SPECTACULAR ADVENTURES!!! EAST COAST TOUR!!! 2009

Posted by: Alek Parker on November 19, 2009 at 11:06 pm

August was the month of Spectacular Adventures or should I say “Spectacular Disasters”… Which is what we quickly dubbed our East Coast movie premiere tour. Every one of our 12 stops in the month of August went off 100 times better then we ever imagined leaving us with the only option but to call our video updates “Spectacular Disasters”… I orchestrated a East Coast Movie tour back in 2007 for “The Best Laid Plans” but this tour was on a level of its own… O’neill was AWESOME with letting us use their RV as well as covering the expenses for fuel and the driver (my best buddy Duddy) which was a HUGE!!! contribution that made the whole tour possible…

All we had to do is plan 12 stops in a month, then get on the bus and make them happen… Lets just say nothing is ever as easy as it looks on paper and for Zander Morton, Jerry Ricciotti and I those were the truest words ever spoke…

Florida was incredible starting on the Gulf Coast with 3 stops that Dustin Howard of BARFLEYES.COM hosted before he jumped in the O’neill RV to drive across the state for our next stop in Jupiter… We worked our way up the coast to Melbourne for a premiere at Da Kine Diegos then after St. Augustine and Jax Beach we partied With Gabe Kling for his B Day before leaving Florida for Savanah Georgia… Im going to say that Georgia was by far my favorite stop… Tybee Island is one of the coolest little beach towns I have been to and the bar HUC-A-POOS where we did the premiere is very easily within mine and everybodies top 5 bars in the world… FOR REAL… The people of Tybee were so stoked we were there and they confirmed that we were the first surf movie to come through Tybee EVER and we were treated no differently… Even the Mayor came out to introduce the movie along with a front page article in the news paper and a video piece on FOX News on why we were there and what we were doing… It was CRAZY and will from now on forever be a annual stop for us with future tours.

Hurricane Bill started showing signs of surf when we were there which was amazing because that meant a number of things. One we were able to shred Tybee Island which was very unexpected, Two it was our first major storm of the 2009 Hurricane season and Three it was time to start filming the first episode of The Hunt 2009… The next 2 stops and our travel plans were completely dictated by hurricane Bill with trying to execute our tour stops while not missing any surf from Bill. Those 3 days were F#@%$ CRAZY!!! and went like this…

Drive Georgia to Folly Beach S.C. to shred day 2 of Bill surf, Spectacular party in Charleston S.C. that night at 11pm which had us leaving at 1am to drive 5 hours to Wrightsville Beach N.C for a early morning Bill Surf with no sleep. Still running on no sleep we then drive that night to the OBX which gets us in around 4 am so we can wake up at 6am to shred day 4 (the last and final day of Bill surf) before leaving mid day to drive to Atlantic Beach N.C. (about 4 hours away) for a Spectacular party that night… WOW just writing that makes me feel crazy all over again. And Dustin Howard is SUPER MAN or just SUPER RV DRIVER…

After that crazy Bill fiasco the next 2 Parties were spread out and easy. First came the OBX party at the Brew Station before heading to VB for the ECSC and our last and final stop of the tour… we had a couple days to relax and regroup till Tropical Storm Danny showed face the day of our Party in VB… Ben Bourgeois and I woke up at 5am slammed 5 hour energies and powered the 3 hour drive to score by far the best surf of the 2009 Hurricane Season and the second installment to The Hunt 2009 on Surfline.com. We surfed till the sun was setting jumped in the car wet and sandy and hauled ass back to VB but not before getting a 18 mph over speeding ticket… Got back showered and was at the last Spectacular Adventures Premiere with about 5 minutes to spare…

All in all the whole tour was incredible and it wouldn’t have ever happened without the help of everyone in our crew… Dustin Howard (Bus Driver, Documenter, Professional Drinker and Jump Kicker), Chris Splendore (the ultimate right hand man to all), Jerry Ricciotti (Spectacular GURU), Zander Morton (Tour Planner, Media updater, writer, and one hot shredder), Ben Bourgeois (Red hot shredder, Pro Party Guy, and the spirit keeper) and last but not least Me (Tour Planner and all around gitter done)…

Thanks to everyone that helped us plan the tour stops and each and every one of you that came out to join in the festivities and support one of the best East Coast surf videos of all time. YEP I SAID IT…