Sunday, September 16, 2007

J' aime Biarritz

My first memory of Biarritz is standing in the Grande Plage parking lot with my sister and brother-in-law in December of 1991. While I macked down on my chocolate eclair I thought man that surf looks cold. Sixteen years later I am emailing Franck Bywalski of Extreme Video asking if I could borrow his longboard while I was in town. I did not expect him to offer me the spare bedroom in his beach side bachelor pad overlooking Grande Plage. None the less he did, and made my fourth journey to Biarritz the most decadent to date. Surfwise I caught some fun logging waves out front but my best session was up the road in Anglet at a break called Le Barre. I caught the wave of the day that session only to be dropped in by a french girl on a longboard. She turned around and in a patented french girl accent yelled out "soooorry....." How did she know my native tongue? I hadn't spoken a single word to anyone while I was in the water. More importantly how can you be angry at such a cute accent?