You'll know that I've done a Kindle book (link above) and having proved my skills at geeking my way to that summit I'm now doing the same service for others. First client: long time compadre, travel buddy and surf media veteran Jarvi. Known as Craig Jarvis officially. He's pulled together stories from all over the surf world for a collection of journalism that will sit nicely on your Kindle bookshelf next to mine.
In honour of this new tome (available here) he's agreed to let me run one of the stories from the book here. It's a cracker from a trip we did to that joint in Norway that people keep 'finding'. We weren't the first, nor was Ted Grambeau, Jeff Divine was... Anyhoose. Read on for the story about how Jarvi got electrocuted and we pointed and laughed.
It was great visionary who once said, ‘Surfers just want to get drunk, stoned, laid and tubed.’
Easy enough to fulfil at home but could it be pulled off in the Arctic Circle? I was determined to try.
Destination: Norway. Goal: waves, tubes.
Secondary goal: chicks. Others: drink, drugs, music, culture, porn, Vikings, whales, fighting, Playstation.
ELECTRIFYING
‘C’mon bru. It’ll be good. There’s some really good waves up there, and apparently the water’s been so warm some guys have been surfing in boardies.’
So came my last invite to go surfing in Norway. I had been pondering it for two weeks. From Durban to the Arctic Circle is a long way to travel to get shit waves and freezing cold water. It costs about half a South African house to get there. It really seemed like a huge waste of time, but Durban had been small and onshore for weeks, one of the charts showed a 37-foot ocean swell bashing around in the circle, and I folded quicker than Superman on laundry day.
After five flights I was finally on the island. It was as far north as I had ever been on the planet in my life. It was cold. Really cold. We just wanted to get to our final destination as soon as possible. Due to some cock-up with the ferry, we had taken the long way around and had a good four-hour drive ahead of us.
Australian surfer/shaper Mark Phipps had the wheel, and I had the job of keeping him awake on this last stretch. Slowly, while he was driving, the sky started smearing. It started off like a little green blotch in the distance and I thought that I was just tired, and seeing things. Slowly it grew and became brighter. Eventually we pulled over and all climbed out of our crowded little cars. It was cold, but the sky was incredible – huge swirling green-blue clouds of swirling lights. ‘Look closely!’ one of the Norwegians told me. I concentrated on a little patch of cloud and saw that it was vibrating at a furious speed. Little points of light moving back and forth at incredible velocity. The Northern Lights on our first night. Some people come to Norway for months and never get to see it. We had got biggest sighting on our first night in. In a country where there are no signs this was a good sign.
