Originally Posted by
Kurzy
Sitting in LAX about to fly home. This turned out to be the most epic business trip of my life. On top of making new connections for potential business partners, recieving awesome training and witnessing inspiring awards and recognition from the Company, I also got to do some epic shit.
Before I go on, massive thanks and much love to Joshua Jackson (solicit). I have been a fan of his music since first hearing it, and it was so cool to just roll around San Diego and chill with him. He picked me up from our hotel and brought me to Boogey's moon a bunch of times. Never hesitated to come and get me if my convention offered any free time, which it did. I got to roll and Boogey and Walel (and got crushed), and a bunch of their students as they prepared for the Gracie worlds. We reviewed tournament basics, passing and going for the kill. Boogey took the time to teach me the Boogey triangle from back, and I learned from the master exactly where I was going wrong with it.
Had my first bowl of acai. I went to 10th Planet HQ and hit up the Renato Laranga seminar. He taught us ways to defeat the 10th Planet spiderweb and talked a lot of shit about Eddie (lol).
After that Josh and I rolled over to the Orphium and went to EBI4. Met a ton of facebook friends in personfinally, moon heads and 10P heads, hooked up with Einstein and bought one of the new West LA rashies.
Hit up La Jolla beach and did some body boarding. Ate some of the best food ever. Had some of the most fun I have ever had. Today we fly home, but we flew from San Diego at 7am and we had a 12 hour layover in LA. I arranged to go to see Einstein and roll, but our Uber got all fucked up somehow and we had to bail on that plan. It would have been nice to hit up three 10P schools in one trip, but all the more reason to come back!
So to kill the last 12 hours in LA we hit up Manhattan beach. I was jonesing to surf. There were no shops in walking distance and we had all our luggage, towing it around by hand. I finally found a surf shop and run up to it! It was closed! In fact, it was just in the process of opening for the fall, and all the employees were moving merch crom the old location to this new one.
I talked to them, explained how I was up from Canada, on a layover, and desperate to surf. They dug through boxes and found a waiver/rental formn and hook me up. For 15 bucks an hour, I could surf as long as I wanted! Not only that, but they let us stash our luggage in their shop while we hit the beach all day! Fucking unreal.
So I surfed for about four hours (with a 10P rashie on), then fell asleep on the beach and got a wicked. Sunburn on my face. Woke up and headed back to return the board. I owed them 75 bones, and they only charged me 40 cash. I was so thankful for their willingness to accomodate, I just kept expressing to themy stoke and they were really happy that they could help make our last day in Cali so perfect.
We called Uber for a ride to LAX, and as I was packing up my wet gear to prepare for the trip, the owner secretly gave the Uber driver a foamtop meshback hat to him for me with their store logo on it. I sat in the car and the driver handed me the "Nikau Kai waterman shop" hat.
Now as I sit here typing we keep having business associates coming up and joining us, all stoked about the business we are in. Man, it has been BETTER than any trip I ever dreamed of. My entire life I have wanted to go ro cali, and planned on hitting up HQ sone day, but I packed so much into this trip it will be seriously hard to top it.
But I'm gonna try with the next business meeting...
Pardon any typos. I am on my phone with a broken screen. Half black, and I can only see part of it.
