Years ago, I went with a friend to Indonesia for a 3 week surf trip. This trip would cost me $1k for the plane ticket and $500 for everything else in the three week experience. My friend Greg is a surfer and I am a Bodyboarder. Though we went to many surf spots in our three week adventure, none of those spots were more life changing than Uluwatu.

More accurately, we spent 3 weeks on the island of Bali. This paradise is the only reason our trip was so cheap. Had we been on a boat trip, we would have been looking at $3K-$4K for just 10 days.

Bali is a Place where you can pretty much get your hands on anything for a unreasonably low price. A meal in the right town would cost 4 dollars including 3 courses, desert, and bottled water. All the while, you might be watching a bootlegged movie that just came out in America the day before. A Massage would cost about $10 for an hour. A driver/surf guide would cost about $20/day (split between everyone in the his Van and a hotel room with a pool, air conditioning, hot personal shower, TV, and refrigerator is about $6/person/night. When I say cheap, I mean it.

There are two well known “world class” surf spots on the island of Bali. Uluwatu and Padang Padang. I had the pleasure of riding many more spots that I thought were worthy of world class ranking, but am glad that they remain out of the spotlight. In fact, the longest barrel of my life was at Balangan where I set my rail into 8 seconds of 7 foot perfection.

Uluwatu is at the southern tip of Bali and receives the most swell on any particular day. It has many take off spots but only one way to paddle out. A keyhole tunnel emits surfers and bodyboarders into a 10 mile per hour sweeping current. This current is nothing to worry about on the way out to sea, but when trying to time the waves, reef and Keyhole as an exit, the timing must be perfect.

We pulled up to the spot with our guide in the middle of the day. Even for a non-ocean goer, Uluwatu is a truly unique experience. The tip of the island is a sheer 300-400 foot cliff that dips directly into the sea. A narrow path of thousands of stairs leads to a funneling cave. this cave eventually turns into the keyhole entrance to the Indian Ocean.

My friend this day had an ear infection that would leave me to paddle out in 11-14 foot surf all alone. I was not about to pass up my chance to ride this monster. From up on the cliff, the waves still looked large when seeing the small dots negotiating them. What I wouldn’t find out until later was the unique dynamic of this spot.

As I walked down the stairs my nerves were frying. I spotted a monitor lizard crossing my path. This would be the least of my troubles. If I were to take a wrong fall on a wave, it would be a $90K medi-vac helicopter ride to the nearest decent hospital. This is why it is a good idea to purchase travel insurance. If I took a normal fall on a wave, it could be as bad as being dragged along a field of underwater glass. I would live, but I might wish I hadn’t for a few days.

My plan was simple. It’s my standard big wave strategy. DON’T GET CAUGHT INSIDE! Paddle out further than everyone else. Get nice and comfortable and be very picky in my wave selection. Depending on the spot, after a wave gets over a certain size, you have to fully commit to it or fully skip it. This would be your equivalent to an “all in bet” in poker. As long as I have stuck to this plan over the years, I have never had a problem that I could not handle. I’m fine with catching the biggest wave of the day, even if its the only one I catch. I guess that is how I deal with a lot of big decisions in my life. I searched for 7 months for the perfect car (in my price range) and I bought the pane ticket for this trip almost a year in advance.

As I walked through the tunnel I could feel that the air was super charged with the same atoms you might fined inside of a barrel. I began to paddle and made it through the keyhole. Immediately, the current began to sweep me along the reef. I saw no reason to fight it as there were 14 foot sets rolling in ahead of me that didn’t seem to have any ending in sight. It would be definitively impossible to duck dive waves of this magnitude with the reef being only 3-4 feet under the surface. I decided to wait it out as the current swept me into a channel that I had scoped out from the top of the cliff. My friend later told me that he observed an unheard of 30 minute set of waves. He said that from up on the cliff he could tell that I ended up paddling out the the worst possible time of the entire day (possibly the whole season).

I finally made it out to the channel which was about 300 yards away from where I wanted to be. My heart bled furiously as I paddled up AND DOWN large swells. As I was moving into position and still hadn’t caught my breath I saw a swell on the horizon that I didn’t think I would make it over. The is the worst possible situation. Out of breath, and caught inside. A hold down in these circumstances is a worst case scenario. Even if I could stay calm, my heart would continue to race under water.

I scratch my way over the wave as 4 other surfers are only 15-20 further out than me and paddling just as fast. As i reached the top of the wave, I caught a glimpse of 4 more waves to come. As a general rule of thumb, the later the wave is in the set, the bigger it is, the further out it tends to break. This meant that it was likely that I would not make it over the last wave or two. All the while, my heart continued to fatigue.

The next wave comes and the 4 surfers make it over the face and I have an executive decision to make. I have 3 options:

1. Continue to paddle and hope that I somehow make it past this 4 wave set, knowing that I am significantly behind the pack.
2. Take my leash off (losing my only flotation device, but letting me pass through the waves much easier considering I still have fins on) which is a bad idea when you are so far away from shore and only have a keyhole to get back to dry land.
3. Paddle into the next wave, provided I am in a position where it is possible when the wave approaches.

These three options are easy to write about now, but they are millisecond, hardwired, instincts at the time. Lucky for me Uluwatu is a world class wave. This means that the build time on the wave is slower than some and more predictable than most. This roughly means that there is more than just one place that a successful take off can occur.

As I am paddling half way up the face of the wave, like a dog chasing a car, I decide to spin around on my board and go for it. I usually fade into waves when I have panned ahead further to maintain a high position on the wave to generate speed, but this would be a “top to bottom” affair.

As I spin around on a dime, I feel my legs lifting above my head and my body begin to become weightless. I am now being sucked up the the very top of this wave. I literally visualize my desired line with imaginary blinking yellow arrows that you might find in a video game. I knew exactly where I needed to be.

By now the wave had morphed beyond vertical. This was make or break, all or nothing, stick or scrape, victory or vengeance from the cruel sea on an over-ambitious visitor. Speed began to take hold.

When I later asked my friend if he caught the event on film, he said “I thought you were just going to paddle over the wave. When you turned around half way up the face, I couldn’t believe it. I just wasn’t even ready to take any pictures”

Not unlike the first morning’s run on a double black diamond slope, the drop was as smooth as it was fast. By the time I made it to the bottom of the wave, I knew I was in the clear. As I set my rail going left, I gazed down a hundred yards of lined up perfection. I was now harnessing my fear embodied in a 14 foot wall of kinetic force. An obstacle had transformed into a threat and then into a source of great joy, all in the same day.

I pulled off in the channel and paddled back out. My exact thought was this “That was the most amazing feeling. I better quit while I am still ahead.” Was I cured from my fear? Nope, I still understood the danger in the situation. I ended up riding three more waves at Uluwatu that day. None as big. None as critical. None as memorable.

I spent an hour trying to time the keyhole exit along with the persistent swell, sweeping current, and shallow reef.

All in all I was exhausted and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face for the next few days.

Scorpion Bay

My coworker Fumi, handed me a bottle of hot sauce and said, “write a post and this bottle is yours.” At first I thought that it would be a waste of my time, then I tasted the sauce. It was sweet to the tongue with lasting warmth (that’s what she said). I read the bottle, “chipotle hot sauce with a hint of chocolate.”

This sparked a memory. When I was still in high school, I went on a surf trip to scorpion bay. For those of you who are new to Baja California surf spots, scorpion bay is approximately 1000 miles south of San Diego (not necessarily as the crow flies). It holds the record for one of the world’s longest right hand waves. On the right swell and tide, this wave will connect five VERY long point breaks.

The trip was a learning experience and much like the sauce, was not what we expected. I traveled in my friend’s 1998 Tahoe with two other friends. We all lied to our parents about the depth into Mexico that we planned to travel. One of my friends actually told his parents that we were going to be at a surf camp in San Diego for the week. We all brought random items with us into the great unknown like rope, mace, and duct tape because we were trying to be responsible. We read all the Baja surf books that promised us warm waters and ruined suspension systems in our 4X4. The possible outcomes were as hard for us to wrap our minds around as our future career paths.

But let’s hear more about the sauce. The image on the bottle of peeling right hand waves does not do scorpion bay justice. Every time I dipped my finger into the bottle to get a taste I am continually impressed (that’s what she said). It is sweet like a chipotle should be but with some serious heat that could qualify it as a real hot sauce.

In getting back to the story, we popped five tires, broke one shock, one ball joint, and pretty much completely tore out the transmission. Most of these problems happened on the miles of washboard roads that will make a meal out of any car. We were driving down the road when the shock gave out in the 113 degree heat. From my vantage point (the front passenger side) it just looked like the wheel caved in on the car and just gave up. We got out of the car and left my friend Warren to wait for help as Dave and I continued down the road on foot to the next town. Baja Cali is really a lot of nothing and in our travels we found that sometimes the next town might be 50 miles away. As I walked with Dave, Warren sat back and dialed everyone he knew on his cell phone. Of course there was no reception for hundreds of miles. As Dave and I walked down the road under the stress of the heat and defeat, we screamed at each other. We said things we did not mean. We said things that we would not forget. Just at the height of our feud, a gold tundra pulled up and Warren Popped out of the back. The occupants were a family of surfers from Santa Barbara. They gave us a ride into town and dropped us off at the mechanic.

Why is the mechanic significant?

He was the only man who would decide our fate. He was the man that fixed the Tahoe for the cost of parts. He was the man who drove 3 hours to the next town that had our part in stock (while we were surfing). He was the man who took all of our ATM cards to the nearest ATM (100 miles away) to pull out only the amount of money that we asked, to pay him for his services and get home.

We were in a tough spot and he made our trip turn from a nightmare, to a story of a lifetime.

The one break that I didn’t mention was when we were driving all the way home in one day. It took us 24 straight hours to get from scorpion bay to my friend’s doorstep so that we were not late back from our surf trip to “San Diego.” In those 24 hours we drove in shifts. During my shift we were on paved ground, thinking that the danger was over. We had never been off road-ing before so we did not know to tighten the lug nuts periodically. As I was driving a conservative 75 miles per hour I hear a loud crash followed by a grinding noise. It was the front left tire that had thrown from the car, stripping the lug nuts forever. As we eventually screeched to a halt, the sun was setting, we were low on gas and were already numb to panic from our previous “Tahoe/Road malfunctions”. We simply worked through the night with great initiative and confidence. Had we become men?

We “barrowed” lug nuts from the 4 other tires, tightened them all down, and took a snail’s pace for home all through the night. I remember weighing out the other possible situations that night and being so thankful for the outcome. We could have run out of gas completely. We could have lost the wheel on a cliff pass. The sun could have gone down a little earlier. This trip taught me many things. Mexicans outside of border towns are some of the warmest, most trustworthy people on the planet.