My brief visit to Tampa involved a lot of bicycling, blood, and tacos. I stayed with some friends in the Ybor area…which tourists cannot pronounce. Here are a few phone-y pictures. Film ones will come some day.
Bitten deep by chainring teeth. Hipster fashion bandanage.
Butternut squash tacos. From a bus.
On the plane home, I overheard a woman explaining the horizon to her son.
“See, the horizon is where the sea meets the sky.”
We talked many times about climbing up to the lighthouse and it became a joke because we never seemed to get around to it. Multiple mornings included this dialogue:
“What do you want to do today?”
“We should climb the lighthouse.”
There were so many wonderful things going on that the daylight simply flew by. On this day, we walked the walk. It was perfect, crystal clear skies, fresh air, small seas and a southern breeze.
Foliage
Strange Fruit
Like so many days before, we took a break for lunch at Santos. Ode to maharini pie, ginger nectar and sticky rice pudding. After the satisfying sustenance, we returned to the sea for a bit of surfing and underwater viewing with our slick new masks. There were tiny little peelers and dolphins and fish and fun. The evening was a teepee filled with friends, musical moving images courtesy of the Doors and late night letter writing.
Sine and Cosine
And then I left. True story.
One last kookaburra clock.
My final full day in Australia and the predawn internal alarm. I get ready by candle light and hop on the motor bike
down the back road to watch the breaching sun.
There is no one around but the sea gulls, fish and a wild tribe of nomadic thoughts. As the light goes from pink to orange to vanilla, I try to remember all there is to be thankful for. There is no better environment for the reminding.
One of my favorite places, one of my favorite days…
And the girl loved the tree...very much
And the tree was happy.
the Surfing Tree
Seven Mile
The ocean has been a pretty big part of this trip. We wrapped up filming for 31 days in March although there is still plenty of editing to be done. Since then, it has been nice to go down to the ocean and just enjoy without lugging loads of equipment.
The variety of breaks and beaches is incredible on this little stretch of the world. We’ve surfed some of the most crowded waves and some of the emptiest just a few miles from each other. Simply go around a bend or headland and the size becomes quartered and the wind favorable.
La Toalla
Lauren and I got assigned some interesting nicknames upon arrival. Resistance was futile.
Australian alter-egos: La La and Ray Ray
Weird and delicious.
One fish, two fish, red fish, brown fish.
Vegan Fishing (photo by Lauren)
Much of the time, we surfed the Pass. It’s usually a knee high, crowded, right pointbreak. Perfect for logging and regularfoots and those comfortable with the masses. It took me about a month to get over being a goofyfoot in the land of rights and my anxiety with big boards and lots of humans. Lately, it’s been far less crowded and I’m learning to love it. The sunsets there are unrivaled.
A slightly less secluded spot
Moth in monochrome
Lauren and I did some planting one day on the farm. We looked pretty tough with our shovels and machetes and wheelbarrow. Funny how life sometimes requires a little death. Apologies to the grasses we disturbed in order to make holes for trees. But how incredible that humans can intentionally (and hopefully positively) shape an environment. I don’t know who we are to judge what plants should go where but here’s to hoping we made a good choice in placing some native trees in former cattle fields (which before that were forests).
the destructor.
the creator
la luna
Moon Rise
La Olo
More photos exist, just slowly getting through them. A few more with my friends: La Luna, La La and Olo.
Leaving in a week for one huge island. Wrapping up things here…packing, finishing up projects…etc. One such project is
I don’t know much about web design but I made that and the blog page blog.merseabeaucoup.com and they seem to work ok. Still refining a few things. Anyway, that’s where all the posts and videos from the 31 days Australia project (which starts in March) are going to be.
Silly intro video made for the Surf Station:
Surfing, work and cognitive dissonance
I work on a lot of videos and rarely post them here. These are a few videos I’ve done for Surf Station since my return. They are culturally significant, intellectually stimulating and deeply important. By that I mean they depict humans riding ripples in the sea on strange objects like over-sized sandals and longboards.
On a lighter note, check out this visual guide to cognitive biases.
Also, try a search for “oil spill” in google. Consider that the top result is an ad from BP. Straight from the horse’s mouth.