Glaring omission in my current quiver: a longboard. I want..no, I NEED a longboard. Though I've been surfing for nearly 38 years now, I don't consider myself a complete surfer. When I started this odyssey, it was already a few years post "shortboard revolution." The "Bustin Down The Door crew were my heroes, Shaun, MR, Rabbit, et al. Nobody, at least nobody cool and happening, still rode a longboard. And when they did start to filter back into the lineup, I grumbled, along with most other shortboarders, that they were simply wave catching machines for fat, old, lesser skilled kooks. I was probably the last holdout in my local lineup until the '90's when it seemed everyone who wasn't eighteen and under delusions that they could surf the little "potato-chip" thrusters of the era like Kelly, was on a log. Resistence was futile; I assimilated.
I'd been shaping and glassing my own boards for only a year less than I'd been surfing. And though I was completely self-taught, and made more than a few dogs along the way, I felt confident enough in my skills to give it a go; I shaped myself a longboard. But as I first set planer to blank, my confidence went out the window; so many variables in a blown-up shape, so many to screw up. I overthought, and hence, over-shaped that first longboard. In fact, dissatisfied with how the rocker was coming along, I kept re-shaping until I'd thinned the board too much and the "log" I'd intended, evolved into a "high-performance" longboard. Yet, after glassing it, and riding it, I found that I'd created a pretty good wave-catching machine. And for awhile, it was my board of choice; I found I could compete with all the kooks out there who had been catching all the waves, and "just standing there!" again. In fact, I was soon paddling around them and catching more than my share of waves. I started to earn stink-eyes from the young shortboarders. I inwardly smiled and disdained them as "using the wrong tool for the job" in gutless surf. But though the board road well, it wasn't what I'd started out to create; it wasn't a classic log. It wasn't a very good nose-rider; it was too thin and narrow a platform for the effective and graceful cross-stepping ballet I'd envisioned. I got bored.
I decided I would try again. Ordered a new blank. Only they shipped the wrong blank; an 8'7." And instead of complaining, I figured I'd make lemonade out of a lemon. A mini-mal. But again, I overthought it; made it more progressive with chine-rails in the nose, and 60/40 rails instead of the 50/50 I'd originally planned. Still, it was thicker, and wider; and it enabled a better platform for walking the nose. Plus I made it a nice candy-apple red with an inlay on the deck of red Hawaiian hibiscus flowers. It was pretty. But last year, out of a need to raise funds for a major surgery, I reluctantly Craigslisted it, along with half the rest of my quiver. Cried when I sold it to some newbie woman who was learning to surf so she could spend more time with her husband. Wished her good waves and fun as I watched their mini-van drive off from the Walmart parking lot where we'd met.
Flash forward, it's been over a year now...I've retooled my quiver by stripping down a few of my old boards (Frankenboards I call them) and reincarnating them into new shapes; my original longboard was cut down to a 7'6" tri-plane hull type shape; it rides frikkin awesome! But I no longer possess a longboard. Recently, after watching the graceful surfing of some of the top pro women longboarders on YouTube, I've come to realize, I NEED a log! And a real log this time. Wide round nose, 50/50 rails, a little kick in the tail, malibu style fin...and NO leash plug (there is something inherently wrong, very wrong about wearing a kook cord on a longboard!) I want to master the art, not just stand there, of log riding. Toes over, cross-stepping, balletic...I want, no, NEED to be a complete surfer...a log lady...
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