Log Item (follow up): The beginning of the Hawaiian Pro surf competition at Haleiwa, had been put off because there was no surf. That changed today and so I took grandpa's tractor to visit the sights and sounds and stayed on the beach at Haleiwa until after noon.
Even though it's a big event in the surfing world with $250K to the winner, the Triple Crown of Surfing (Sunset Beach, Banzai Pipeline and Haleiwa) doesn't draw many people. I've attended several times before. The demographic breaks down this way: Surfers, friends and family of surfers, media types, sponsors, a handful of tourists, adventurers who used to be cool but are now long in the tooth, locals who are hard core surf bums and don't work, and trust fund babies from Europe, who bounce from one international event to another. You see them at auto and motorcycle racing events as well.
When I arrived there may have been a dozen people on the beach in addition to photographers (another dozen or so). When I left at noon, there may have been 250 total along a hundred fifty meters of beach frontage.
But you want me to get to the bikes, because this is a bike blog. There was just the tractor (seen pictured above, right) until a GSX showed up, dropped something off for somebody and then left.
Which brings me to the question of why only one lonely hog (the bike, not me) was there. It rained a bit at one point, but it felt good and it always rains on tropical islands -- daily event.
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| Early in the competition |
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| People arrive in ones-and-twos |
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| Later in the day. |
If you want photos of surfers, I had my cell phone, not a long-lens to capture the action way out where they were fighting for scores in moderate surf. The surfers would look like ants.
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| Somebody else's photo from today. |
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| selfie |
I'll be back tomorrow as the competition rolls forward for a few hours until the sun bakes my skin into hard leather. But I won't have the tractor. I'll have to make do with a rental Nissan Altima. Maybe by doing that, the Diavel will more readily accept me upon my return one day.
Cracking shot of the surfer from "somebody else's photo" although yours give me a real sense and feeling of the beach activity, which of course, I prefer.
ReplyDeleteThere are some very nice lenses there..
I'm sure the Diavel will be more accepting since the competition is secondary.
I'm poised to return there in a few minutes. It should be a nice day with 8-10 ft. swells.
DeleteMy experience, as a non-surfer, is that surfing is fun only to the surfer. After watching them do it for about 2 minutes, I turned my attention to the bikini's. I rate watching surfing right up there with watching bowling or golf or tennis. Give me a good commercial instead.
ReplyDeleteThis is it? No Diavel, No beach babes, No real surf, No selfies on a surf board...
ReplyDeleteJohn, you pierce me, presuming that I would leer at the svelte beach babes from behind my aviator glasses. I watch the surfing.
ReplyDeleteBrig - I'll put up a selfie from today with me sitting on a beach chair like a rock. Most of the hot girls were girlfriends of the surfers. The remnant were a combination of belching tourists, local sweat hogs and so forth with the occasional beauty. There aren't that many people who turn out to watch these events in Hawaii.
So, what are you doing there.... running security, reliving past lives, working as a support SEAL...
DeleteI thank you for the rock'n selfie. Brig
I'm a surf and scooter bum. I thought that I made that plain. My days of fighting other people's wars draw to a close as I fade slowly into my dotage.
DeleteI get a lot more excited about riding the Ducati or hanging in the tropics than I do about killing people for a living.
Aw, I was just kidding you, which seems to be unacceptable... fine.
DeleteIf you all paid a little more attention to detail you would see two hot birds, sitting on the beach right in front of Larry and reflected in his glasses. And... a hot blonde supporting his rear.
ReplyDeleteThe hot birds are seagulls...the blonde that has my back is not.
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