EKAS.

Eureka! EKAS!! What a fucking day. At 6:30am Im sitting outside our room on Skype, talking to my parents. Barret comes walking up and asks if Im up for a little surf adventure. Goddamn right I am. Finish up my call, grab my board, and hop on the bike with Barret headed to Grupuk. Barret is from southern California....from a little town called ENCINITAS. Hahaha. Yep, small world. He knows most of my friends and vice versa. Anyways....we rent a big boat for 700,000rupiah (70bucks) split 4 ways...me, barret, Oscar (sweden) and John (hawaii). It is a bit of an hour of a boat ride through the most outstanding "kodak moments" of scenery. outstttttaaaanding. And of course, I forgot my damn camera. Shit shit shit. Oh well, the beauty is forever burnt into my mind. We arrive to EKAS and similar to Grupuk, there is an Inside and Outside. Inside is about 500meters to the left, and its a Right and Lefthander. We surf Outside because the tide is high....it is basically a huge left that fires. Christ. I was shitting my pants. Well overhead, steep take off, and BACKSIDE...Im still not feeling overly confident going left on the shortboard. I decide when Im on the boat greasing up with sunscreen that I am NOT going to be a pussy. I paddle out into the water, take a huge set wave, drive 3/4 of the way down the face and then .... I eat shit. Hard. Silly girl...now Im inside, right in the impact zone, and I took the rest of the 8 wave set on the head, getting pushed and pulled and washed all over the place. hahahaha. What a way to start a session. I finally make it back out into the lineup and all the boys give me props for dropping in on the massive wave. As Barret put it, "Christ, these drops are heart throbbing." Yes, heart throbbing pretty much nails it on the head. After that I decided to be a bit selective...my chubby board is a dog to duck dive, so when Im in the impact zone Im pretty much just floundering around underwater. John and Barret are really great surfers, so they got a ton of awesome rides. Oscar has only been surfing 150 days, but he charges it and has no fear. He would take off late and deep on every set, and got drilled on the takeoff 75% of the time. And then he just paddled back out and did it again!! I finally looked at him and said, "Dude, are you crazy??" And he replied, "No worries, its Just Water". Just water eh?? That shit seems pretty powerful to me. Ha. All in all an amazing day. We were on and off the boat...napping, reapplying sunscreen, eating, hydrating. Once the tide dropped we headed to inside and enjoyed some smaller rights. We left as the sun was setting, and damn...I wish we had left a bit earlier. Our boat "captain" is some random Indonesian who probably doesnt know two shits about driving a big boat. The swell was filling in and the bay was BIG. By the way, the sun set QUICKLY and all the sudden is was dark too. Thank God there was a full moon or else I think we may have died. In all honesty, the boat ride home was the closest that Ive ever come to dying. The boatmen here know nothing about boats, so they hug the "coast" aka huge, sheer rock cliffs. Well, the swell was charging in, bouncing off the rocks, and nearly knocking over our boat. The capitan was driving us into the swell sideways too...so at one point in the ride my hair nearly dipped into the water when the boat swayed completely onto its side. My arms, exhausted from surfing, were clinging to anything tied down...holding on for dear life. Everyone was shitting their pants. Finally we talked the captain to driving OUT into the bay and AROUND. This was a bit helpful. The hour ride home was the longest hour of my life. As when Im nervous, I couldnt suppress my hysterical laughter. The guys gave me props for not FREAKING out through all of this mayhem...but little did they know that hysterical laughter IS me LOSING it. I about cried when we finally pulled back into Grupuk. No time to dilly dally though...I was scheduled to play again at Cafe7. No shower...I zipped to the Cafe and had a cocktail, a STRONG cocktail. - my hands were still shaking. Finally calmed down after retelling the story to Meesh (with lots of hand motions, cursing and more hand motions!!). Had one more drink and then was on stage. I played music into the night and then posted up with my surf buddies for a beer. Its been decided...in a few days Barret, Oscar and I are going to head to Sumbawa together. Sumbawa is even quieter and more primitive than Lombok -- but even less crowded and even better waves. The island is a taxi drive, ferry ride, then another taxi drive away. I really reallyyyyy wanted to go, so Im glad to have some cool travel partners now. And even better...Im meeting up with my good friend Nicole (from Encinitas) who is in Sumbawa with her boyfriend. Small world, filled with awesome people...and fun waves.

Cheers to being ALIVE. Im greasing up and heading to Areguling now for some perfect, overhead righthanders. I hope that your day is as good as mine....