John John Florence at Off The Wall.....Hawaii

What a difference a day makes again........LAX to this in a day.......well nearly.

We flew out to Hawaii as planned on 2nd Nov and arrived in Honolulu at about 9.30am, went and picked up the rental car and booked into our hotel in Waikiki.
I left the girls there to go and cruise the shops and whatever while I hit the H1 freeway in the rental, as all I was interested in was getting up to the North Shore to see what was going on in the way of waves, and also to try and find our accomodation for the next 5 days. One hour later I was up there looking at a dead flat blue ocean and not holding a lot of hope of any sort of real wave action. BUT, this is Hawaii we are talking about here. I did what I had to do up there and headed back to Waikiki to hook up with the girls again and head out to dinner at DUKE'S on the beach ........(Thanks Chris, it was 100% beautiful and appreciated like you would'nt believe).

The next day we were back on the H1 first thing and heading across the island. About half way up to Haleiwa I hear this odd noise coming from the car and then feel a bit of a sway up happening......flat right rear tyre, (after about 13,000 kilometers on this trip, we get the first car drama in our last 300 K's of driving) and I just happen to be on the far inside lane of a freeway, so somehow I navigate my way through 3 lanes of traffic and pull over on the side of the road without loosing the car and start unloading all the luggage out of the back so I can get to the spare. I am just about to put the jack under the car whilst laying on the road, and Wendy says something which I can not quite hear, anyway I stick my head out from under the car, and there is a tow truck just reversing up to the front of the car.

About four minutes later the job is done and he is gone.........all he said was "your a traveller are'nt you" I answer him with yes, and he says "no worries, let me fix this for you" and gets his trolley jack and "rattle gun" from the back of the truck and next thing I know he was gone. Pacific Towing I think was the name on his truck....very much appreciated I will say.

Anyway, we were all back up on the North Shore by mid morning, checked into our place at Sharks Cove, and snorkelling in that flat blue ocean I was talking about before by lunch time..........still no waves !!!

The next morning I woke up at a sparrow's fart and headed straight down to Pipeline to see if anything has changed........grabbed my camera on the way out just in case and BINGO....this was what I'm greeted with. The first two shots are of John John Florence hanging onto the wall at "Off The Wall" and then pulling out before the axe comes down on him, the third shot is taken looking up towards Waimea at a break called Log Cabins, and the fourth is some lucky barrell hound getting shacked at OTW again. The North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii is legendary for going from dead flat to huge within hours, and that's basically what happened on this occasion, it's certainly not as big as it can get, but it was still a good size and pretty clean,( and thankfully so) as thats the main reason for coming here on the way home.........to get the waves when they are on.
I think the young John John in these pics is totally on fire with his surfing and will be a force to be reckoned with in the not too distant future....(Kelly Slater has said that he will know these waves better than anyone ever has) as he has been surfing them since he was about 8 years old, he is just so good at such a young age and is totally relaxed in pretty heavy conditions.
I also got some really good shots of him last time I was over here, he does'nt miss out on too many sessions as he lives here.........look for that name coming up through the ranks real soon.