I recently returned from a five-week tour with Damon & the Heathens, a six-piece punk-soul band from Oakland, California. It was a chaotic, disorganized, wonderful, amazing trip.

I didn’t find the time to write much of anything during the tour, except for pages of messy, scribbled notes in a notebook I carried around in my back pocket. Hopefully some of those notes will eventually lend themselves to something resembling coherent stories, either on this blog or in other outlets.

One thing that must not be underestimated, when six 30-something men travel Europe for five and a half weeks playing music: the power of clean socks. Never have I seen grumpy, grouchy, crochety men (including myself) transformed in mind and spirit so quickly than by taking off dirty, grimy, ripped socks, and grabbing a fresh pair.

Unfortunately, socks are incredibly easy to misplace or lose when traveling, so their transformative power is often trumped by the inability to actually hold onto things.

But while local businesses enjoy the benefits of tourism, Morocco’s surfers want their breaks back. The surf companies here are foreign-owned, and although they employ Moroccans as instructors, drivers, guides, cooks and cleaning crews, they are still outsiders. Graffiti scrawled on the crumbling wall of a former anchor factory at Taghazout’s most amazing break, Anchor Point, declares “Surf camps go home” in English.

As tourists surfing Morocco’s waves, we’re contributing to the country’s third-largest source of income.

The full story is at INTELLIGENT LIFE.