Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, a day of celebration for food, for the harvest. Many moons ago, indigenous Americans saved the early European settlers from starvation near New Plymouth with their bounty of foodstuffs. The white devil, overcome with gratitude repaid them by committing mass genocide, and stealing their entire continent and renaming it ‘The Home of Free’.

Big Al Hunt abusing fowl. If you qualify for the WCT, this is the dude who emails you to let you know. The wahine is Julie Camembert from ASP Europe.

It was also the day of stoning the devil in Mecca, where the hajj is underway. Unlike christians, muslims still believe in the devil. Christians used to believe in Him but went all quiet on the subject sometime in the early 20th century. But enough of that. By the smell of things on the North Shore, there was a fair bit of stoning going on, but the devil stayed mostly out of sight. I don’t believe in the devil, and the only person I’m scared of is Kaiser Souzai. 

Here in Hawaii, one of the crops to be most thankful for on Thanksgiving is the crop of crude oil. Here, people thank Saudi Arabian farmers for producing such a plentiful crop of crude oil so that they can run their massive black pick-em-up trucks that do 500 yards to the gallon. Awesome.

I surfed the Sunset two times yesterday. In the morn before paddling out I saw Jarrad ‘shit’ Howse on the beach and commiserated him for not winning fifty grand in the CWC series. He told me he needed a 3.85 and got a 3.84 or something. He basically missed out by 0.01 of a point. Gutted. He cut his hair and I told him I preferred it before.(What I actually said was, “I don’t fancy you anymore”). He said he ‘just felt like a change’.

Out in the lineup Adrian Buchan told me I look like young Hitler (I have a moustache and my wet hair was arranged in a semi side parting). I was stoked on the young part. I told him he looked like fat Kai Otton. It was crowded in the morning and I didnt get many waves, but that doesn’t matter. When you get to the beach and there’s loads of Japanese tourists looking at you in awe and taking photos all you have to do is suck your gut in and look hard. I tried my best.

In the afternoon I paddled out with Neco Padaratz. He’s a total legend. I don’t know why I’ve had my Neco block on all these years but he’s cool as, and totally ripped it. TJ Barron was the stand out for me, killing it. There were plenty of Euros in the mix too, Aritz, Alain Riou, Marc L, Joan, Hugo Savalli, Gony, Hodei. 

Brodie Carr from the ASP invited me for dinner and it was great. The food was OK, but the highlight was being quiz master in surfing general knowledge quiz. I had Matt Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing and tested Al Hunt on anything and everything from A-Z. Highly impressive, his knowledge. He also told me he has every copy of Surf Europe except 4 that he’s missing. Wow. 

Me with the ASP World Title trophy. That’s not sweat, it rained as I was cycling over for dinner.

Here’s ASP CEO Brodie ‘BJ’ Carr trying to look as cool as me. I used a technique called ‘foreshortening’ to make him look fat. I think it worked.

This is female pro surfer Jesse Miller-Diller or whatever she’s called. She actually went OK in the quiz too.