Friday 6:30 am I left home on a solo trip journey to the X Salinas Longboard Festival.
For a couple years I’ve been hearing good things about the Festival but never had the opportunity or really big motive to go there. I’m not even a longboarder!
This year I had tons of reasons to go. A few potential business partners were going there, some good friends and also a few of my Spanish costumers and online friends. Just for the opportunity of meeting a lot of people I talk online, the drive was worth.
And it was quite a long drive, 8h. But what I found there made it really worth.
The organizers put out an amazing Festival. The ambience was really nice, with everybody having fun. Salinas is a beautiful town/beach that provided us some nice waves and a warm sun.
I was expecting it to be big, with a good crowd but I was impressed on how big it really was. I won’t talk about numbers, we’ll leave it for the organizers but there were a lot of people there. The “camping” where we slept was packed and trying to catch a wave between the huge crowds of longboarders was a hard task.
I went there to meet some shapers and business partners and that turn out a huge success. Had great talks with the Bing Crew: Matt Calvani and his wife/sales manager Margaret, Chris Del Moro and Bing Copeland (huge respect to this legend, nice to everybody all weekend), Jaime from Tablas Surf Shop, Robin Kegel, Josh Hall, Manila (delivered there my new surfboard), the talented and super nice girls from Sew and Sing, the Panadero Brothers/Gliders House; Miguel and Eduardo, the Fish Brotherhood; Alex and Nuno and my friends from Wavegliders, just to name a few. Even got some words with Joel Tudor about Kookbox!
Can’t forget all the nice people that I met, like Jose, Chusma, Oier and many others that just stopped for a couple minutes to say hi and meet. A BIG THANKS to all of you. It was great to see how many people knew Magic Quiver. Unfortunately time wasn’t enough to meet more of you and share some waves.
I got some surf, talked a lot (almost lost my voice), had some beers, watched the amazing surf from the Duct Tape guys, saw great movies on the big screen and most important HAD A LOT OF FUN!
Congratulations to the organizers. You manage to put out a great Festival and I only regret for all the years I’ve missed it.
A Final word to my good friend Chris Haiderer, who joined me there and shared all the good moments. Chris is working on the design for the future shop and I will never me able to pay him for his help and continuous support. OBRIGADO Chris!
