Tom Jones in Fort Bragg California Paddle 2007

I met extreme athlete Tom Jones today. One of my surfer friends called me up and told me he was coming by my house to pick me up to meet the crew of an event called  California Paddle 2007.
http://www.tomjonestv.com/PADDLE_TRIFOLD_2%5B1%5D.pdf
We went out to a nearby campground and shook hands with the crew and then got invited inside their trailer to chat while everyone ate.

Tom is a seven time Muay Thai kick boxing champion, and ran 120 marathons in 120 consecutive days. He recently switched sports again and is now surfing. His goal is to paddle his board from north to south down the entire California coast line.

I'm going to go help them launch from Wages Creek tomorrow morning.

Tom is doing this to raise awareness of plastic pollution in the ocean.

Too Cool!

ran 120 marathons in 120 consecutive days

WTF?!  What planet is he from?   

When you first said Tom Jones I was expecting

Glad I was wrong!

Hey, anyone who drinks Alaskan brew is a good dude in my book.
And a good cause for the paddle too!

Z

Apparently Tom is the spokesman for Alaskan IPA. He said he'd give me a case for helping out this morning!
We launched at Wages Creek just north of the Westport store. We had to "leapfrog" rollers underneath the jet ski to get it out there.


Tom Jones gets ready to paddle out with a jet ski safety crew.


Surfer, Zolton “The Magician” Torkos, works his magic on Tom's paddle board.

Crossing the GG will be interesting.  So will Ano...  I think he'll have to go offshore to stay outside the Diablo Canyon exclusion zone too. 

IPA is so called because it was specially designed with higher hop bitterness and alcohol (both preservatives) to keep well in transit to India for British expats there during colonial times.  Now you know, knowledge is power! 

Now you know, knowledge is power! 

And knowing is half the battle... YO~ JOE!! 

Z

My girlfriend and I are homebrewers; IPA is actually our favorite. Tastes great to beer people but a bit to strong for the Budweiser crowd.
we've also made mead; a batch of regular mead, a spiced mead and blackberry mead. We've been collecting blackberries for another batch of the later.

I'm planning to start homebrewing this fall since I love DIY projects and darker beers.  My dad is going to bring me 6 or 8 glass carboys next time he visits.  That *might* be enough capacity to keep ahead of us.     

If you like IPA you gotta try Russian River Brewery's (4th St. Santa Rosa) Pliney the Elder: double hopped & 8% ABV.  Ahhhh yess, I think I'll go right now.  Even though every time I read something by Asa all I can usually think about is a Red Seal.

Even though every time I read something by Asa all I can usually think about is a Red Seal.

Creepy, I was wearing my Red Seal T-Shirt today. Well, they do make them just down the road from my house.

When you first said Tom Jones I was expecting

That pic is INSANE!!!

This Tom Jones is an animal...incredible accomplishments.

Whew! we are back! What a paddle! I'm going to be feeling this in the morning. We put in at Noyo Harbor and went all the way south to the boat launch in Big River. All that way we were trying to keep up with a world class athlete. He said that he appreciated the company and that we were the first people to go the entire day's distance with him. A couple people met him on the water coming into Shelter Cove but we were the first to go all the way.
We all expect this to be a National News item when he gets down to San Francisco. I hope it is because it will put shed some light on the problems of ocean pollution.

Did you get to get any pics of him paddling?

Bah! I'm a bit sore about that point. I brought my camera with me but it wouldn't start up like it should have. I even made sure to charge the battery before leaving for the trip but it kept giving me the battery low blink. I was hoping to take some pictures from the water back toward shore.