On The Road With Mikala Jones
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END OF SUMMER UPDATE
Been spending so much time on the road lately that I haven’t really been blogging this “On the Road” thing too much. Don’t we have people to do this stuff? I thought my job was to go surfing. Oh, anyway — I did just put together this little iPhoto book of my daughter’s summer vacation, and it reminded me of some of my own summer vacation.
Last time I wrote one of these, I was just heading off to Africa with Nate Tyler, on a trip for another magazine. We spent some time in Reunion on our way there and scored some pretty fun waves. One day I forgot my leash and surfed with a roof-rack tie-down around my ankle. If you ever have a board that goes too fast, I’d recommend using one of these. But on fast little reef waves, not so much.
After Africa I flew out to California for a couple promos during the US Open and managed to score a few nice sessions around San Diego and Huntington between meetings.
From there, I went with the Split Team down to El Salvador. The team’s pretty small — just me, Josh Loya, Jeremy Johnston and Puerto Rico’s Leslie Bursian (plus our team manager Jeff Deffenbaugh) — so we’re pretty tight. We stayed at Punta Roca Hotel, which is local surfer Jimmy Rotherham’s family place and the best place to stay in that area. Great food. Great people. We surfed every day, sometimes all day long. With Jimmy showing you around, you can’t go wrong — but you’ll have to accept that he’s going to be on the wave of the day every session. He’s spent his whole life on those waves, and nobody surfs ’em like him.
I cruised back through California for a Matuse Wetsuits photo shoot and was home in time to take my wife and daughter away for a little vacation to the Mentawais. A friend of ours had room on their boat, so we had a nice, relaxing week out there and I still managed to grab a couple of waves.
If all that sounds like a busy schedule, somewhere in between all that I’ve surfed every major island in the Indo chain this season. Boats. Planes. Road trips. You name it. Sometimes we bring a crew and get some work done, sometimes we keep it real low profile and just enjoy it for ourselves. Maybe we can have a few highlights from the season mixed in with this blog, but you’ll have to check the magazines for the rest of ’em. Hopefully there a few keepers in all these sessions — that’s all you can hope for from a season. I know I scored plenty of good sessions just by staying on the hunt, and to me that’s what really matters.
Hasn’t really been the best Indo season ever, but consistent enough and there’s still a few months left before I head back to the islands. Right now I’m getting ready to host my local friend Koming’s grom contest. Koming is just a local surfer, but he’s managed to get together sponsorships, a skateboard ramp and prizes for a contest for the young local surfers. It’s great to see guys like him putting so much back into their community, and I’m just stoked to be able to give him a hand with judging and some prizes that Split and Osiris were cool enough to donate. Swell’s looking good, so it should be fun.
—MJ
THE BEST WAVES!
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