minutes or so I stroked into a nice righthander with little effort.  I cruised out into the flats for my bottom turn which projected me forward into the face.  I was so fixated on the camera that my surfing was pretty simplistic.  It actually helped me to slow up and as a result I flowed a bit better.  I was headed for a nice left peeling my way and so I thought I would hit that lip and land out in the flats.  The video doesn’t do it justice…I thought it was going to look sick, but the lense wasn’t quite wide enough to capture everything and I was swinging it all over the place.  Good learning experience.

I paddled back out after this ride pretty stoked and looked back at the beach and noticed I had drifted south a couple blocks.  My next ride was better.  It was an effortless take off, stood up and just let the wave do its thing.  I probably could have pumped or something, but I was just trying to keep the camera straight so I could catch some tube time.  I dropped in and pulled up close to the face and tried to crouch a bit.  The lip came over and I was inside a nice little shack for what felt like a couple good seconds.  After that ride and subsequent washing I decided to point myself toward the shore and call it a morning.  After all I was trying to get to work on time and was stoked to check out the footage.

As you can see, it wasn’t quite what I thought I had.  I swear I was in that barrel for a good length of time, I was totally much deeper…that lens didn’t do it justice;)  Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to try and get some better footy.  I’m going to get this wired.  I wish GoPro would make a 5 mega pixel with that super wide angle lens for your wrist.  The photos arent’ so hot, the video will be cool once I figure it out, but regardless its still pretty cool to be able to have such a cool little camera to play with in the surf.

Until the next session….