MISTER SURF

Last week Emily and I went to Los Angeles on vacation. When we moved to Portland lots of people suggested that we book a holiday somewhere sunny for February (to prevent rain-madness), which neatly coincided with Em's birthday.

Venice in LA was our destination; we found a beautiful house on the canals, which are 5 minutes walk from the long beach breaks of Venice and Santa Monica.

Agfa Precisa 100 | Yashica T4 View from our cottage, and palmy Santa Monica

One of the things I was looking forward to most was surfing - but unbelievably, the whole week was flat! I did not get my stoke on.

One more reason to hit the Oregon coast as soon as possible, with the water temperature working towards bearable.

Agfa Precisa 100 | Yashica T4 Me, looking at the flat, blown out surf

PS: who got the "Endless Summer" reference in the title?

We've been in Portland for 10 weeks now, and starting to feel settled in this charming little city.

It's been a good 4 months since I've been surfing, and even more alarming is my slide into the anti-surfer stereotype: I spend most of my time sat at a desk.

So, I've made a deal with myself; an investment, if you will.

I'm going to spend the next 30 days religiously getting surf fit, so that once the madness of Christmas and New Years is over and I can hit the surf on the Oregon coast and make the most of it.

Here's a calendar that visually represents my commitment to making the most of that first Oregon surf. Green means I trained, and red means I didn't.

I am an “improbable surfer”.

I’ve surfed for just 3 years, and Emily and I were lucky enough to live in Baleal, Portugal - a stone’s throw from some of the most consistent surf in Europe.

Agfa Precisa 100 | Olympus XA The Surfcastle in Baleal, Portugal

Through the Surfcastle (who taught me and all my friends to surf) I must have met hundreds of surfers on surfcation. The vast majority were also improbable surfers.

The improbable surfer is an alter ego (‘second self’) whose first self are often:

• Living in cities like London or Tel Aviv.
• Working as managing directors, bankers, programmers, research biologists, and lawyers.
• Enduring 80+ hour weeks, until Friday at 5pm when they head for their nearest airport or highway headed for the ocean.
• Planning the next surf trip
• Dedicated fathers or mothers

The conception is that surfers have sun-bleached hair, drive knackered old cars and surf as a permanent escape from ‘reality’.

The actual reality is that many surfers are in fact like me and my friends - folk with demanding city lives that couldn’t be more different than the idyllic surf vibes offered by places like Baleal and the Surfcastle.

In my opinion, it’s in this contrast where the magic lies.

Surfing gives me a more intensely satisfying dose of perspective than anything I’ve ever done - and by default, it takes me to some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to!

Agfa Precisa 100 | Olympus XA The Belgas coast, central Portugal

On a surf trip, you always have to take a gamble on the surf conditions. The waves might be amazing, or it might be super windy and blown-out. You always have to wait for the tides to be right on the day, and often you’ll have bide your time and wait for the best conditions. Sometimes you’ll wait all day in freezing weather, huddling in cafes and watching the water hawk-like for an improvement in the conditions that never arrives. There’s no way to hurry it and there’s no shortcut. You just wait, watch, and think.

Agfa Precisa 100 | Olympus XA2 Rob and I ready to surf in Polzeath, Cornwall. It was January and 2℃ (35F) outside.

Freezing weather is just one of the elemental assaults surfing puts your body through. Howling wind, burning sun, rain, snow, and finally the most consistent: the inevitable pounding you get on every surf session by the very waves you’re trying to ride.

I’ve come to realise that surfing is pretty close to meditation. When you’re in the water, you end up having this obsessive mental focus on the waves. Paddling against currents, watching other surfers, monitoring the wind, and of course your surfing technique. Sometimes though I end up just sitting on my board staring out to sea and then back at the land, thinking about nearly nothing.

Finally, it seems there’s no end to it how much fun and excitement you can have surfing. Surf bars are full of people who are about to jack in their jobs, or build a sea-house in Indonesia (honest), or are planning to go surf their home-country waves for the first time. It’s a broad spectrum, and there always seems to be a place for you.

More than anything, surfing is a huge source of comfort to me. Now I know that no matter what, like so many others, I always have my alter ego.

I love taking photos, and most people who know me have seen my freakishly large camera collection.

My first digital camera was some clunky Kodak thing I bought from eBay about 10 years ago (back then I used Linux and gphoto2 to get photos off it, but that's another very nerdy story). Since then I must've bought 4 or 5 digital cameras over the years, and I even got a fancy Canon 400D with some expensive lenses too.

But I don't use digital cameras any longer, I use 35mm film cameras. Some of these are pretty old because a lot of the ones I've grown to love aren't made any more, and some of the photos that I love the most were taken on cameras that are older than I am!

Agfa Precisa 100 | Olympus XA Grassy fields, shot into the sun — somewhere in England

Sometimes people look a bit surprised when I pull out a camera that looks like something their mum might have used in the late 1980s. I guess they'll think I'm either:

• a hipster
• clueless, or
• somewhere between a a weirdo or an enthusiast

Maybe none of those, it's hard to tell.

But I'll tell you why I switched, and why I don't think I'll ever go back to shooting digital photographs regularly:

Shooting on film is magical!

It is! It changed the way I take photos into something I find much more fun and fascinating. It's like being a kid again - you get this head-scratching sense of wonder at how it works, and why it worked that time but less so this time, etc.

There's this constant sense of experimentation. Light seems to play on film so much more dramatically than on digital, colours seem more memorable, and one frame to the next can turn out totally different.

Also, I can logically work out how digital cameras work because I know how computers work. A huge light sensor, RGB, etc. But a film camera? Film? WTF is it? How does this strip of plastic turn out these beautiful images when dunked in the right chemicals for just the right amount of time?

See - magic!

Ilford XP400 | Olympus XA2 Arcade in Lisbon, and the beautiful Surfcastle

Ektar 100 | Yashica T4 Motorbike with chrome trim, parked outside Bar da Praia, Baleal, Portugal

I stopped over-thinking, because shooting on film won't let you over-think. No more taking 5 shots of the same scene and standing there flicking through picking the best one in the middle of the street or restaurant.

You point, click, and put the camera away.

Then, 3 weeks later when you finally remember to take the film to be developed, you get these images that you'd mostly forgotten taking.

Forgotten moments, back in your hands.

Emily and I have been in Portland for 4 weeks, and it's flown by. At times it feels surreal, and there's one sentence both of us have uttered (usually whilst walking down the street, or picking a restaurant):

This is it. We're in America!

It's one of those things I never really believed would happen. I mean, nobody just decides to live in America and manages it, do they?

Well, we did and now Portland Oregon on the charming Pacific northwest of USA is our home, and the first impressions are that it's an awesome place to live. It's just so damn American!

Ektar 100 film | Yashica T5 Emily on 19th & Marshall

Life is so comfortable here. To get treated well by the friendly locals all you have to do is get up and leave the house. Everybody's so accommodating and polite, of course it never hurts to naturally charming accent; they love it.

Things I don't miss about London:

• The mad scramble for the Tube (armpits)
• The dirt (bogies)
• Buses (too hot or too cold, always smelly)
• Landlords (constant shaftings)
• Commuting (sure, I'll spend 15% of my waking hours getting A to B)
• Topping up my fucking Oyster card (FFS)
• Accepting rudeness ("It's London mate")

I know I don't miss them because Portland improves so drastically on what I figured was just 'normal' city life. Drastic means a 60 minute commute is reduced to 6 minutes, or instead of using Foxtons to find a flat we just walk into each purpose-built residence and ask the leasing office to see the empty ones (taking our pick).

In case someone calls me out on it, I know we lived in Portugal for ages but that was different. London and Portland are easier to compare because they're both cities -- the goal is to balance financial security, career progression, and enjoy the things I love (in no particular order, promise). Quality of life, mate. That's what this is really all about isn't it?

Ektar 100 film | Yashica T5 Quiet and carless on 11th Avenue

The 'baseline' quality offered by Portland is so high that you rarely have any reason to complain. The result is that people don't really complain, and so the majority of the populace here are happy. As a Londonder who was so worn out by London that he ran, lady not far behind, to Portugal for recovery -- I can't tell you how nice it that is to be in a happy city.

I don't have a huge arseache getting to work, I just walk. The guy in the coffee shop always says hello and asks how work is, and how we're settling into Portland. We found a perfect apartment a few days after we started looking. We got cable installed for free the very next day after calling even though Comcast are supposed to be bastards.

As we settle, we know that Portland will have even more 'baseline' to add for free. It's only an hour from Mt Hood for skiing and snowboarding; a little over that to the surf. Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver, Los Angeles and San Diego are all under 2.5 hours away on a domestic flight, and it'll be so awesome to start going away for weekends and exploring some of these fantastic cities.

We could take a drive to the coast in a car like one of these:

Ektar 100 | Yashica T5 Classic American cars spotted in Portland

In fact, I think we could do anything here. It'll just take a little time.

Damien Hobgood pulling into a perfect barrel at Supertubos, a wave I attempted to surf constantly for 7 months, but never truly mastered:

Being a surfer from England I'm used to people saying "Oh! Huh? I didn't know you had waves in England!" Fair enough.

But it never fails to make me smile when someone says the same thing about Portugal, the crown jewel of European surfing.

Supertubes is as perfect, and as challenging a wave as it gets. I'd practice and practice; in smaller conditions I'd go for long sessions and try to get my take-off fast and down the line. The conditions would get 25% bigger and I'd get schooled.

Frustrating for me, but perfect none the less.