H2uh0

Here at H2uh0 we feature the unusual, the bizzare, the extreme! Well here is another one that fits perfectly into that scenerio. A man with a dream to swim the Amazon River. The most dangourous river in the world. Filled with deadly fish, crocs and a little critter that will kill you if it gets into your system.
Read about this crazy here.

I rode my first wave back in about 1968 in southern Delaware on a 10' Dextra surfboard that my dad had bought at Sears. He bought it for my two sisters who thought it would be a great way to pick up guys in the line up. Once I stood on the wave, I was hooked. I spent days and days surfing the right at Indian River. I was so stoked when I moved to Cali in 1981 and lived on the beach in Carmel. I surfed most every day and charged on some really nice waves in Carmel, Big Sur and Santa Cruz with my buddy Jamie. There was nothing as fine as some cold water and big waves. Here's a narrated picture tour of some of the breaks and folks that shaped the surf scene way back when.

There has been some talk on the discussion boards about this 30 something couple circling the world on their cat. Folks are dissing them for their lack of culinary skill, a beer and pizza diet, and for not appreciating the different cultures and ways of the areas they visit. Well I say to each his own. Not everyone is going to sail the world in the same fashion. I think maybe there is some jealousy towards them as they are lucky enough to be doing it at the ripe age of 30. They have about 1000 miles left to go before they sell the boat and move on to another adventure in a VW camper. Check out their lastest logs entry here.

I just read an unbelievable story in Sail Magazine. So this big fishing trawler was headed to port after a long day at sea and all the sudden crash, splat, boom and the boat has a huge hole and is sinking. The crew calls out a Mayday over the radio and they are rescued. How did this happen? They pieced it together and found out that a Russian cargo plane was in the area at the time of the sinking. Apparently the crew found a lost cow and thought the would take it home with them. Halfway home, the cow went nuts, so to save themselves they pushed it off the plane. Talk about wrong place, wrong time. This maybe another prospect for the Bonehead Hall of Shame!

One of the most amazing things about the internet is the amount of free music available to listen to. One of the coolest sites with more music you could listen to in your life is Shoutcast. Thousands of music enthusiasts share their music libraries with you over the net. Pick a genre, click on a station and enjoy. Its all perfectly legal and safe. Listen to Dave Mathews 24/7, take your pick of jazz, electronic, 70's and much more. For more click here.

While the iPhone stole a lot of the thunder from this years CES in Vegas, there was still alot of cool stuff that went under the radar. Here are some of the top gagets from the show according to Pop Si. Click here.

The Teahupoo break in Tahiti's got a daunting reputation. When it's big, it shows no mercy. At Teahupoo, water pours off the reef and drops down into a cylinder-like cavern. If you look at the reef from the air you can see why the wave behaves the way it does. There is a tiny keyhole that allows a small channel, with a v-shaped bottom, to emerge. The other unique thing that separates this wave from most others is that it breaks below sea level, so you feel like you're in some sort of dungeon waiting to be let out. The back of the wave is basically flat, so there is no way of gauging just how big it is from behind. All you can see are massive amounts of white water getting shooting backwards as the wave explodes onto the shallow reef. Usually the first wave in a set sends so much white water in so many different directions that the second and third waves are unrideable. Surfers scurry to be the first to catch the first wave of the set. There is almost as much anticipation between the boatmen trying to get the ideal spot for a photo as with the surfers trying to catch the ultimate ride.

Knowing all this about Teauhpoo, it was clear that we had to get into contact with one of Tahiti's favorite sons, Robert Teriitehau. He's basically like a god down there and is fully respected by the Tahitian surfing fraternity. It took one quick phone call and a look at the weather maps to convince Robert to take us under his wing.

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I left my clients on top of Mount Everest. They wanted it that way. Truth be told, Kit DesLauriers, her husband, Rob, and their great friend Jimmy Chin barely even noticed when I left. They were busy laughing, crying, taking pictures, hugging, and pointing out the far corners of the world visible at 11 a.m. on October 18, 2006, along with our crack team of nine climbing Sherpas, who'd heroically fixed every inch of the route up from our high camp at the South Col. I'd have preferred to stay and celebrate, too. Except these weren't just any clients. Each of the three was an elite athlete (Jimmy and Kit are both members of The North Face's professional team). And we had a deal: If they climbed to the top strong and responsibly, I'd let them find their own way down...on skis.

Mount Everest is not yet popular with skiers. Go figure. Perhaps it's because one must climb up first. Or the small matter that skiing Everest is life-threatening on the best day. It has been skied before. Among others, a few notable attempts include Japanese speed skier Yuichiro Miura, who in 1970 set his sights on the Lhotse Face, taking off from 26,000 feet at the South Col with a parachute, barely surviving a several-thousand-foot tumble and an Evel Knievel–like disregard for fractures. More recently, Slovenian Davo Karnicar is the only person in history to have actually skied continuously from the summit to Base Camp, which he did in less than five hours in 2000. Frenchman Marco Siffredi snowboarded the Great Couloir, on the north side, in 2001, before returning to the mountain and disappearing in the effort to board the Hornbein Couloir in 2002; he was 23.

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"The first time that I heard the name Mavericks was in 1968, when I surfed inside the rocks there with Walt Von Hauffe and a couple of friends," explains Mavericks surfing pioneer and legend Jeff Clark. "At that time Walt owned the Von's Cinema in Half Moon Bay, a popular hangout for the kids in the neighborhood. This was a time when you could drive to the end of Pillar Point and park right at the beach, then walk up the hill to see past Sail Rock where the big waves would break.

"On the giant days we would bail on school and find our way to the point to watch Mavericks. The year that I first surfed the main peak that we now know as Mavericks was 1975. In the early years I would bring whoever was willing to paddle out with me to sit in the channel, people like Jeff Kayes, Jim Dale, Jerry Hogan, Keith Delari, Heather Brown Dent, Mark Harrington, and John Dale. Interestingly, one of the biggest problems I had back then was a lack of the right equipment. The mentality was that there was no such thing as a 20-foot wave in California, so there was no reason to have a board for it.

"One day in 1990, Tom Powers, Dave Schmidt and I paddled out to surf Mavericks. What we experienced that day was bigger than anything that any of us had ever seen. When Dave and Tom returned to Santa Cruz with stories of the most perfect big wave on the planet, everything changed. The thought of a 20-foot wave in California didn't really sit well with the rest of the surfing world, but over the next few years the photos and the videos convinced the doubters that Mavericks was for real.

Read the rest here.

I heard a knock on the hull followed by a soft whistle. I poked my head out, sweaty and reeking of gasoline from cleaning the carburetor in Genny, my portable gas generator. Four boys in their early teens peered up at me with round brown eyes.

“Podemos atar a su velero para pescar?”

“Si, por su puesto,” I replied. I took their line and wrapped it around the mid-ship cleat. I really wanted to fix the carburetor, but I could tell my new neighbors were less interested in the fishing than talking to the strange gringa alone on the sailboat. I fielded questions and passed out cookies and crackers in exchange for fresh coconuts.

“I want to learn how to climb the coconut trees,” I told them. The three pointed to the smallest boy at once. Apparently he was the best at it.

“Manana, quiero aprender,” I told him. They were thrilled at this and we agreed to meet the next day in the afternoon by the medium-sized palm tree by the pier.

“It was like, like 15 feet…it was huge,” the sun-burnt guy in the internet café bragged to Diego, who ran the place. He was facing Diego but I could feel his words aimed at the back of my head. He spoke with loud inflections and dramatic hand jives towards the ceiling about the size the waves had been that day. I stared at the computer screen doing my best not to make the slightest visible reaction to his commotion. I listened carefully to each word for signs that he couldn’t surf and was probably exaggerating. The words stung. I knew the swell was pumping. I was trying to let my ears heal by resting alone in Puerto Jimenez, where the waveless waters had less of a magnetic pull on me. This lobster-faced, hotdogger had to tell his story loud enough for the entire galaxy to hear. I tried not to let it get to me, but he jabbed my most tender point of weakness and finally pushed me over the edge. I silently devised a plan to sail across the bay at first light. Long drive to the left, huh buddy? I paid and thanked Diego and walked out into the cool, wet night.

Continue reading here.