200KMFROMTHEOCEAN: March 2009

(RAT) Hello fellow bloggers!
Here we are back in Östersund after a week in the cold waters of Norway during winter (but warmer waters than in Sweden!!!)

It's a risky business booking a week of surfing 2 months in advance because it can just turn out that the week you have booked can turn out dead flat, totally howling onshore or out of control, unsurfable, massive slop! However, it can also turn out really good if you have the luck!

We don't normally book in our surf missions (we just hit it when the prognosis is 'on') but this year was different because our fellow 'midnight runners' member Jay and his wife are expecting bub number 2 and she was due to arrive 4 weeks after our return. So we earmarked a week and hoped she didn't pop one out before or during our mission..We were lucky and all was well and we made it home without Jay having been an 'absent' father..

We lost our faithfull 'runners' member Andrew (from California who had lost his job here and had to go back to the states) just before we were due to go which was a big shame. Woodsy, the other ozzie, is in Oz at the moment on hols..We were down to 3 members in Östersund: Johan, myself and Jay.

2 weeks before we were due to leave, Johan rings me up and hands over his mobile to a guy from Adelaide, in Oz, named Heath that Johan had met at the language school that day! (the same day that Andrew left for the U.S.!!!) Turns out that Heath is a really keen surfer as well and was the Billabong rep in Adelaide before sacrificing it all to come to Sweden with his girl.. another victim, hahaha--but thank God for that because all of a sudden we were 5 again (counting Woodsy). Heath was naturally flipping out when he heard that we were going to Norway and we wanted him to come along...He was stoked to think that he was gunna get wet again..

Unfortunately, 2 days before we were due to leave, Johan had to pull out because of work and family commitments, but it was lucky that Heath was there, otherwise it wouldn't have been as fun driving with just 2 of us in the car..It's always more fun with a gang..

We took off for the west coast of Norway at 6am on Monday, March 9th (as soon as Jay finished his night shift) with an 11hr drive ahead of us. Because of the horrendous night-time experience we had last february, we decided to be the 'Daylight Runners' this year for fear of dying before we got there!

Apart from one part (when we had to drive over sheet ice for 30kms with a HOWLING 'hurricane like' side-wind that all but blew the queue of cars doing 4okms/hr OFF the road, including us) .....

the drive went well.......

and we arrived just on dark to a 6ft offshore swell and no-one out, as usual.. Olav takin' off..

We decided to get settled in and set to work immediately by making a reasonably large dent in a case of coldies as a warm up for the surf the next day ..hahahaha.