More often than not I’m stuck at work when the Madison wave comes in. It’s downright painful when your favorite spot is in and you are earning money to pay the bills, right?

In a stroke of luck, I woke up on my day off to find the usgs.gov gauge at Madison trending up. Ben and I spoke about this possibility and when he called after engineering class I asked him “why aren’t you here yet!?!?!?”.

I just received a new Allstar in the, appropriate for Halloween, pumpkin orange. I had paddled it a couple times but not on a fast wave like Madison, since it had not been raining here.

So the gauge hits 15k and we are driving to the wave. We need at least 17k to paddle onto the Madison wave from the eddy and when we arrive it is perfect. I like the new Allstar’s loose hull, added volume, stability and pop. It is a wonder JK can pack those all features into the same play boat. I loved my first JK play boat which was a Rockstar and I believe the new Allstar is even a step up from that. Better for me for sure as I was too big for the Rockstar medium and felt like the Rockstar large was a little too much volume.

Ben and I surfed until dark as it was his first time ever on this wave. He learned why the spot gets so much hype in our area. I made it back to the wave a few day’s later and asked Mitch to paddle the new Allstar and he looked like he was having fun. My friend Mike paddled it and found it easier to roll than his old Allstar and more fun to surf.

Ideally the Madison wave will come back in this fall as the combination of that wave and the new Allstar is a ridiculous amount of fun. You come away from the experience physically sore for days but mentally feeling like you surfed a perfect and elusive wave.