My alarm went off at 5:30 this morning and I wanted to hurl my phone across the room but something told me to look out the window first. Upon initial inspection the waves still looked non-existent but the sky was pretty enough to get me into clothes and down to the contest site. Something I discovered on my nine block walk... Virginia doesn't believe in early, or coffee, or bagels... well not between 10th and 1st streets at least. I find this fact annoying, but since someone later showed up with chocolate cupcakes I can forgive until at least dinner time. The Pro Junior started off super slow at 7:00 AM and continued to barrel through heats with poor conditions. The guys really made the best of it though. I hung out in the athlete area for a while and they all seemed to watch the first heats with high spirits. At 11:20 they put the Pro Junior on hold until tomorrow and our guy Andrew Doheny had yet another day of no surfing. Hoping for some better conditions for him tomorrow. They immediately launched into the Vans Pro Men's Round 1 and got through it with slightly better waves. Right at the end they decided to start round two, and are currently knocking out those heats as well. The conditions seem to be improving; Maybe we have Hurricane Irene to thank for that? Double edged sword. We might also be here until the last ounce of sunlight tonight trying to get enough heats in to not get slammed by said storm this weekend. They have worked and re-worked the schedule trying to figure out if the storm will hit us and how we could possibly get through the contest in time to clear out our camp here on the beach. We'll see what happens over the next few days but I definitely expect that they cram as many rounds of both the Pro and Pro Junior into tomorrow in preparation. We'll be live right here starting at 7:00AM EST.
