Check out the boots haha. I feel like I'm going snowboarding every time I put them on!
I'm havin' a blast here. I'm in Ballstad Norway, in the Lofoten Islands, off the Northwest coast of Norway! It only took four flights to get here and $450 later for my boards to make it. I met up with Pat Millin, Cyrus Sutton, this Aussie bloke named Matt, and Yazzy a photographer from Canada, in Oslo, Norway, kinda accidentally. Pat and I were just walking through the airport when we ran into the others. SO stoked we did because Yazzy greased it sooooo hard with the board bags. We actually checked in twice somehow! The reason we did that was because we each had too many bags and we didn't want to pay again for the boards or any of our other luggage... Ok, so first we hid the board bags and got our baggage tags. Then we went and put the tags we received on the boardbags where we hid them. After that, we dropped them off at the oversize baggage drop. Then we went back and waited in a separate Scandanavian Airlines line and checked in again at a different counter and got more baggage tags. The lady was like... "You already checked in, where are your baggage tags?" We told her we never got any. She was sorta confused and suspisious but after a little greasin' she just put the tags on there. We were on our merry way! How sly is that?!
Mr. Yazzy
Pat Millin excited for the climb. He actually made it to the summit crazy mofo !
We've climbed about five mountains already and it's only the fourth day. Shit, One of the climbs w as seriously INTENSE. We were literally hanging off the side of this sheer face at one point wayyy up there. I was shitting my pants because I am SO immensely scared of heights. Maybe that's why I am a logger and don't surf Jaws. I was almost crying to Yazzy telling him I wanted to go down and he totally agreed. He felt the same way. He didn't have the $500 Vasque boots people use to climb Mount Everest that we got sponsored with for the trip. We definitly took the wrong route up the mountain for sure. SO freakin scary. Pat and this crazy Aussie guy Matt made it to the summit but they're derelicts. I imagine it was a killer view from up there. I'm going to try and conquer it eventually, but definitly not taking the goat trail again. We've also made friends with another ridge where Yazzy has been eager to get the "covershot." We've hiked it about four times now. By the end of the trip we're going to hate that ridge. It's pretty rad though. There's a huge lake at the top of this hill where when you get to the top, you can see down into the calderon. You'd have no idea it's there until you hike it. It looks like the top of a volcano but intead of magma there is a massive frozen-over lake. A stream flows down the side of the ridge where we drank fresh water from. Something about the water here is amazing. It's so fresh and replenishing. Everything about this place is kinda like that though. There's somehting very special about it. They say it's closer her e to heaven so it's easier to be touched by and angel. I dunno. I feel like it's a very spiritual place.
The forbidden ridge...
A view from the VIking ship.
Yes, this is the summit that Pat climbed. It's way higher than you think.
The days are never-ending here in The Lofotons. November through January it's dark all day long and all night. Then this part of the year every day is getting 20 minutes longer day by day until the midnight sun occurs in June, July, and sometimes August. You can surf all day and all night if you want. The sun pretty much goes around the sky in a big circle. It's never straight overhead. We havn't seen the Northern Lights yet though unfortunately. I feel like I've been here for two weeks already.
Norwegian barrel.
A couple of days a go we went out on a Viking ship! Dude, it was an experience. Full remake of an old Viking ship that they used to sail from Norway to Iceland, Sweden and all over the arctic circle to pick up the hottest chicks. Then, export them back to Norway. That's why there are so many gorgeous girls here. And yeah, it's no rumor. Women here are extremely beautiful. You should have seen in the airport man... Pat Millin and I were staring every two seconds.
The bow actually fell off while we were out to sea. Luckily the crew managed to rescue it !
There's somethin' fishy in the water.
The ship in action.
A Viking has set sail.
Norwegian cutie :)
You should see how beautiful the mountains are here. They are Huge. We're staying at this killer place as well called the Kraemmervika Rorbuer. T hey have really good food and nice people own it named Ingvar and Torgun. They have really nice kids, 8 and 9 that have been hanging out with us around the place as well. I became pretty good buddies with one of the sons named Andreas. They have music equipment here like a drum set, some speakers and an EQ system. The reason they have all this is so that local bands can come and play without having to bring their equipment and also so that traveling musicians can perform as well. Today I taught Andreas how to play the drums and we have a little song we're going to jam tonight for "Open Mic Night." I'm also going to perform some of my songs. Yazzy, Pat, James, the writer who is writing our story for Outside Magazing (who is by the way, one of the funniest people I've ever met), and I, are going to perform a couple songs we came up with yesterday. Pat and I are the rastafarian vocalists, Yazzy's on raeggae strum, and James is on the Balstad beats. We're called the Fish Heads apparently after the vintage fish head bags hanging on the wall behind the drum set where we practiced.
Andreas.
Kraemervika SKATE sesh.
One of the numerous spectacular sites.
d feesh heads
We took the Kraemmervika speedboats out today and went fishing! SO ZINE dude... I caught the biggest fish I've ever caught in my life. A huge Cod! I only caught two fish but they were both pretty big. Probably about two or three feet long. Cod is the number one export in Norway. It's interesting. You see thousands of=2 0cod hanging from wooden stilts in uniform lines. The cod dries for 2-3 months. There are 17 catagories of Cod. The highest quality goes to Italy and lowest quality, the fish heads, go to Africa for Cod stew. Pretty weird how the world works like that. Anyways, The bay where we fished today was incredible. Huge sheer mountains come down into the ocean and create an insane fjord which is like a huge bay.
As far as the surf goes, it's been pretty flat but really nice weather. We surfed once and it wasn't even that cold. I thought it would be colder, but then again, the sun was out, and it was keeping us fairly warm. The waves were fun too. Fun little lefts for the CJ Nelson Aviso model I brought.
My Ocean Minded ugg-shoe-shoe-slipper-thingys are working out great in the cold.
Andreas couldn't quite find the focus haha.
Rock-infested peelers.
That's pretty much what we're up to. Soon we will be camping about an hour away on some deserted beach where we have to take a boat to. Then we have to hike about an hour to the beach where will then post up and really live it rugged because at the moment we're living like kings eating waffles and cod all day. The outdoors will be a great angle for the Outside Magazine article. After camping for as long as we can bear without getting frost bite, we're heading North to Russia to camp some more. We've heard there's a lot of radio activity along the coastal waters so I'm a little nervous about that but what's an adventure without a little fear? I'm looking forward to it. After that we are flying over to the Faroe Islands. That's an entirely different adventure we'll be tapping into. I'll try and send out more updates as soon as I have more to write about because that's pretty much all of it. Thanks for reading!
Save me.
