You’ve gotta watch this clip of OAM rider Sterling Spencer. He is my favorite human now… Funny funny kid indeed…

Hey everybody
Great to be back blogging in 2009…sorry, for the slow start to the
year.  The first CT event of the year has come and gone and here I am
down at Bells for the Rip Curl Easter Pro waiting for my second round
match-up with Adam Robertson and I’m only firing up my first blog.
But I’ve got a good excuse that I’m sure you will all appreciate –
the waves have just been too good!

After the Quiky Pro, I was fortunate enough to head over to Lakey Peak
in Sumbawa for a week.  I travelled over there with Mick Fanning,
Steph Gilmore, Ozzie Wright and Occy.  We were there for photo
sessions and the making of a DVD to celebrate Australian Surfing
Life’s upcoming 250th issue (hell feat, guys…well done!).
It was such a good trip.  Surfing Life must have good karma because we
scored really fun waves the whole time ranging from three to six feet.
There wasn’t much time that we weren’t in the water!  Needless to say
given the crew onboard, there were some hot surfing going down.
Then, as soon as we got back to Oz, we walked into one of the best
Gold Coast swells in years!
I got one training session in with ‘Elko’  (Gary Elkerton, aka Kong)
and then we were into it with the jet ski, doing step offs every day.  It
was a really strong swell and we mainly surfed Kirra.  There were some
insane barrels to be had.  It still wasn’t as good as old Kirra would
have been with the same swell but it was definitely the best it has
been since they started all the sand pumping and ruined it.  Let’s
hope it keeps improving and we get one of Australia’s great surfing
treasures back.
Of course, the Quiky finals went down a Kirra which is another
indication it still has a future if we nurture it correctly.
It went pretty well for me with a fifth which is a “banker” result for
me.  It was great to see Joel Parkinson go on and win it.  Parko was
on fire and was definitely the king of Kirra!
The Quiky was definitely a mobile event this year.  We surfeds heat at
Dbah ,Snapper and then finished at Kirra. The first event of the year
is always interesting.  You get to see how everyone is surfing and who

has been training in the off season. The only real major upset was

Kelly’s early departure.  But if I know Kelly, he will be a force at
Bells yet again.  And he will be well motivated.
My own preparation coming up to Bells has been great.  There’s nothing
better than getting a bunch of good waves and I have just been surfing
so much.  I got down to Victoria early, though, because I wanted to
get used to the cold.  It takes a couple of days to adjust, especially
when you come from Queensland! Other than that, I’m sticking to my
same routine as last year.  I’ve been training with Elko and Wayne
McKewen.  Wayne has my boards firing and I’m really enjoying surfing
down here.  I got to the final last year against Kelly of course, so
it would be awesome to go one better than last year and ring that
bell.
You can count on the usual suspects being up there again….I think
Kelly, Joel and Mick will be right up there along with Taj.  And Jordy
Smith was a standout on the opening day too.
The swell is looking ok for the waiting period it looks like a bump up
on the weekend and quite promising for Tuesday and Wednesday next
week. It’s perfect timing for the ASP to launch its new format because
it doesn’t look like there will be four good days of surf in the
waiting period.  The new format is sudden death from round one which
allows the organisers to get through as much as possible of the event
in quality surf.  It’s harsh that people lose in round one and they’re
out but if you do well on the tour you do get rewarded by being seeded
directly into round two . I think the format will grow on every one
over time and it’s worth trying so we get more surfing in better
waves.
Talk soon
Bede

keep on the look out. new giraffe signature pad coming for summer! sterling spencer style!

The contest is now over and the crowds have come and gone along with the swell. Today was a nice break in the action of no stop swell and pristine conditions for the last week here in Margaret River. So what to do when the waves go flat? There is pretty much 2 options around here, go check out all the wineries or head down to the Margaret River golf coarse. Last weekend was the end of the contest and we had a couple late nights out, so it was a negative on the wineries.
As we pulled up to the golf coarse we realized that there was one major difference here from the golf courses in the States.

The difference is real live Kangaroos. When I say Kangaroos i dont just mean a couple I mean hundreds. So what do you do when you have Kangaroos roaming the fair way? A good reason to make some bets. $50 bucks on who can hit the first Roo. I know it sounds mean but if you saw me golf you would realize that there is a good chance Im going to be losing some money. We actually got half way through the fist 9 and went soft. The Roos are pretty cool looking and there were a bunch of little guys cruising around so we called off the bets. On the bright side Austin and I shot par 2 different holes after we stopped aiming for Roos……… Is there a moral to this story? NO,   But if you want to come up with one feel free to send it my way.

yeah Mates-

n8