Sayulita is featured prominently in The New York Times’ “Adventure Guide to Mexico.”

Our blog turns one this month and with its second year comes a new look. The new design uses the WordPress theme QPwilm!, which I first ran across at QualityPeoples. Some fiddling and code tweaking was applied and now we have something more Ben and Cad’ified. As I’m a compulsive (and possibly obsessive) fiddler there’ll most likely be more small changes to come…

Apologies to those of you on IE. I’m working out some kinks that appear in that crap browser, but not in any other. Surprise, surprise!

We’re just back from a typically wild, nonstop, and incredibly fun holiday week with the family. This year was a bit different in that all four siblings (and significant others) were home for Christmas. For my sister Sarah it was the first time in over five years. Sometime around eleven PM on Christmas I had to take a time-out and catch my breath. We were, after all, on our fourth night of parties, and fifteenth straight hour of opening, drinking, chatting, eating, ping-ponging, drinking, Scattegoring, drinking, eating, opening, drinking, chatting, eating, and drinking. Earlier on Christmas, my sister Barb passed out very similar looking presents to everybody in the room. Caddie and I opened first. Check out the photo for what we unwrapped, designed and put together by Barb, her fiancee John, and friend Guerin. It’s crazy to think that the next time we’ll see everybody is down in Sayulita. If the past few days are any indication it’s going to be a fantastic week. Rest up.

With what seems like all of Southern California on fire we’ve had a few people checking in on us this week. We’re fine. The Malibu fires are twenty or so miles north of us, and as of today it sounds like they’re being brought under control.

It’s been a bit surreal here in Venice. Normally we can smell smoke when there’s a large fire. This past week we’ve had the Santa Ana winds blowing off the desert, one of the many contributing factors to the size of these fires. For us this means that all of the smoke has been pushed out to sea. Beyond hyper-colorized sunsets, life in Venice has been unchanged. We did see the fires in Malibu when we went surfing early Sunday morning. From the beach in Santa Monica we could see smoke and even flames rising above the hills to the north. It was almost like watching a volcano erupt.

The real damage being done is nearer to San Diego. If you know anyone living in the area it would be a good idea to check in.

Donations can be made to the San Diego Red Cross.

Apologies for going slightly off-topic, but why does CNN pay Glenn Beck? And why won’t they apologize for him, if he won’t do it himself? Liberal media my ass.

For better or worse there’s a fairly lengthy article on Puerto Vallarta and Sayulita in the October/’07 issue of Travel & Leisure (“La Nueva Riviera“).

Hi all. Just want to let you know that there are four awesome houses still available right in the immediate vicinity of the festivities. These houses will probably book soon, and we’d rather they be booked with our friends and families. They are:

Delfines Compound:
-Casa Colibri (3BR, $1500/week)
-Casa Cunados (3BR, $1500)
-Sierra Azul (2BR, $1500)

Gemelas Compound:
-Casa Bollenger (3BR, $1600) :: this one is generally not available as a rental, so it’s not online. Contact Kerry Moeller (who is helping coordinate the fiesta) for details and to arrange rental. Kerry can be reached via e-mail at kerrymoeller (at) hotmail.com.

All of these houses are within a 30 second walk of the beach and have a pool (or two) on the grounds. We’d love to have just our families and friends in the complexes so book now!

xoxo, caddie

We’ve been kicking around the idea of projecting surf movies up on a wall during Sunday’s welcome-to-Mexico cocktail party (more on that later). On the wall, or onto a sheet tied between two trees. There are no guarantees that we can pull this off, but we’ve been compiling a list in hopes that we can. This list is a relatively small slice of what’s out there. With that in mind, let us know either in the comments or an e-mail if we’re missing a personal favorite (or if there is one listed here that you particularly love and want to see up on the wall). We say all of this knowing that I might be the only person in attendance who has watched Sipping Jetstreams at least ten times…

First up? The Woodshed Films, the first four of which were Moonshine Conspiracy projects (Jack Johnson, the Malloys, and others); Shelter [trailer, clip], Thicker Than Water [trailer and a clip of the Malloys and Gerlach in Ireland], September Sessions [trailer], A Broke Down Melody [two trailers: 1, 2]. The remaining two are Thomas Campbell movies, The Seedling [trailer], and Sprout [trailer, the first ten minutes, and a music video from the film produced by Jack Johnson].

Next is a personal fave, Sipping Jetstreams [trailer]. While not a Woodshed Film, it was made by one of Shelter’s filmmakers, Taylor Steele.

Singlefin: Yellow [trailer] follows a bright yellow longboard around the world. The board, by the way, was shaped in nearby El Segundo at Tyler Surfboards. Yellow’s filmmaker Jason Baffa has since gone on to collaborate with Mark Jeremias on this fall’s One California Day [trailer, SurfySurfy's quick piece on the movie including a "super secret sneak preview clip" on artist/surfer Tyler Warren's site].

Blue Crush [trailer]. Just kidding, though I know Evans isn’t.

We know there are a few people out there looking for someone to share a house or room with. If this is you, feel free to use the “comments” section of this post to leave information (or respond to someone else’s comment).

If you’re not comfortable leaving contact information online, e-mail either Caddie or I and we’ll put you in touch.

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my first post. scary.

anyway… here’s my fortune from lunch on friday. considering i’d spent all week trying to convince ben to elope, i guess it’s a good omen.