These boards have been extensively tested throughout the surf of Bali, and provide amazing speed with the unique feeling of weightlessness that only finless wooden boards can achieve.

While living and working in Bali, Jamie Johnstone continually searched to find the most environmentally friendly wooden surfboards. The Journey product range cause minimal environmental damage in construction, without comprimising on the quality or performance of the boards. With Alaia riding continually increasing in popularity, these environmental factors are important.

Alaias by Journey

Please download the Powerpoint show or email Jamie for the full Journey Alaia range. This includes technical details of each model and their dimensions, as well information on the wood used and its sourcing, and the boards manufacturing process.

The first batch of Alaia’s will be arriving in the UK for April 2011.

PRICE (excluding VAT and UK postage/transport costs):
The Serious and Magnum Alaia will be available at a wholesale price of £175, with a recommended retail price of £275.
The Pleasure Alaia will be available at a wholesale price of £225, with a recommended retail price of £325.

Since I last dispatched a month ago the grand tour has taken in Lombok; Bali again; excitement and fury directed at Singapore Airlines as they refused to allow us to board our flight to Brisbane due to a ticketing error; family and friends’ time in Australia as we rediscovered sofas, TV and booze (and realised we’re pretty good at all three); a stopover in New Zealand and a week’s breather here in Tonga before our assault on Nicaragua, a country where our meagre budget will allow us to blossom again. During this time I’ve tried (and infuriatingly failed) to buy a shipment of Kush Kush caps from India to sell back in the UK, I’ve been developing and planning an e-commerce idea and designed and launched an early-bird website for our winter venture in Kerala, Soul&Surf/India while continuing to worki on the main marketing site. Whew.

The expectation is that, on an extended trip like this, we leave all cares and worries behind, and that through the absence of a job all problems cease. Not the case I’m afraid. I know I won’t be attracting much in the way of sympathy from those folk working 50-hour weeks back home, but what I’ve learned is that our usual character traits come with us. We find new ways to be busy, stressed and anxious – or at least I do. Personal projects, travel arrangements, budget concerns and existential angst fill the shoes of the mundane home-life triggers that continue to swirl around the maelstrom-mind. It’s the character traits we need to work on, not their location, detail or circumstances.

But enough guff, it’s our time in Lombok that I wish to recount.

I was enthralled by this wild, rugged, beautiful land. Yes, it’s well known as a destination, easy to get to and sprinkled with resorts, but in most parts its raw charms prevail and, unlike its Westernised tarnished neighbour, it feels like Indonesia proper. The roads are horrific; trees sprout from the centre of the cracked tarmac south-coast road, yet traffic is almost non-existent. Villages of traditional thatched bamboo huts fleck the rolling hills, which meet the ocean in dramatic crescent-shaped bays; people smile and wave with genuine warmth as you approach, rather than as a ploy to extract your tourist buck.

Visiting, as we did, at the end of the rainy season, showed the oft-arid south coast off at its verdant best. The grass was green, the rivers full, and the roaming livestock fat and contented. And the surf… The south coast is indented and scalloped by bay after bay, creating breaks of numerous variety… Except beach-break. The easiest wave in the area at Inside-Grupuk attracted 90% of the travelling surfers, despite the boat-ride access, leaving empty line-ups elsewhere for the more adventurous. Inside-Grupuk also attracted groups of Japanese surfers who pay locals to snake, block and drop-in in order to clear the wave for themselves. Is this the future of colonial-style surf travel in increasingly busy global line-ups? I hope not.

Yet despite my natural affinity with Lombok, its lack of beach-break beginner’s waves left Sofie a frustrated observer for much of the time, so with an egalitarian spirit we headed back to Bali.

Until next time…

Sofie really wanted to visit, so in an admirable act of generosity and compromise I consented to the trip. My lips, burnt to a crisp from over-zealous midday surfing in Bali, were raw and cracked, so a few days out of the water wouldn’t hurt anyway. We chose the quieter of the three islands, Gili Meno, and from the moment we waded ashore from the shuttle boat the serene seclusion of this tropical idyll enveloped us. Time warped and heart beats slowed and, in stark contrast to its near neighbour, Bali, the sound of silence generated by an absolute absence of motorised vehicles was deafening.

Sandy tracks circumnavigate and criss-cross this 2km-long island. The only transport is shank’s pony or bell-jangling pony-and-trap cidomos. It’s fringed with white sand beaches, protected from the surf by coral reefs, and the pure, clear water reflects blues of every hue imaginable as the tropical sky evolves and transforms throughout the day. The sun rises over the active volcano Gunung Rinjani on Lombok; tropical squalls pass as quickly as they appear; and azure clear skies give way to firey sunsets over Bali’s extinct volcano Gunung Agung. Snaffling a coconut-infused carrot-and-bean salad-like lunch of urap urap one stiflingly hot lunchtime, we watched as the awesome Rinjani coughed and spluttered into life, sending an immense plume of thick grey smoke into the atmosphere. Not a bad digestif actually.

A tempting right-hand reef point reels down the southwest coast of the island, an even better-looking one off Gili Trawanagan, yet my ravaged lips thwarted all but the briefest forays into the salt water. As it happened though, slowing down for a while – getting up with the sunrise and sleeping not long after sunset, and doing very little in between besides snorkelling the teeming outer reefs, lolling, lounging and sprawling sprinkled with delcious cheap local Sasak food – was enough to make me fall in love with this as-yet unspoiled tropical Eden.

The inordinately long time between posts is testament to the surf-rich Bali lifestyle. We left India a month ago now and have been squeezing two or three surfs in a day, cowering from the oppressive heat in between.

Yesterday was Nyepi, marking the end of the Balinese year: the whole country banishes demons from the land on Nyepi eve and then on the day everything stops. Everything. No cars, no planes, no electricity, no cooking, no leaving the house… And absolutely no surfing. Government officials stalk the land, blowing whistles, enforcing the silence. Hence I’ve written this blog!

Bali’s long been a favourite destination of mine, but I must admit that this time the romance has dulled somewhat. The pace of development all over the island is inexorable, but special attention is being paid to the Bukit Peninsula – where the surf is. The thatched, irreverent shanty-town of Dreamlands has been bulldozed and an already crumbling, rusting steel and concrete Javanese monstrosity of a holiday resort replaced it. Every clifftop or small patch of beach around the entire Bukit coast already has or is in the process of having villas, housing estates, hotels, resorts and golf courses. And the gridlock  on the roads in the southern half of Bali is witness to the hordes of tourists being ferried very slowly around the areas sights and beaches.

But the area still has a certain charm. Bingin is a great collection of wooden and thatched guesthouses clinging to the cliffs with higher-class – yet tasteful – plunge-pooled hotels lining the clifftop, and Balangan, where we are staying, is a wonderful bay lined with affordable beach-front warungs, but it always feels like the bulldozers and tarmac-ers aren’t far away.

What they can’t develop (yet) is the dramatic rocky coastline and the obscenely wave-rich reefs fringing this prime hunk of real estate. We’re here in the off-season yet the surf has been relentless. Not the cutting edge, life-threatening 12ft barrels of the ‘on’ season, but that’s not for me anyhow. The waves have been consistently shoulder-high at worst and we’ve had a good few days of well overhead surf. I’ve been lazy in my wave-hunting, mainly surfing Balangan. A quick check from my beachfront bedroom window and the 20ft walk across the beach to begin the paddle out is too tempting to refuse, but on occasion I have ventured further afield, adding Bingin, Padang Padang and Keramas to my surf knowledge. The crowds and an overwrought irreverence has so far kept me from Uluwatu. I was intending to go there tomorrow morning, but the swell’s picked up and I persuaded myself it will be too big/crowded/scary for little old me, so I’m going to stumble out the front door to Balangan again… Maybe next time.

We’ve made forays inland when the surf’s dropped a little and become enchanted by the volcano-crammed central region with its huge ancient calderas filled with lakes and new-growth volcanoes. This preposterously fertile and dramatic landscape is home to less Westernised and more friendly Balinese villages, and the relief from the oppressive heat of the coast that altitude provides is invigorating. I never knew you could get so much joy from wearing socks and trousers!

Although I – like most other surfers – enjoy fast and hollow surf, I had been put off Bali by macho talk I had heard in the past, of shallow and dangerous reefs, hungry for your skin. But my boyfriend convinced me it was just big talk, that we’d avoid those spots anyway. And I had always wanted to see Bali for myself.

When my boardbag appeared at the baggage collection point after the flight, I was struck with horror at the sight of one end of my bag, torn to shreds. My worst fears were confirmed when I opened the bag – the last 12 inches of my board had been smashed into a hundred pieces. My favourite board was ruined, a gorgeous raspberry and magenta Corduroy 9’ singlefin speed shape. A never-to-be-replaced custom, I had even mixed the colours for the resin myself. Nothing could hold back the tears, and I felt that my trip was ruined.

Mark and I traipsed around the dirty, smog ridden and humid Kuta, being harassed by hawkers and shopkeepers, in search of a longboard, to no avail. The smog made my eyes red and the humidity turned my hair into an afro, and I started questioning why I was there. But the karmic wheel is always spinning on the Island of the Gods and when we were about to quit I found the perfect Bali longboard in a little back-street shop, manned by a gaggle of typical Bali groms. So after the obligatory haggling I purchased a Town and Country high-performance nine-footer.

Once I escaped Kuta, I found the real Bali, a breathtaking island with many fantastic waves. We scored great sessions at Medewi, Kuta Reef, Nusa Lembongan, Uluwatu and many spots up the east coast. Not once did I need a helmet, and I revelled in the Indonesian perfection.

The people of Bali are some of the most beautiful – on the inside and outside – you will ever meet, and they enjoy an amazing culture going back thousands of years. After exploring the island, being invited by a local family to a small traditional ceremony, watching a historical play, viewing temples and witnessing the Balinese people approaching their difficult daily lives with such good humour and kindness, I was inspired to take many photos and produce an eBook to capture the experience.

You can reach Thelo here: thelo@bluebirdboarding.com.

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Indian Summer at the Lane in Santa Cruz, CA.