For a guy whose livelihood is built on getting barreled, Jamie O’Brien feels like he’s been getting skunked quite a bit. To the average Joe, this is the typical roller coaster of riding out summer months. But when you have resources and a reason to constantly be out hunting the globe for waves you can imagine a few uncontrollable shakes, tremors, and other withdrawal symptoms start to take over if more than a week goes by without a proper dry barrel.
So this is J.O.B.’s current plight. And spoiler alert here, things don’t exactly swing in the opposite direction when O’Brien lands in OZ. Forget that it’s the dead of winter in the southern hemisphere because he’s still left yearning for something heavy. And sure enough, O’Brien and crew are introduced to what he calls “The Australian Wedge.” Even at its uninviting, undersized, underwhelming, wrong-tide-wrong-time self, they’ve found something that you can’t help but be intrigued by. If you want to fast forward through the doldrums of everybody wishing they could find waves, head to about the 12-minute mark, where O’Brien pulls up to this psycho slab. Just a glimpse of this one is worth the watch.
