ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON ONE MONTH A CHRISTIAN FLETCHER HEADED TO LAX WITH TWO ONE-DOLLAR BILLS IN HIS POCKET AND FOUR BOARDS IN THE BACK OF A BUDDY'S PICK-UP.
They drove in the car pool lane on the 405, the pick-up redlining at a little over a hundred and Fiddy clicks. A brand-new 5"8" epoxy was scooped up by the wind and launched into the LA skyline. Cars screeched and swerved to dodge the missile. "Keep driving," muttered Christian to the driver. "We're late."
He missed his flight. Whatever. He spent the night drinking with friends at an Irish-themed tavern called Hennessey's in Dana Point. Around three am, he succeeded in selling another of his quiver, his four-boards reduced to two.
Later that morning, and with $350 in his pocket, he got on his new flight, this time via Narita in Japan, en route to the Sunway Lagoon in Malaysia. Overnighted in Narita. Arrived in Kuala Lumpur after three days travel.
There was no one to pick him up. No smiling man in a beige pantsuit and with slick black hair holding a white plastic board with the words CHRISTIAN FLETCHER scrawled in black texta.
He waited four hours. The airport emptied. All Christian knew was that he was s’posed to be at a wavepool and that he'd already missed two of the three days Stab had hired the pool for. Fuck, he needed a cigarette.
HOW CLOSE CAN YOU SHAVE YOUR LIFE TO THE BONE?
Christian Fletcher is the master edge rider. Thirty four. Homeless. The son of deck-grip, jetski and longboard pioneer Herbie. Older brother of Nathan. Father of 14-year-old Greyson Thunder. Likes to race road bikes, ride bulls and surf Pipeline at night. He introduced skateboard grabs to surfing and was punching judo airs nearly 20 years ago. Won thirty-gees in a contest at Trestles once and wound up on the cover of both Surfing and Surfer in the same month; a result that so incensed the old guard on tour they petitioned the American surf mags not to run photos of the kid.
Christian was picked up by Australian clothing label Insight a few months back and put on a small salary so at least he's mildly solvent. He doesn't have a wetsuit sponsor and wears a 1 5-year- old fluoro orange Lanty wetsuit owned by his uncle. Christian gets free dildos and some travel green from Spankys, a sex shop, but feels bad asking for money so usually goes without.
No one expected Christian to actually arrive. The feeling was, man, if he comes it'll be a blast. Would he grind the pool's wall? Ollie the lifeguard tower? Launch the ski into a crowd of onlookers while off his chops on a cocktail of viagra and speed9 But, whatever. He probably won't show. Two airport pickups had already been missed.
I'm buzzed at two-thirty on the morning of our last session in the pool and see the shaven headed icon wander into the hotel foyer, pack of Malboros in his hand, a necklace that says Sik Fuck around his neck and jacket and jeans despite the tropical humidity. "That was the longest flight, dude," he smiles.
Turns out he'd been to the rooms of the other suffers and the photographer and, without fail, each had told him to find his own bed. I tell him I'll get him his own room. Christian grunts his thanks, swaggers back out and squats outside smoking his cigarette.
Six hours later, he's up and quickly makes up for any lost time by jamming one of his two remaining boards into a tigers' cage in the theme park and letting the beast take a bite out of the tail. The tiger hacks. The surfers cheer. Christian is here
ONE YEAR AG0, ALMOST EXACTI.Y. STAB TOOK TAJ. PARKO AND TRENT MUNRO TO RIDE THS KUALA LUMPUR POOL
We hunted, we hustled, we lied, we bled money, we did whatever it would take to get three of the world's best into a wavepool – and then use a jetski for high-speed tow-ate. The result? One of the two exceptional sections in Taj's movie Fair Bits (the other section, airs shot from a chopper, was also a Stab initiative), two magazine covers (Stab and Surfing, posters, billboards and various ads for Billabong, O'Neill and Globe, and more than 40 pages of magazine editorial. A success? Yeah, you could say that.
Three months after we'd been there, Quiksilver took Ry Craike to the pool, hired the same ski, and tried to replicate our earlier success. The ski broke down. No photos. Our contact at the pool told US she'd since been approached by magazines from the US, Brazil, surf co's and a couple of movie makers. We heard that and figured, man, if we don't claim some kind of ownership of the whole ski-in-a-pool concept it'll wind up being in every surf mag, in every movie, and fronting every company's ad campaigns, and no one'll ever care where the idea came from. We're a young mag with, we like to think, good ideas. We couldn't let this one get away from us.
FROM AUSTRALIA WE CHOSE JOSH KERR AND WADS TWO YOUNG GUYS WITH FEROCIOUS REPUTATIONS.
Josh, the Gold Coaster, a world air champ with a bit of a death wish in the big gear We called him in California and he was on a plane to KL within two days. Goodall comes from the Sunshine Coast, is a young master of shuv-its and superman variations and has an angry streak that marks him as a personality worth writing about. On his right forearm is a tattoo that reads, "Four Double Five One", his Queensland postcode,
From Hawaii, we picked Jamie O'Brien. Pipe Master. Can ride 10-foot barrels switch. Makes rodeos. The biggest thing in surfing since Bruce Irons. Jamie's arrival at the pool was almost as spectacular as Mr Fletcher's. Jamie was in Bali shooting for his next signature movie and, though he was into the idea of a KL wavepool massacre, was finding it hard to leave a rising swell, Jamie was on the beach on the Sanur side of the island, two hours from the airport and two-and-a-half hours from the day's last flight to Malaysia, when we convinced him to come.
"When?" he asked.
"You have to leave... now!" we barked.
Six phone calls later, the photographer's Indonesian wife, Mira, had bought Jamie a flight to KL from Bali, collected the kid from town and passed on the ticket. At the airport, he was told the plane had already left the gate. "I NEED to be on this plane," insisted the towering Hawaiian. Two hours later, he was picked up at the Sunway Lagoon resort in a black Proton sedan and driven to the water's edge. Utterly bewildered at pulling up to a dark theme park, heard a wild screech, a thump, a jetski's whine and watched as flashes captured a Kerrbox slob air. Next wave, a Goodall superman. Within six minutes, Jamie was onto his second perfectly-ridden wave. Already, he was pushing the other guys. The level lifted.
THE SUNWAY LAG00N IS SOUTH-EAST ASIA'S ANSWER TO LAS VEGAS.
You enter through a 10-storey high lion's jaw, the sun illuminating the lobby through a pyramid atrium. In the gardens are $2,000-a-night villas, film stars tended to by an army of butlers. Expensive Starck and Jacobson furniture give the hotel a hipness rare in this part of the world. The pool, called Jeffreys Bay, is part of a grand South African theme. J-Bay squats in the very centre of the park, surrounded by slides and a lake filled with giant fibreglass swans. At night, and as a filthy westerner, you vist the Beach Bar in Kuala Lumpur, 40 minutes cab-ride away, Three black-tipped reef sharks swim in a tank above the bar. The busty transsexuals and the toothless whores bump a soft beat in the dark. There is a communal, doorless toilet. Cigarette butts fill the bowl. On stage, cover band Hot Wired play a Triple M playlist. You wonder if there is any occupation more mediocre than being the bass player in a Malaysian band playing covers of nineties American blockbusters. You marvel at the caucasion ex-pats with their tight-assed whores. Look at this man over here. He sits in his plaid shirt, white chinos worn high, brown leather belt, loafers, his thick grey hair pomaded into a silver helmet. His three Asian lovers dance and shake in their tight clothes, little cans pushed out into perfect prisms. He sits on the one Heineken for the night and watches World Wrestling Federation fights on the plasma screens.
Later, he walks into a large bedroom cooled to 16 degrees. He shivers. Ttje wallpaper peels. He puts his Tiger beer on the bedside table. The Chinese teenager soaps his pubis. He is 50 years old. In the wall-size mirror he studies his reflection. "This is my life?" he wonders silently. Earlier in the bar, you and your buddies had looked at each other. Everyone was thinking exactly the same thing: I hope Jl hasn't targeted this fetid bar. You had looked over into the maw, where the hookers were lining up the marks. You asked: "Wanna sit near the bomb blast?"
YOU STAND IN ANKLE DEEP WATER, FRONT FOOT TURNED HORIZONTALLY FOR BALANCE ON THE BOARD. THE OTHER PLANTED ON THE TILES
You pull the rope tight to your chest. You wait. And'wait. And just when it seems like the session's finished, the horn sounds, the pool whomps, Josh, Wade, Christian, Jamie, the cameramen and the filmers yell. You wobble at the start, the ski misses a beat, you fly past a wall you let go and you reach for the grey equatorial sky or cutback into the left. You get high on an insane mix of speed and familiarity with a wave that never changes. But, what does it feel like to blow a wave? When you wobble on the takeoff and faceplant on the tiles? Or fail to negotiate the wake from the ski and launch headfirst into the wave? What it does it feel like? I'll tell you - lonely, A feeling of overwhelming inferiority; of being a beta among a pack of chest-thumping alphas. The pool goes silent, the cameras drop and a groan fills the arena. You wish you were anywhere but here, with the muslim tourists in their black lycra bodysuits watching your failure from behind the roped-off area and with the disappointed looks of the curious maintenance staff filling your head.
THREE DAYS. TEN SESSIONS. 200 WAVES
Doesn't sound like much when you cut it down, you know what I'm saying? Most of these guys would find 30 waves in a two-hour session at any normal wave. Five a day? At the pool, it was like feeding time at the zoo.
Kerrbox called his moves before the wave: Slob Air! Mute! Method!
Goodall crushed four boards in seven waves. Threw down shuv-its and one clean Superman.
Jamie mixed up the airs with grabrail cutties and hacks, flying smoothly into his moves without any stutters. He busted two sticks in two waves.
Christian played a different beat. Instead of the tow-ats employed by the others, he instructed the driver to hold the throttle on full while doing tight donuts. Like a propeller, he circled the entire breadth of the pool before getting launched into the waves at 50 or more clicks. He didn't land anything, but got higher than you'd believe possible. It wasn't always pretty but, without exception, spectacular. Like, losing an edge and being catapaulted headfirst into a wave. Like, flying so far sideways he nearly cleared the pool.
And when the last wave of the three days was ridden, Chrisitian grabbed the ski and punted the biggest air of the trip turning the machine 180 degrees mid-air.
"I COULD'VE GIVEN YOU THE WHIP-INS OF YOUR LIFE," he bellowed.
AS A PARTING GIFT ON OUR AIRPORT BUS, CHRISTIAN GAVE THE PROPRIETORS OF THIS MAGAZINE AN INTERESTING PRESCRIPTION SEDATIVE.
"It'll calm you down," he said.
"What will it do?" asked one, tentatively.
"Take it!" he ordered.
What might've been an unpleasant evening of missed flights and reamed credit cards and angry reactions turned as crisp and as sunny as a day frollicking on an empty beach. Birds sung, faces smiled, airport check-in staff wore kaleidoscope colours.
One minute we're fleeing security guards at the hotel and trying to wrestle the controls of the bus from our driver in a desperate bid to catch our flight, the next we're sound asleep in the Nap Room of Changi airport, Singapore. Gone are Goodall and Kerr and O'Brien. Gone is any remaining credit on our cards. Gone is Christian Fletcher.
Gone, but not forgotten.
Thanks: to Sunway Lagoon for letting us torture their wavemakers (Marcus and Choo) with our requests for different types of waves; to Reina Malini for the attention and the impeccable PR work; to Agnes Ong for the rooms at the Sunway Lagoon Pyramid Tower and to Muheddi for his careful lifeguarding. If you want to hire the pool (paddle-ins only, sorry) and want to stay at a hip crib, give these cats a call: 603 7492 8000. Or email: sirh@sunway.com.my
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Reply #1 on : Mon September 08, 2008, 14:44:01