Day 1 we arrived in Bali, typically running late, for the first night at the Deus Ex Machina Temple of Enthusiasm Q&A at Canggu. We quickly head to drop our gear at our digs, which turns out to be Dare Jennings' (one of the Deus owners) Villa and our jaws dropped in amazement as we walk through the doors.
Its an amazing place called Puri Angsa. I lost count of the number of bedrooms, bungalows and hidden gems in this place. The main house is a Sumatran structure and is over two hundred years old. The pool is awesome with a 4 metre diving platform at one end - Bob promptly goes and jumps off it. A man of his vintage should be pretty conservative but his appetite for fun not only shows in his surfing but also in his delight for life in general!
This is a picture of Bob's room, he paces around the room and calculates its 14 metres by 14 metres, it is truly gigantic and achingly beautiful. We both feel extremely spoilt to be spending some time in this villa.
We quickly change and head off to Deus for our first event. We started off with a quick tour of the Deus setup in Canggu, mandatory Bintang in hand. Its a mixture of art, motorbikes, surfboards and food/beverages to top it all off. Its a one stop shop, they restore and build bikes, make surfboards and have a pool of talented mechanics, surfers, shapers, photographers and artists on hand - The restaurant and food was amazing as well.
The Q&A Session was a great event with Steve Montell (aka Monty) chairing the session with Bob, Californian fish guru Rich Pavel, and up-coming young Aussie Deus shaper Thomas Bexon on the panel. All 4 amused the crowd with stories about shaping and designing boards and the evolving movement of traditional/retro surfboard design.The crowd listened intently and asked some great questions.
Dane Peterson asked the panel about how they felt about the up and coming shapers developing their designs and whether they felt like their designs were being copied. Bob's response was enthusiasm to the next level, explaining that it was the best thing that could have happened! Board development had moved so quickly in the late 60's during the transitional period from logs to shorter designs, and the full potential of these shapes were never fully explored as everyone raced to keep up with ever-shortening lengths. Bob was enthusiastic in his encouragement for the talent pool like Thomas Bexon to continue the work that he started. The crowd was overwhelming in their response and the night was a huge success.
A couple more beverages and photo moments followed, we retired for the night excited for the 9 Foot and Single event in the morning.
A big thank you to the crew at Deus for putting on a great event!
Ben H
