adventures in oz

sooo yesterday i decided to go on a solo adventure down to the gold coast and try get some surfing in. it took 2 trains, a bus, and about 2.5 hours to finally get there, but i made it. round trip only cost about 20 bucks or so, which isn't too bad. the student discount makes the tickets about half off, which is nice, since i only had 20 bucks in my wallet. sketch!! anyways on the train ride down i somehow struck up a conversation with this maori dude from NZ which was pretty cool. he was legit maori, he went to a maori immersion school where they only spoke maori until high school, so that was kinda craycray. we ended up talking about all the local foods in NZ and HI, which are actually kinda similar. made me super ono for some poke bowls and squid luau, can't wait til i get some of that. two months! anyways, once i got to the gold coast, i took the bus to coolangata, where snapper and kirra and dbah and all those famous breaks are. i had heard that they just opened up a bodyboard shop there, so i stopped by to grab some wax and figure out where was the best breaks. they were nice enough to let me leave my bags at the store while i went for a surf, since i didn't wanna leave um on the beach with all the other touri. i ran about 1000m down the road to dbah, since snapper wasnt breaking at all. kinda cool, cuz to get to dbah you cross the border btwn QLD and NSW, which is only marked by a sign that says "border between QLD and NSW here." dbah wasnt much better, it was only about 1ft hawaiian style and super crumbly. kinda reminded me of donkeydongs, only a lot less powerful. surfed for about an hour or so, found a couple clean faces to work with, and one nice launch section. thought i was only gonna be able to get a roll off but somehow turned it into a flip. after my surf i ran back, grabbed my stuff, and picked up a pizza to grind on the beach. after that it was time to head back into town, so i hopped on the bus and headed back into town. the last train was full of drunk aussies back from the rugby league game that they just won, so it was all rowdy. anyways i better get back to writing my papers. here's some pics i snapped, mostly on the go. i couldn't take too many since i left my phone in the shop while i was surfing, but i'll be back and i promise to take more pics next time. chutes!