50 minutes to drive 8 miles.
The annoying thing is that there’s no alternative, we have to get to CIT before there’s any decent public transport.
Although, walking through a city at ten o’clock is a cool feeling, especially if it’s sunny, nice and quiet. Everybody seemed that little bit happier today.
This is an article I wrote for a mag about a year and a half ago, but it never got used.
Hope you like it.
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So when is a grom not a grom? When does that special transition occur? I guess Einstein got it right when he talked about everything being relative, it seems to depend either on how long you’ve been surfing or how old you are, and usually a combination of both. The question arose recently when a few of us Lahinch boys went on a small trip for Damien Conway’s 16th birthday. Ah sweet sixteen are there any better times in your life? Well when you’re sixteen there definitely isn’t; just starting to develop your own style and self, old enough to fight back when the older guys starting hassling you and the right to pick on others. That seems to be about it, “congratulations you’re a proper surfer now, go pick on somebody smaller than you”.
We were heading to a fairly secret spot that only one of us had surfed before, so we were all pretty stoked to see how it would go. It was a pretty short-notice trip, which is the best way with surf trips as it makes it easier to make a call, I had to hang around home for some college work so joined the boys on the second day of the short weekend trip up the west coast of Ireland. I arrived to the usual tales of bravery, cowardliness, stoke and horror. Ollie O’Flaherty was proudly showing off half of one of his boards he had snapped that day and the rest of the boys were talking about the wide set that had sent them all scurrying to the horizon and still get washed half a mile down the coast (isn’t exaggeration part of surfing?) easily 8-10ft apparently. It was a little too windy so the wave, despite the size, wasn’t really doing it’s thing yet. Checking the web we saw that even though the swell was dropping so was the wind, so hopefully the break would be barreling it’s tits off to use the local expression.
The next morning we were disappointed to see that the swell had dropped by a good bit and Ollie started trying to convince us to check another spot a good few miles down the coast. This, however, would mean either taxis or a few trips in the car so we decided to check the local break first. The others weren’t too into it so myself and Damien headed out on our own only to be confronted by a number of farmers and a wild bull that was wandering around the rocks beside the jump off spot. We sat tight until the crazed animal decided grass was nicer to walk on than rocks. We phoned the boys and told them to start walking because we were jumping in straight away. It was 3-4 foot and looked fun. The guys eventually joined us and scored it OK. We hopped out after a while with the intention of heading down to this other wave but decided to sit tight and have lunch first, good move. During lunch the tide dropped and the swell started hitting the reef perfectly, being the token grom on the trip Damien was super keen to get back out and got sick of waiting so went out alone. His first wave was a solid 6 footer and it didn’t take long for Ollie and Kelleher to jump in after him. The place showed it’s real potential during this swell and will definitely go down on the list of return trips. After willingly paddling into the largest closeout of the day I reckon Damien has qualified from being a grom.
It’s really hard to stay inside and try and do some work when you can see that it’s really sunny and you know there’s good waves somewhere.
So frustrated.
Here’s a photo from a nice sunny day last year.
Mac getting shut down at the cliffs recently.
Apparently I’ve got some shots in the new Footprints Guide to UK and Ireland, still haven’t seen it though.
If anybody comes across one could you let me know how it looks?
John McCarthy on one of the smaller days.
I really need a bigger lens for the housing.
But it’s not in the usual cosmetic sense more to do with the fact that I have constantly had inflamed sinuses since about 1997.
I think I have been able to breath freely through both nostrils at the same time for about an hour in total since then. It’s not so bad, you learn to live with it, you realise some things make it worse and you avoid them. Recently though I’ve been getting treatment for it. The inflamed sinuses are an allergic reaction dust-mites and grass pollen apparently (along with numerous other things) so the doctor is gradually training my immune system not to react so badly to these things.
To be honest I hadn’t noticed that much of a change since I started but Friday night I realised what an improvement there had been and man did it hurt.
As a result of the constant blocked nose I’ve never had a great sense of taste. To me eating is just something you do to help you live, very rarely I have something that is just a little bit more enjoyable but not outrageously so. But there is one thing that shines through time and time again. Red Wine.
I had tried white wine before and just thought it was sweetened vinegar, but then on my first holiday with my lady friend I decided to try it, at the time it was because I felt I was an a grown up holiday with my lady friend and therefore had to do grown up things like drink wine with dinner. I realised that I quite liked red wine.
I spent the next few years finding out about different grape varieties, different production regions and what to drink with different dinners. I tried white a few times recently but it just doesn’t hit me the same way red does.
Red wine has depth and complexity and different levels of taste, you still get different tastes even after you’ve swallowed it. This was amazing for me. It was as if, for years I had just been listening to a bass guitar, there was a good range of notes (tastes) but it was related and pretty dull on it’s own. By comparison drinking red wine is like listening to a whole band playing together.
I haven’t been drinking wine that much this summer for a few reasons, mostly because while it is ridiculously tasty it’s not as refreshing as a cold beer or even a glass of water. But Friday night my brother and his family came down to stay so I cracked open a bottle that we’d had for a while (McGuigan Reserve Shiraz, I think). When I had my first sip it was as if I had discovered a whole new level of taste again. It was fantastic. Tastes were soaring around my mouth this was as if a whole orchestra had turned up and was playing the most beautiful piece I’d ever heard. I couldn’t get enough, so obviously I kept drinking. Obviously what ever the doctor was doing was working.
The thing with red wine though is that it tends to affect your sinuses, I think it’s something to do with tannins. By half eleven I was in agony. Because my nose had been acting up for the past few weeks this flare up was similar to the worst sinus infection I’d ever had. Throbbing headache, ridiculous sinus pain and a streaming nose. And the next morning was just as bad, my nose felt raw.
So with great nasal clearance comes great responsability.
I guess I’ll just have to learn to drink in moderation, stupid ads.
Peter Conroy, warming up.
When we were in France last year myself and my brother came across a Boules ball that was the absolute perfect weight for throwing. We actually stood for 5 minutes in the aisle of the Leclerc throwing it to one another and marvelling at it’s beauty. Kind of reminiscent of the Friends episode where they are throwing the ball. unfortunately in cost in the region of E60 I think so we had to leave it behind.
I reckon it would be cool to do a project trying to find the perfect size and density of the perfect ball.
I reckon decent sized apples are close.
Jaysus, how sweet is it today.
It’s probably the best day ever FACT.
I love days like this reminds me of walking into college which is a good thing. Speaking of which all the first years started out in CIT yesterday. Was quite funny to see, I reckon first day of college is probably more traumatic than first day of school. People have so much more expectations of you to be cool and have a good personality and dress well and like good music and be able to party and go crazy.
In junior infants people just wanted to play with you.
I would guess that most freshers spend more time getting ready for the first day at college than they do getting ready for a night out.
There’s this mental dog out at CIT. He’s a big black fella that only appears when the students are around. He wasn’t there at all during the summer, but first day of term, and there he is sitting out side the main door watching everyone come and go.
I think he might actually be the boy/dog from Woof. On Halloween he hid in the bushes near the college and jumped out and barked when people went by.
Brilliant.
Late this morning, was editing the shots from Sunday.
Here’s a few of them thrown together.
More will come when I get down to picking and choosing some.
Hope you like.
