Home James....

The only way to protect your stick - Santa Monica surf case

Travelling's a bitter-sweet dichotomy. Lekker to be away, sad to leave, but then actually nice to be back home. Provided you don't mind the coolish water, average waves...and having to share the surf with more than 2 people.

Online check-in rules - you get to ensure you score decent seats, and don't get squashed in between the sweating 150kg ou with bad BO and the twitchy, nervous looking dude with dandruff and toejam. Luck ran out on the last flight home, Dubai Joeys. Til then we'd each scored our own row of 4 seats to doss - the only 2 peeps with 4 seats each in the whole plane. First class style at economy cost. Lovely.

But as it always happens, luck doesn't last forever - so we ended up suffering like normal mortals on the last flight - being forced to sit upright in our single mangy seats. Factor in plane delays, which didn't help cos our connecting flight to PE was going to be bloody tight to start with. Landed with exactly 1 hour before plane home left! Challenging, specially since immigration can only muster 1 ou at the checkpoint, dealing with 2 plane-loads of peeps. 

Welcome back to SA, land of inefficiency and abject laziness. Baggage handlers decided it was teatime, so took em a good 30 minutes to start getting the luggage out. 10 minutes before check-in closes, still no surfboard. Mad dash to get tickets, and wait at bag drop counter. Husband makes it at full sprint with errant surfboard bag a whole 60 seconds before check-in closes. Sprint to xrays - nother long line cos, you guessed it, only 1 counter open. On a Friday, at lunchtime. Made it onto the plane with 2 minutes to spare. Stuck next to chick with screaming baby. Storms batter the airfield. Delayed by 30 minutes. Hurry up and wait.

We made it, turns out the surfboards didn't. They caught the next flight in instead.Turns out they got the royal treatment too. Nice rail ding on the epoxy fish - achieved through a heavy duty coffin bag, high density foam and a rail guard tubing. Only way they coulda got that right was to throw it out the back of the plane. Probably did.

Nice to be home. Missed wearing a wetsuit, surfing weak east swells, light onshores and crowds! Um, not.....