Debbie (and crew) does (do) Phillip Island

A rare offshore prediction for the island combined with decent swell made a trip out of Melbourne particularly appealing last weekend. So when Deb offered up the family mansion on the local beach we were all down there on friday night faster than you could say "freeloaders". Pistol, Joeleee and Sergio scoot out of town so quick they even manage a surf on the Friday arvo which was, by all accounts, amazing. These tales of reforming reform spin through my green dreams and on Sunday we resolve to hunt down more of the same but minus Dub who is sorely under the weather.

As you might expect on a 38deg surf friendly day, smith's is packed to the gills and even the back beach is pretty full. What's more, there are a million people sitting hopefully in a millpond! "Stuff that" we say and roll to Forest Caves to find a crowded carpark and lots of swell. Out we rush to grab some green, and indeed we do, until the freak sets start to roll in. One minute you'd be paddling happily near the take off point, the next you'd be getting rumbled by a set of 3 massive freight trains that suck you under until your last ounce of breathe is running out. Lovely… I am briefly side lined by an unfortunate incident involving the squashing of my private parts by my own board (don't ask...) but soon we all head out again spouting such optimism as, "It looks to have died down a bit". Nothing could be further from the truth and this is brutally illustrated when the biggest set of the whole day rumbles in and leaves poor Joeleee with only half a board. Yes! That massive mofo snapped it clean in half leaving Joeleee a desperate body board to the beach on the remaining stump while a friendly fellow surfer collected the runaway tip from out the back. Ouch.

Now I don't know if Dave (the bogan wave god) codes, and if he does I don't know if he codes in Visual Basic, but I would summarise Saturday's surf thus:

Dim numbroken As Integer = 0
Dim mashage As Integer = 0
Do Until mashage >= 30
If Ocean.Swell.PhillipIsland.ForestCaves.Wave >= 8ft Then
Mash(BurgerPosse)
mashage = mashage + 1
End If
If Ocean.Swell.PhillipIsland.ForestCaves.Wave > 10ft Then
TryToKill(Joeleee)
numbroken = numbroken + 1
End If
Loop
MsgBox("You have broken " & CStr(numbroken) & " board/s! Yowser!")

We spend the rest of the day splashing/recovering in the water on the safe bay side and playing a fun card game called "Apples something something Apples". Plus for dinner Dubbie (Dub and Debbie) cooks us round 3 of the great burger-off. In an attempt to soften up the judges, all ten of us are showered with 2 delicious seafood entrees, chilly prawns and freshly caught abalone! As for the main event, imagine if you can, spicy lamb patties (completely valid patty choice we concluded), beets, tomato, lettuce and a sauce with feta in it. A unanimous verdict from the biggest panel of critics we'd yet had at a burger event, that's a tasty dubbie burger! One girl even ate it sans bun and it was *still* tasty!

Sunday is just as scorching, maybe more, so we head down to smith's back beach to have a dip and the girls all have a crack at surfing, proving to be remarkably adept and, judging from esther's query on board prices, potential competition for waves. Truth be told, I am also very happy catching the 2ft beach break after the size of the previous day. We even sneak in a cheeky burger at Trace's Place on the way back through San Remo arriving just in time to watch Melbourne Victory win the A-League grand final 6-0! What a thoroughly splendid weekend.

Good Vibrations vendor makes a mean vegie (wrap) burger

Good Vibes. I hear you thinking, you will find some tasty music here but surely not a tasty burger. Sure you can, well a felafel burger anyway, in as much as you could call a wrap a burger.

Noone else tasted this delightful creation after I handed around some wedges in the crowd, having used my intuition and navigation skills to find the crew (senza Glovey and Serge who were MIA out there somewhere) in the dark and the massive crowd of 20,000. I ate this tasty burger (erm wrap) whilst rocking out to Beastie Boys, and basking in the afterglow of J5.

My personal good vibe of the day were the revival grooves in the B-Live tent. Nothing is better than when the inner Zombie finds himself to remixes of AC/DC and Public Enemy.

Spiders on drugs

nothing to do with burgers or surfing, but funny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc

Brush with fame

Ok, so I know that Barney Allen's has been blogged before and I know that between the group of us we've consumed a fair few Tolarno burgers, but last Thursday was special. Burger rookie Dave and I head there for a pre-reggae TB and while we are eating we spy none other than Huey himself, sitting at the bar and pondering life (new burger recipes?) over a glass of red.

I figure it would be fun to get something signed and let him know how tasty we find his burgers, the exchange goes thusly:

ME: Hey Huey, sorry to bother you

HUEY: No worries, what's up

ME: Just wanted to let you know that a group of us run something like a burger club and we've got Tolarno as the grail of all burgers. Was wondering if you'd mind signing something for us?

HUEY: [sounding peeved] Well if you like it so much why don't you get *them* to sign it for you…

{uh oh, what's gone wrong here?}

ME: [confused] It's just that I thought you designed the burger?

HUEY: What are you talking about?

ME: the *tolarno* burger?

HUEY: *Oh* no worries then [whips the coaster from my hand and is already reaching for a pen] I thought you meant Ciccinoto (sp?) burger, the guys down the road

{I'm not sure who ciccinoto is, or if that is even the right name, but seems Huey is a bit jumpy}

ME: [while he is signing] No way! I don't know who that is, but I wouldn't compliment someone else's burger then ask you to sign something [awkward laugh from me]

HUEY: You'd be surprised, last Friday a young bloke came to see me about a job as a chef and I asked him why he wanted to be a chef and he said, "To be like Jamie Oliver", Geez, I told him next time someone asks you that, you say "To be like Iain Hewitson"!

ME: Word Huey, you owned that mofo [or maybe I just scurried off, I don't remember]

So that is how we came to have my beer coaster signed by the tastiest tasty burger creator himself. I was too flustered from almost pissing him off to think of anything clever for him to write on it.

It's all coming back... coming back to me know...

Indistinct foggy people catching hazy distant waves…. That's all that's left in my rapidly-getting-afflicted-with-Alzheimer's mind of the last two weekends surf. Got to get onto this blogging business sooner! Taking a stab I will hesitantly record that Joeleee, Dub, Dre, Joeleee's little sis and myself most likely went to Phillip island two weeks ago. We probably went to Smith's Beach to escape the wind and it was probably so chockers with groms that you couldn't even find a park. Luckily for us we would have known about Smith's backbeach, a place around the corner that the hoards were ignorant of and even more luckily it would have been going orf. I just bet that we all caught heaps of great green and Dre even managed to master that surfing fundamental "standing up".

Last Friday is not that far gone so I'll leave off on the vague, afflicted prose. Dre and I head down the west side to catch massive massive tubes, Zombie informs us that aforementioned gigantic tubes are rolling into Ocean Grove left right and centre where he is convalescing with Millhouse and Luca after the crazy Aussie Day traffic of Geelong. Rushing to the OG we find 2ft of swell and 3000 kids on bodyboards… hmm. But that doesn't stop us! Soon enough we're out the back and enjoying as many brief rides as we can paddle back out for or for those inclined, stand in the white water for. It turns out much better than we'd thought and with a sandwich stop in Barwon Heads on the way home (no tasty burgers on a public holiday!), an all in all fun day in the sun.