Slide Magazine...

I'm Not Dead...

In Sri Lanka, not found any Internet access yet, waves are v average! Have seen elephants and monkeys. Doing this from my phone so prob cost me a fiver...

MVP You Decide... Josh Hughes

O'Neill Coldwater Classic South Africa- Finals.

Slide Mag Vs The Orange Blob

  A large, scary orangey thing covered in arrows is heading rapidly towards the idyllic Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka. It's going to hit the coast sometime on Sunday. We are gonna be there to help tame the beast. No idea how you stop a ocean basin sized orange thing but we're gonna give it a shot. Maybe calling it names will make it go back to tempestuous seas off Antarctica where it came from? Who knows. We will have elephants on our side. Photo's, video and more will be coming from the weekend- unless the big orange thing gets us.

MVP You Decide... Lyndon Wake

10 Things You Didn't Know About: Sri Lanka

1. It used to be called Ceylon…
So you knew that already? Well, aren’t you clever? Did you know it should have been called Sinhela? But the colonial Brits couldn’t pronounce it easily so it became Ceylon and way back when the island was called Serendip from whence we get the word serendipity. As for the reason that the name changed from Ceylon to Sri Lanka? Well, with all the thorough and exhaustive research I’ve done it seems to have been changed because they could. Much like the Marathon to Snickers debacle it seems the idea was to take a world renowned and recognised brand name like Ceylon (read it and you immediately think ‘tea’) and change it to something which means nothing to anyone. Good marketing skills!

What's Grinding My Gears- Clampers

Is there anything worse than being financially raped by clampers? It stings way more than a parking ticket cos most times you get a parking ticket you deserve it. Clampers lurk in the shadows to catch you out in benign, non-yellow lined areas known as 'car parks'... places you think you are allowed to park without concern. Like the one out the back of my girlfriends house in the Big Smoke. You need a permit to park there and I have one. It lives on the dashboard. Only problem is my foil sunvisor thing had slowly but surely slipped down millimetre by millimetre over the course of four days and obscured the thing. £140 extortionate quid later my car is sitting in the exact same place with the exact same permit now visible without resorting to crazy ideas like looking in the SIDE window.

Oli's Baggies Bomb...

Surfing Sri Lanka- First Timer Questions...

Now I've not been to Sri Lanka... Indo and the Maldives, yes, many times but I've never made it to Sri Lanka. That's all set to change next week when I'm out there for the UK Pro Tour Champion of Champions event. Am looking forward to it and not just because of the tea or the thumping forecast. So being a good traveller I asked some of the pro's a few pertinent questions, my main concerns if you will-
1. Describe the wave at Arugam Bay.
2. Is Sri Lanka the hottest place you've ever been? And if so how do you cope?
3. Are there elephants? and of so is elephant dung an issue at night?
4. Is there any food apart from curry? and as someone that's not really into curry will I starve?
Answers after the jump.... (and you can add yours in the comments)

The Laird/Chopes Ting...

The wanderin' minstrel that is Mickey Smith has been in Taheets where him, Ferg and Lowey had a pop at Chopes (as you'll have seen from the cover of Carve below) he's just whacked a riveting account of their experience on his blog that makes for good reading. Here's a quote for ya-
"Then it all went a bit tits up with the hype of the first mega swell there in a coupla years, and the subsequent arrival of big wig film crews, hookers and photographers everywhere, all trying to get a piece of Chopes and a godlike Laird Hamilton. The mega swell was a non event, but as there were some perfect waves Laird merrily obliged the ogling masses with some pretty dangerous displays of blatant disregard for anyone else - by surfing all day on his SUP, taking every decent set on a very slow swell along with his buddies, not caring how frickin lethal those boards are in 1ft waves - let alone 6-8ft waves at Chopes, and especially when there's 30 other people trying to ride them - most of whom are spending their own hard earned money camping in the valley hoping to get a once in a lifetime chance at riding a setwave out there".