Merry Christmas all, have a great day! I'm posting this a day early as it's already Christmas Day in New Zealand. We are meeting up with Altie in Manhattan for Christmas Day (tomorrow) and I guess going to a restaurant and generally just cruising around, we'll figure out the details later. No white Christmas this year - the snow we got a few days ago has all since melted. I keep thinking of my Christmas Days in NZ for the last seven or eight years before I came to NYC, where I'd get up before sunrise and head out to Raglan for a surf for at least a few hours, kind of my Xmas present to myself. Amazingly enough, every Xmas morning bar one produced excellent clean surf of reasonable size and only a couple of guys out in the water at most. I'd then spend the early afternoon driving over to Whangamata to see Amber and sometimes from there I'd head down to Taupo or up to Auckland to see family, or I'd just surf all day if Amber was busy for the day. I really enjoyed my Xmas morning surfs, it had become a kind of personal tradition. Anyway, enjoy the season and be careful out there.

Almost forgot (thanks Alberich); for you PC types, happy non-denominational, un-offensive, non-religiously-influenced, inclusive and properly democratic seasonal festival that absolutely is NOT a leftover from an un-politically-correct non-inclusive and judgmental religion whose name we shall not mention for fear of offending anyone.