Newport Beach surf today, just kidding. I wish!

In the spirit of my new found commitment to fitness and health, I’ve been taking every Tuesday morning off to go surf with my buddy Jon Gih at the Newport Beach jetties. For the last 3 weeks, the waves have been a far cry from amazing; I guess that’s what you get when you show up late to the party. Today we tried to time it so that we’d get there just a few minutes after everybody leaves for work and that seemed to help a little with the crowds.

Parking wasn’t too bad, you just have to drive around and keep your eyes open. Next Tuesday I’m thinking we’ll have to just try going down to San Onofre instead, maybe Old Man’s or Trails. It’s been a good 2 months since I started working out at 24 Hour Fitness so I think my paddle power might put up a good fight. I definitely have my doubts but I’m trying to be optimistic. Right now my left shoulder is very sore; I think we were in the water for almost 3 hours chasing after scraps. In hindsight, I should’ve gone to bed early last night instead of watching surf heats online until 2 in the morning.

Well, so far I’m happy with my results from the gym and occasional surfing. I’m now 175 pounds down from 182 and I haven’t even been taking my diet that seriously. I’m confident with a great diet I’d be seeing improvement much sooner; I’m just not ready to give up tasty eating yet. The only downside to surfing on a weekday is that after it’s over, all the work that piled up is still waiting to get done and all I can think about is passing out on the sofa. It can’t be said enough how bad I want to retire already.

Click image above to watch trailer.

Ever since racing came to be part of my life, I’ve put surfing on the back burner and haven’t gone out to chase waves nearly as much as I used to. It’s something I really regret and I’ve been slowly making amends by taking Tuesday morning off every week to surf with my good friend Jon Gih. For a little inspiration, I bought the latest and greatest surf flick, A Fly In The Champagne, featuring surfing’s greatest rivalry of all time: Kelly Slater and Andy Irons. To be honest, I didn’t know they hated each other so much.

Sure I’d seen interviews from movies and magazines in the past, but I always thought it was more the media doing its thing and not really the surfers themselves fanning the flames. For the first half of the movie, all you’re watching is Kelly and Andy talking about how bad they wanted to beat each other up. You can only take a few minutes of that kind of thing before you’re fed up and just want it to stop and get on with the surfing.

If you’ve seen Kelly and Andy’s older films, you’ll probably already have seen the footage they recycled and will want to skip all that. Once you get to the surfing, it’s incredible, as usual, and there’s no other way to describe it. You just have to see it for yourself and I think the DVD is worth buying for that much, just ignore the ten year long recap. Then again, not everyone has been following the drama for the last decade so you just might be interested.