On the Saturday of Wheels & Waves El Solitario unveiled a secret project that has accompanied our family for years and finally saw the light this early Summer night. El Solitario’s Barbacoa Sauce!@#$ We cooked, devoured, drank a hell of a lot of whisky and danced till very late into the night until security kicked us out Special thanks to Dewar’s Scotch Whisky for your love and reliance 500gr of the best of everything in a Le Parfait Jar took everyone by surprise! Alberto Garcia – Alix can’t stop creating!@# Love you brother, life is fucking rad around you This poor soul gave its body for us pagans to celebrate the Summer Solstice and the survival of another Wheels and Waves with our dearest ones  🐺❤️🐷 Fita AKA: Mr Wolf happens to be a repented ex-carnivore and was seating in protest for the sacrifice Our friend Karlos Ibarrondo knows his stuff well and never disappoints. Using a very ancient basque technique called “Burduntzi”, he started the roast at 08:00am over a hot bed of vegetable carbon burning at very slow pace. 12 hours later the humongous beast had turned into butter constituting the perfect support to enlighten the organoleptic supremacy of our Barbacoa Sauce. Gasoline, Barbacoa and Whisky are the 3 liquids El Solitario wants to take to the grave . The Dewar’s family designed with us an special cocktail with Ginger Ale that delighted the most exquisite tongues. As soon as Elliot Murphy hanged his guitar D.J. Fat Fish put the BPMs to the red. The rest of the story depends from which angle you want to tell it from. Blood sweat and laughs but… kicking ass! You can listen the first half of his DJ set here: 165 kilos of pig, 55 liters of Barbacoa sauce and 112 bottles of Scotch later, we still believe we are living a chimera worth fighting for. The last grasps of freedom before Big Brother rises in arms to stay. And all of you motherfuckers that had so much fun you can thank Val & El Sol Grandmas team for organizing such an incredible show. If El Solitario goes bust one day, now we know we organize the best parties too Hail Hail Wheels & Waves!@#$ Photography by KT Fender

Feels good to be back – exhausted but sound – at El Solitario Ranch after surviving for another year our best and worst week of the year. As the festival gets bigger so do we and so do the risks and challenges we encounter. Thinking on the way back home about this  chronicle, couldn’t help  but ask myself if it is worth so much effort and stress for what it feels like an altruist path to redeem ourselves. Although one thing we know for certain is that chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort. And so I would say that the best way to make decisions, is go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself, buckle up, and handle the stress that will surely follow.  How big shall the counterculture movement become before the always moribund mainstream phagocytes it leaving no trace? At the times of W&W-1, in the midst of the economic meltdown,  the world was full of new ideas and outrageous propositions. The new wave custom scene was born! Shortly after, populist custom houses extended the same model of “bespoke” motorcycle across the globe filling gaps and  wiping the voices of those that dared to speak different. It didn’t take long until the industry learnt to run off with their style, dogmas and clientele. Today it feels like it might be the end of the scene and the motorcycle will continue its self destruction path and I begin to feel it might be better it this way. The outlaw way! Still, I don’t know the right answers and for us, W&W still is our avant-garde quintessential space in which our rebellion finds its latitude and friendship steers the wheel, and who knows, maybe the motorcycle scene is not worthy of being saved. Anyway for us we still work like lunatics for a better W&W, because it is in our DNA to enjoy it with our friends and why not walk for a while on David’s shoes, with his loaded slingshot, fantasizing of dropping the system to its knees. And how do we do this? How do we overcome the drift towards standardization? Gentlemen, the answer is Guerrilla Warfare. Irregular combat in which a small group of combatants use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, hit-and-run tactics, and mobility to fight a larger and less-mobile traditional military. This is exactly how we tackle Wheels & Waves. A first class ticket in a pirate torpedo aimed at the core of the decision makers & influencers in today’s motorcycle and surfing industry but without getting burnt. “W&W, although most often been billed as a party, it has always been secretly operated as a convention of the most creative people in Motorcycle & Surfing today”. “If you didn’t come to the party before, maybe it is because you weren’t interested or didn’t think you were invited, but the answers to your questions are here, and it doesn’t look like you pictured… but then, the future never does!”. Paul d’Orleans The Art Ride consolidated its presence in Casa Ciriza in the town of Pasaia with a