On smoking and five-way stop streets

My Grandfather smoked a pipe. Exclusively using Rum and Maple tobacco. The smell was nostalgic, even in the moment. The rooms in the house clung onto the aroma and it made every visit significant. He never offered me the pipe though, and I never wanted to smoke it; the smell was enough.

The first time I smoked something was with my dad. Inspired by my Grandfather we fashioned a bamboo shoot and acorn into a pipe, found some dried grass in the garden and lit it up. Honestly, it was a piece of parenting genius by my father - I coughed for ages and never even looked at a cigarette until I was about 22 years old.

During University I rolled my friends cigarettes as a study break, never smoking them. I tried the odd cigarette on a dance floor with little enjoyment or return business. In 2017 after graduating, I moved to Indonesia for two years to work on a surf resort on a small, remote tropical island. Indonesia as a whole might identify their main religion as smoking rather than Islam, with children as young as 10 beginning to smoke. It was here that my will, and father’s lesson, was broken.

Off the Western coast of Sumatra are the Mentawai Islands. I lived on an Island called Pulau Masukut in the centre of the “Playgrounds” area. Aptly named for the multitude of amazing waves in the area. The resort that I was working at was directly in front of the wave called “Pitstops”.

Waves aside, deep in the island of Siburet the Sikerei had been peacefully smoking away in the jungle. The original inhabitants of the Mentawai islands, some of which still lived deep in the jungle untouched by the Western world. There is a quiet tourist route that allows one to trek out into the jungle and visit the Sikerei in their home. Before I left Indonesia for good I knew that I had to venture into the jungle:

The video fails to tell one vital part of the story - that of smoking. Upon arriving in the jungle, and meeting Teu Tagougou (translated: Grandpa Chicken) he offered me what looked like a jungle rollie; tobacco rolled in a banana leaf. I tried my best to smoke it but it was too strong. Levi - my friend, and guide for the trip - laughed and pulled out a box of Marlboro Golds. “I knew that you wouldn’t be able to smoke that” he said. I shared the laugh and smoked the cigarette. Yet the humour faded when the first cigarette finished and he handed me a second. ”No thanks, I’m good for now” I countered the offer. ”No Leo, you have to smoke in the jungle. It is our culture” Levi pressed. Teu Tagougou agreed.

So I smoked. All day. For three whole days. Roughly sixty Marlboro Golds per day. And while I left the jungle and the Sikerei, a little part of the Sikerei (read: nicotine addiction) has never left me.

I’ve flirted with smoking intermittently since then. Mostly socially. Occasionally I’ve bought a bag of tobacco for a holiday or festival. Once I’ve formally quit. Almost always I’ve enjoyed it. When I found myself driving into Jeffreys bay, I heard myself using “It’s a sabbatical baby” as justification for pulling into a petrol station to buy a bag of tobacco.

“Could I have the Colt Vanilla” I ask the cashier. Or a dessert rollie as I call them. The equivalent of an IPA in the world of beer; delicious, but you can only have one of them at a time. Which is a foolproof strategy if you’re trying to minimise smoking on a road trip.

I’m playing my psych-rock playlist, singing along, feeling cute and so excited to be going to watch what is set to be an incredible day of surfing at the J-Bay Open. I’m going to be meeting up with Leon and Niklas in J-Bay; two dear friends of mine. I know that me rolling out of home at a respectable 8am and Niklas taking a 9am meeting from home has got Leon’s surf froth (anxiety) through the roof. It’s a feeling that I know so well, and used to send me pacing laps around the kitchen table for hours until my mom would agree to take me to the beach. Yet today the feeling is not there for me, am I getting old?

“The only remarkable things about Jeffreys bay are the waves and the five-way stop street” I quote myself for famously having said. A five-way stop street is the equivalent of gorilla warfare or Russia at the Olympics; it just breaks the rules for no good reason. Put a K53 learner driver there and watch them have a heart attack. It’s the double slit experiment of traffic signs. Some say the only way to navigate it is to close your eyes, hit the accelerator and hope for the best. I both love and hate it so much. Anywho, it’s one of two things that keep me coming back to this weird little town.

After that first remarkable sight, you drive over the hill, through the traffic circle next to Builders Warehouse (that you can ramp over if you’re in a rush and the waves are good enough) and get your first view of the ocean. It’s a sighting I know very well, and have calibrated my ability to gauge the size of the waves at Supertubes by it. Today the corduroy braille lines on the ocean read: “it’s fucking cooking” and I ramp the circle with a whoop.

The surf was incredible: consistent and large with a really good direction to it, go check the replays. I settled into the beach action and watched a heat. It’s something that I haven’t done in years, and “oh my” was I in for a treat. Piggybacking its namesake virus and somehow making a huge amount of money during the pandemic; Corona sponsored the J-Bay open like never before. The production quality was immense.

There were massive live televisions, drones, multiple camera angles, jet-skis, boats, a glider checking for sharks, beach commentators, Strider in the channel (obviously), massive infrastructure on the beach, a froth of groms running on the beach to get autographs, food, cheap beers, expensive things you don’t need, a whole festival setup in the park over the dune and the worlds best surfers going absolutely wild in the best waves they’ve had in competition for a while. Smoking rollies made all of these things more enjoyable.

Leon does the necessary thing of going for a surf. Niklas and I walk down to the point with him to see if we were missing out. We haven’t seen each other in a couple of months so have a lot to catch up on. We watch people struggling to paddle out through the waves and formidable rocks. We spot someone attempting to paddle out in a spot that… well… we just knew it wasn’t going to go smoothly. So we started filming:

After that exciting little detour we go back up to watch the competition. The waves have gotten more consistent but the tide is filling in, making the paddle out much more challenging and giving spectators another thing to watch out for. Niklas goes off to “fill up our water bottles” and comes back with with two Coronas. We cheers and he immediately says we should go surf. I don’t have the German blood to allow me to down a beer and then surf enormous Supers, so I silently slip most of my beer to our friend Keren who’s watching with us.

We watch Carissa Moore get absolutely smoked on the paddle out, break her board and have to swim in. That somehow is the cue for us to put our wetsuits on and paddle out. The last heat of the day is coming up so we should get about an hour before dark to surf supers.

We paddled out at about 4pm, with trepidation. After watching people get minced by the rocks, broken boards and leashes and general carnage all day we were excited to see if we’d succumb to a similar fate. Carissa is coming in, somehow after winning her heat, while we paddle out - we cheer her on and she can only laugh and remark at how hectic the experience had been for her. We are on the rocks at the keyhole, we wait out a few sets and find our chance - skill (mostly luck) was on our side and we get out with dry hair.

We surfed just above tubes and it was cooking. Easily double overhead, running all the way to point on a good one. I surfed the Custard Queen and just went fast and straight. I pulled into a couple of barrels but didn’t make any. I’m considering putting twin keels into the board to see how it goes, let’s see if I can find any.

We watched the last woman’s quarter final from the water and Tatiana demolished a wave a couple of meter away which was eventful. The last heat of the day ended and we paddled up to supers against the merciless river of a wash going down the point.

The sunset was a soft pastel pallet that would make the trendiest Cape Town fella blush. The waves would make that same person put their expensive longboard back on the roof of their Jimny and drive back to Harvest get a cortado and a vegan Ferrero Rocher.

Thursday night sees a psych rock night at the Parkoff festival. Vanilla Colt will be the guest of honour along with some borrowed vapes. There are mates, smoke machines, a smoke machine except it sprayed sparkers, mosh pits, tequila shots, head banging and finally there is Niklas, Leon and Leo asleep in their cars in the parking lot.

I wake up to the sound of reversing trucks and the competitors arriving and putting wax on their boards. I snooze some more. Once it feels like the coast is clear I clammer out the back of the bakkie and head to Spar to buy some toothpaste, deodorant and breakfast, feeling like a teenager.

Friday is a beach day of tremendous proportions. We plonk ourselves in a prime spot with an unobstructed view of the waves as well as the big screen for the replays. We drink coffee, smoke rollies, eat food, talk shit and laugh. A couple riddles are told, most notably was “The land of the green glass doors”. I may have been slightly less than sober and I couldn’t work it out, to this day it still bothers me.

The competition is over. The winners are announced. The show is over folks, well no it isn’t - another huge party awaits all of you tonight. Yet I am not included in that target audience this time. After two months of hard work to wrap things up for this sabbatical, a big party with Jozi Jordan straight into driving up to Jeffreys Bay has left me absolutely exhausted and socially depleted. I slink off to a quiet campsite for the first night by myself in a long while.

Having lived with six or seven other people for the last year and half has been incredible, but it also fills in the gaps between social life to a point where I’m not alone all that often. I actually can’t remember the last time that I spent a whole weekend alone. As an extrovert by nature I don’t look for isolation, yet today I am craving it.

I take Saturday slow, and find my way to the wild side of Cape St Francis for a run. After that I go for a longboard at Hullets. That night I will be staying with my friend Sasha in Cape St Francis; we opt to go for a beer, pizza and rollie at Full Stop for dinner. I tuck myself into bed with what feels like two aliens in my chest - both lungs are raw, hurting and covered in a syrupy vanilla goop. I try cough it out without luck and struggle to sleep that night. At 2am I make a reminder on my phone “get rid of the rollies - it’s killing you”. At 3am I think that if I had some phlegm in my lungs it would help to cough it up.

After a breakfast of avo toast and a coffee while overlooking the ocean I leave, heading off to Hogsback. I feel a desire to be alone again, and what better place than those magical mountains. I pull out the driveway and immediately realise that I’ve left the Vanilla Colt and rolling paraphernalia behind, thank goodness - I vouch not to ever buy tobacco again. Take that, Teu Tagougou.