Life has changed for me a lot in the last decade or two.
Once I was a flaming ball of tumbleweed careering through life’s Wild West; travelling, partying and surfing wherever and whenever I could. I had energy, light and life. I had hair.
These days I’m more of a small patch of fuzzy moss hugging a comfortable-looking rock. It hasn’t been a difficult transition, far from it. As most of the choices to get here have been exactly that: choices. But you can get too comfortable, sinking into that shabby-chic couch watching the Travel channel. You can convince yourself that you don’t need to visit new lands and new cultures or risk deep vein thrombosis flying to long-haul exotic destinations filled with danger and excitement. You can make do with your ‘à la carte’ vacation list: Christmas in suburbia chit-chatting with one side of the family, summer in the country playing petanque with the other. Maybe the odd trip to the Algarve? Drink some chilled vinho verde and catch a few small waves on a big foamy longboard?
And yet somehow I ended up standing in the middle of N’gor village just outside Dakar, surrounded by chaos, up to my knees in muddy water and holding nothing but a beaten up twin fin and a pair of man sandals…
The rest of the article can be read at Drift surfing:
http://www.driftsurfing.eu/mid-life-crisis-senegal/
The full gallery of pictures from the trip can be seen on my facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1106968869383980.1073741836.429441407136733&type=1&l=03ae147497