Malaria, Mud, Jungles

Mike Dodd (missing a chunk of his board)

The MVMIDAS looked like a big, comfortable, well-oiled machine and I was pretty happy about that as we were going to be on it for 10 days. No getting off at any time to walk down to 7-Eleven for a magazine or Burger King for a Whopper. Just a bunch of young men and the sea (and surfboards and a boat and beer.)

For the next two days we surfed and surfed and surfed. We surfed Hideaways, Rifles, Lefts. After all this surfing, we paddled back to the boat for dinner. After a dinner of steamed rice, vegetables and beef stew, we hit the couches and played cards. Homer, who has been on kind of a roll, whipped our asses and took our money. The next morning we hit HTs at sun up. Not long after, we ran into some fellers from home. They were on the Audio boat trip and they hit the lineup with us. It was nine more guys in the water, but they were all cool and it was like being back home surfing with your buddies (only the water was actually warm, the light was beautiful and the waves were unreal. That was the only difference.) By 8 P.M. we were back on the boat and sleeping. The next day, we surfed Green Bush and Lances Left and HTs.

Four days into the trip, we hit land for the first time. You really do appreciate land when you've been away from it for a while. That was one of the epiphanies I had on the trip. We walked the beach and looked at shells and chased hermit crabs and even took a walk through the jungle. The jungle was a trip; mosquitoes and lizards and swamps everywhere. And mud. Mud everywhere. After two hours of that, we got the hell out.

Another epiphany: Leave the jungle to Tarzan. Soon, the dingy came and we got off the land. I like land, but land in a place like, say, San Diego. When we told the guys about our Rudyard Kipling (for you literary types, he's the guy who wrote The Jungle Book in 1894) jungle expedition, everyone told us we were dumb asses and that it's pretty easy to catch Malaria. Then some smart ass was kind enough to tell me it takes 10 days for Malaria symptoms to show up, so sure enough, I started worrying right then and there. Any way, We surfed Maccas later that day and it was the best, most enjoyable wave of the trip. It was a perfect wave with a great barrel section. Anything you want to do on a wave, you can do at Maccas. We shot thousand of photos there and laid down a ton of video footage.