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Posted on Thursday March 4th 2010 at 2:52 p.m.
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Cost: $10 for petrol, $5 for totally essential icecream and chips
Accommodation: Our crappy flats
Time spent on trip: 3 whole hours
Sunburn damage: Like a bottle of tomato sauce, but only from the neck up
Team members: Definitely no pros but at least 5 total newbies
Admittedly our journey wasn’t quite as epic as theirs, leaving Riccarton, Christchurch at 4pm to get to New Brighton, Christchurch at 4.30pm. But when you’re 21 years old and working a very unnatural 40 hour week, not only is this wait unbearable but this trip is the only one you can afford the time and money (even when you are working full time, paying off student loans and rent means all that juicy cash usually ends up in someone else’s pocket) to make. So while the surf report for Kaikoura was a very enticing 3-4 feet on the same day that New Brighton was a disappointing 1 ½ feet (although a tsunami warning did make an appearance), we loaded up the roofracks and resigned ourselves to using the small amount of spare time we had tripping across Christchurch instead of going on a proper surfing road trip.
It’s lucky that we did, the waves at New Brighton aren’t exactly mammoth but they’re usually better than the surf report would have you believe and even though we’re all different skill levels, let’s just say none of us will be doing a cutback anytime soon, so they are all we need (or know what to do with). Today was no different, even though the waves were anything but massive, they were definitely better than the surf report said, smallish but clean and big enough to have some fun on. And having fun is the whole reason we go surfing. Despite our low skill level, it’s impossible not to have a good time when we grab a group and mission out to the beach, sharing boards, laughing at each other’s bails and hunting down the compulsory post-surf fish and chips.
How could you not love surfing? It gives you the chance to get fit while having an awesome time hanging out with friends and also the satisfaction of not only constant improvement but a constant motivation to improve. Speaking of improvement, some very exciting events occurred on this trip – a legitimate stand by someone who previously could only get vertical on a board for a few seconds before falling off, and the addition of a first time surfer to our small group who made it look easy, riding her board all the way in to the shore on her first ever attempt.
Even though we all would have been super stoked to go to Kaikoura or even further to find some new hunting grounds and different breaks, the waves at New Brighton were awesome and totally uncrowded. This gave us all a chance to mess around and cram a decent amount of good times into our small amount of freedom from the fluorescent nightmare that is full time work. As with all good surf sessions, we all went away happy, tired, sore, and full of cheap goody-goody-gumdrops icecream. Photographic evidence of this would have been awesome but since I forgot to take the camera to the beach, the only photo of the day ended up being the one I remembered to take at the last minute before stashing my board away for next time. Let’s hope next time comes sooner rather than later.
Bex
*photos from the beach sent through later after Bex actually remembered her camera on her next 'road trip'
That is the last Road Trip tale. Voting opens this week! You get to decide who takes home the bag of goodies including a custom surfboard shaped by Pete Anderson!