PopsiGlider

I like it when they go from this:

To this.

Rebecca's popsicle-icious Mini Glider for shredding OB waves in the fall and beyond.

This is an 8'6. What separates a Mini Glider from a standard longboard? Well, these mofos are designed for speed. With a well thought and executed rail shape/bottom contour, a single fin (flexie) is all that's necessary for control and stability.
Fast and stable for getting into tight situations, then getting the hell out of them.

Here's Rebecca handling a tight situation this morning in Nicaragua.
Recommended pairing: color-coordinated homemade popsicles. A couple of these after a solid shred sesh, and you'll have harnessed the stoke of your ten-year-old self on that summer vacation when you didn't wear shoes for what seemed like a month and drank from the hose for most of your meals.

Or pair with a couple of these if you want to harness the stoke of your sixteen-year-old self on that summer vacation when you didn't wear shoes for what seemed like a month and got to second base with Jen Gibby.

Of Fire, Rain, Praying Manti, and Bitchin' Quads

Strange things are afoot in Sonoma County, friends. Portentous omens. Unsound eventualities. Weird shit.
Example 1: fire. And rain. In the same week. In September. For those familiar with the climate of Northern California, or familiar with our four-year drought, it's strange.
Example 2: I left my house last week, as I do on just about every day that I've lived there (once, I was super sick and didn't leave the house for a week. Another time, I shaped surfboards straight through for three days while my family was in Yosemite without me). Something on the sidewalk drew my eye. I had to inspect: a humungous praying mantis.
I'll refer to her as 'she', but really, I have no idea. As I squatted down (no small feat for someone with knees like mine) she moved her head to watch. I leaned to one side. She moved her head to follow. I leaned to the other. She did the same. It was a strange feeling to be connecting with an insect. To experience her cognitive powers. She was watching me. I held out my hand and she slowly crawled onto it.
I called my girls over, and we all checked her out. She took turns looking at each of our faces. She didn't move into an offensive or defensive position. I held her close to the ground, but she made no motions to escape. We were in each other's thrall for a solid three minutes, which to six-and-eight year olds may as well be an entire day.
Then I dropped her to the sidewalk and we squashed her with a satisfying crunch.
Just kidding! We put her in the garden in the backyard.
As you know, in these trying times we seek out the constants. The dependable. The comfortable. The fresh baguette in these most carbo-free of paleo days. The pull of the moon and the splatter of stars. The tilt of the earth as we enter our autumnal solstice and the deep gold evenings of a Northern California fall. The waves that grace our rocky shoreline without thought, and without cease.
Shredders, like nonshredders, need the comfort of routine--to pull into parking lots in the chilly pre dawn, stamp our feet, squint toward the ocean, wrap our hands around a hot drink. We need to check, check, check the buoy readings at work all day, then finally make the call, drive to the coast, and marvel at the feel of the ocean around us, the sudden calming of the mind as the light turns pink.
And surfboards need to be made for this. Not only the shredding, for we come for the shredding, but for the everything else, too.

This particular instrument of engagement is currently being schralped by new homeowner, corduroy enthusiast (I'm guessing here, but he seems the type), and bicoastal (if you regard San Diego and Sonoma as two different coasts, which I do) surfboard enthusiast, Eric.

Lovely two-tone resin tint by the good folks at Almar, led by their affable, mustachioed capitan, in Santa Cruz.

Still life with dog-scratched wood floor, dog-haired Persian rug.
I believe it to be a 6'4" Clover.

Glass-on wood fins are just as satisfying to foil as they are to lean into a hefty bottom turn with.
Nota Bene, blog enthusiasts: while never exactly 'prolific', these blog pages were updated with some regularity. Not anymore! These days I'm stretched thinner than an ironic t-shirt at a hipster convention, and something's got to go. The good news is that it's not Princess Dress-up Time with my girls. The bad news is that the board porn might be a little light this fall.

Showerbeers Bronson

Last year I had a kid in class named Norbert. It was difficult for me to imagine an exhausted, overjoyed couple gazing down at the just-born, tiny naked ball of energy of their new baby boy and whispering Norbert...Norbert...Norbert...into his crackly pink ears.
We called him Bert, but still.

Same thing with new Sandwich Clubber Showerbeers Bonaparte. Whatever possessed the Bonapartes, flush with the excitement and stupor of childbirth, to gaze into their tiny boy's dark eyes and say Showerbeers, is not up to us to decide. Naming is every parent's right, but, unfortunately, they don't have to live a lifetime in the shoes of Norbert. Or Showerbeers. Or anyone named Richard that they insist on calling Dick.

Fortunately, Showerbeers has overcome this particular linguistic handicap, and has made those who know him proud. He finished law school without too much drama, has a healthy fan relationship with 80s cinematic masterpiece Cocktail, and is the proud new owner of a sweet new 8'6, rounded-pinnie Bronson.

Two-plus-one fin setup with a shreddy flexie in the middle, two-tone color lamination by the boys at Almar Glassworks, too-legit-to-quit Bronson radness.
If you note Showerbeers ripping his new sled in the greater Los Angeles area waters, or note this Bronson strapped to the roof of a diesel Bendzo in hot pursuit of a speeding ambulance, throw him a shaka!

Blue Bronson

Le Bleu Bronson for SF log enthusiast Erin, who convinced me to amend the Sandwich Club Charter to include a certain Outer Sunset bakery named after the Beastmaster that features perhaps the best breakfast sangie Team HHG has ever experienced.

Therefore, Sandwich Clubbers, the choice is now yours: a full sandwich card gets you either a ridiculously good Ike’s sandwich (no chips, for chrissake) up here in SoCo or, for you City shredders, an insane breakfast sandwich from ______________ (name withheld to preserve location’s reasonable line lengths), which is also endorsed by fine photographer and helmswoman of my Urban LadyShred team, Rebecca H.

Ladies always know where all the good breakfast eats are at!

Couplinches shy of 9ft, but designed to maximize the glide in typical Bronson style with more curves than a bucket of snakes.

Erin’s name means ‘Ireland,’ which is pretty fitting for a surfer—being surrounded by water and such.

Deep blue tint by Tony Mikus at Almar Glass Works in Santa Cruz. Polished by Tim the Polisher, who is a fine board builder, to boot.
That's the first time I've ever attached 'to boot' to a sentence--written or spoken.
Not convinced it works.

Of Thrusters, Mini-Simmons, and Questionable Single-Parenting Practices

Fresh foam for Northcoast shredders M and K, whose boards managed to be shaped and glassed during a particularly unhinged chapter in my life that was the product of the lovely Mrs. HHG frolicking in London for two weeks with her mom.
It's not that single parenting is hard the way that coal mining or dairy farming or building a railroad is hard, but here’s the deal: it comes at the expense of every other thing in your life.
Free time? Nope.
Food? Hope you like shoving a cold hotdog-covered-in-applesauce into your mouth while you hover over the sink.
Culture? Only if your idea of culture is falling asleep on the couch four minutes into an old Arrested Development episode, then waking up two hours later because your laptop is burning into your chest with the heat of a thousand suns. And you're drooling.

Let's say your life is a balloon ride, and all your wonderful non-parenting pursuits (surfing, making surfboards, gardening, scanning ebay for an exact replica of a shirt an old girlfriend gave you that you wore until it was shredded, enjoying the occasional dram of Ardbeg Uigeadail you’ve managed to hide from your peers for the last month) are sandbags hanging over the rail of the balloon basket. There will come a moment—usually within the first twenty-four hours of single parenting—when first one, then suddenly all of those sandbags must be cut free. 

K's 6'0.

The remnants of your former life drop unceremoniously to the ground so that the balloon may stay aloft. You don’t really have any control of where you’re going (though, at some point, you’ll probably end up at the pony rides at Howarth Park), but you have momentum and you’re all aboard and as long as you have some instant Mac&Cheese and popsicles you should make it just fine.

Also, for some reason, there's a lot more nudity when your significant other is out of town. You get out of the shower, almost put on pants, then think, nah.  I know what you're thinking: doesn’t you walking around the house naked look like a sad, hairy snowman?
To which I reply, no, thank you very much. Snowmen wear ties. 

M's 5'7

Maybe a bit of an overshare for a surfblog, but I’m on allergy meds and my head feels like it’s filled with something soft.

Let’s check back in with the surfboards.

From my incomplete family to M and K’s newly completed one: his and her shred sleds in matching green hues with deep, dark, chocolaty cedar stringers.

K’s is pure thruster bliss with top-and-bottom resin abstract by Tony Mikus at Almar Glass Works.

M’s 5’7 mini-Simmons features a green resin wrap with Braztafarian resin pinlines.

M and K are our surfy Northcoast version of Sonny and Cher, only with more dreadlocks and natural-fibered clothing. 

La Mango Lady Sans Merci

This lovely, full-board Mango Lady is for sale. Never ridden, waxed, or had popsicle dripped onto it by  four and six year-olds while using the deck as a Barbie Beach Party venue.
*update. SOLD to JD from ML, bicycle enthusiast, repeat customer, and proud shredder of the BOB*

Why is it for sale? Well, my friends, it's complicated. Delicate. Thorny.
You see, sometimes a wild hare (rarely. Unjudiciously) lends me its soft, downy ear. Often, this hare indulges in a dram of scotch. Often, it requests another.
In this particular instance,  Kilchoman's amazing Machir Bay expression proved the persuasive element.

In my lusty single malt rapture--nay, my pure Islay-inspired exaltation--this surfboard presented itself to me as a singular vision. Unseen hands guided me to the Blank Storage Area (staircase to the upstairs bedrooms).  A chock of raw foam urged itself into my hands (first one I saw), and led me to my shaping bay. The hour was late. Family members slept. For some reason my dog was invited into the proceedings, happily plunked in a pile of foam dust. Tongue out. Enthralled.

What happened next I cannot be sure. Much like the narrator from Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1819), I entered a liminal state, a diaphanous, filmy, place that ethnographer Arnold van Gennep would qualify as betwixt and between--neither of this world nor of another. Much like Keats' narrator I, too, emerged in the half dawn with only a fleeting series of images from the experience--planer on foam, plane on wood, ecstatic dog licking my leg as I moved from nose to tail and back again.
Suffice to say, fresh life--gasping, trembling, joyous--was coaxed into form during a gauzy, limitless session that lasted well into the wee hours (things get a little hazy at this point). Then, I emerged. Swaddled in foam dust, iPod drained (and, apparently, stuck on Chapter 27 of Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens for reasons that have yet to reveal themselves to me). The resultant form was the Mango Lady Sans Merci.

Actually, it was more like a white lady, but I don't think I can call it that in a blog post.
Onto the specs!
La Mango Lady Sans Merci stands at 7'4, and is 22" wide and 2 7/8" thick. She features my Lady rocker, a gentle, sexy curve that prioritizes swoop-and-glide over rip-and-shred. Bottom contour is a dollop of belly under the nose to the front foot, then a panel vee off the tail. Rails are medium round and sharp in the rear 1/3rd. Cedar stringer. She can be ridden as a single or as a 2+1, and comes with fiberglass sidebites and a fiberglass center fin (TK Flex by Rainbow Fin Co.). You should consider the Mango Lady if you're looking for something to ride when the waves are waist-to-huge, like accelerating out of turns, and want to know what it feels like to be a hot knife slicing through a cool stick of butter.
Full board tint by the nice guys at Almar Surf Works, sanded finish (faster! Less slippery under the hands!), strong-and-lively glass job that's built to last.
First $580 takes it (plus tax, I'm legit). That's cheap, but whatever.
If you act presently, I will include a free mountaineering-grade through-the-box leash loop for your leggie. The only way this thing could fail is if someone were to take a hacksaw to it. Even then, it should still hold up to a good tombstone or two.
Email me at HeadHighGlassy@gmail.com if interested.
Swell in the water. Just saying.

Propositions for Prepositions

I call this composition, Off to the Glasser!
Or maybe, On To the Glasser!

Or just, To the Glasser!
Either way, hope Tony's got some green pigment in stock.

Down to the glasser!

Plug

Kelly is a Renaissance man—surfer, artist, designer, entrepreneur, musician, dude with a mustache. He’s also a builder with of epic vision. How do we know it’s epic? because it’s in the name: Epic Design Build.

The EDB bros are scientists of building efficiency. They also like riding bikes, shredding Northcoast waves, and drinking beers at the Toad.

Kelly is at the forefront of a movement to transform Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square from a place of occasional dining and hobo watching to a model of the contemporary urban ideal: small local businesses, artists, intellectuals, musicians, surfboard shapers with an alarming amount of gray finding its way into their beard this winter, purveyors of local-made (and brewed!) goods intermingling with community-minded homeowners and their offspring. Sounds nice, eh?

So what does a man-of-our-times order when he wants to shred?

6’ Sparkplug.

Like the name implies, the Sparkplug is the necessary ingredient for heavy duty shredding. Plenty of foam for Northcoast paddling with a rocker to match our steep beachbreak offerings.

Quad for extra spark.

Because he's also a gigantic design nerd, Kelly created his own custom Sparkplug lam just in case, in the middle of a sess, he forgets why his board shreds so hard.

California born, start to finish.

Spring Blows

Sweet mother of God, how much has this spring sucked?
Who knows to what extent poet Mary Darby Robinson was deluded when she penned the lines in her Ode to Spring,
Ev'ry little flow'r
Seems to exult in thee, delicious Spring,
Luxuriant nurse of nature!
but she definitely wasn’t on the same allergy medication as me. The only nursing I’ve experienced these last few weeks was sucking on bottles of Lagunitas IPA while keeping tabs on a new sinus infection. Turns out my new sinus infection doesn’t love Lagunitas IPA. Turns out I don’t give a shit.
Remember fall? Sweet, sweet fall?
Some folks call it autumn. I have no idea what Mary Darby Robinson called it, but if she wrote anything less-than transcendent about it I’m burning my membership card to The Wearisome Poet’s Society For Those Who Use Exclamation Marks Whilst Describing A Season. If that society even exists. And if it did, why would I have joined in the first place? And what, exactly, does one have to do to get a membership? What were we talking about again?
Fall!
Speaking of fall, this one snuck by last fall, as boards do when the surf is the clean and the sinuses clear.

Note how the board's color palette stimulates a conversation with autumnal leaf background. Waveglider took this photograph.

Notice how this picture was taken in a Costco parking lot. I took this picture. Clearly, one of us is the better photographer, and it ain't me.

Waveglider has been around for a while—surfed with the heavies on Oahu back in the day when mens’ heads featured a bit more hair in the aft sections, and shorts featured a bit less fabric in the leg sections. He has a penchant for beak-nosed single fins and rippable 2+1 longboards.

WG is also no stranger to the vast expanse of the California coastline, and knows what he wants in a surfboard. It was a fun challenge trying to meet his, um, suggestions. For one of my shapes to be resting alongside the others in his quiver is indeed an honor.

This particular 9'6 has been joining WG in his jaunts into our cool, dark, watery offerings up here on the Northcoast.
Remember those?
Ahhhh, fall.

Abstract bottom by resin Maestro Tony Mikus

Seeing Red

Guys Up North don't fool around. When horizontal freezing rain smashes directly into their blood-drained faces in the lineup they call it offshore. They regard plaid as a color. The only other colors in their chart are jeans, mud, and doghair.

Their automobiles are often missing seats and the word pilates has never, ever escaped through their unironically moustached upper lips. They think Miley Cyrus is a constellation, latte is how Italians say Goodbye, and a decaf is some kind of move from the summer Olympics that's done by dudes in tights.

What I'm saying is that there's a dialogue the rest of the nation is obsessed with that doesn't concern these folks in the slightest.

And they like stuff that's built to last.

9'6 triple stringer for Jonny from Up North. Full board tint with freehand comp bands--done during lamination by master glasser Tony Mikus at Almar Glass Works.

Built tough (heavy-but-not-too-heavy glass job, deck patch, fin patch, tailblock), so when the sleet turns onshore and the beach fire turns to smoke, Jonny doesn't have to worry as he tosses it with frozen fingers into the back of his van.

Right where the seats used to be.

Of Midlengths, pigments, and atmosphere

Words I’m not really that stoked about right now: Zillow. Drought. Romney. Mayonnaise. Lana del Rey.

Words I can really get behind: Dungeness. Pliny the Younger. Leonard Cohen. Caol Ila. WNW Swell. Blue.

I’ve been pondering this last one while looking at the pics of Adam’s new 8ft Broadsword. It’s a lovely color. Tony Mikus—master of pigments and one of the best laminators on the planet—calls it medium blue. I like that, too. Simple.

We’ve seen a lot of blue up here this winter. Mostly in the sky, but in the water, too. Etymologically, the word blue is loaned to us by the French: belle, for beautiful, and eau, meaning water.

The Thai word for blue translates literally to sky.

And there we have it. Air and water.

And if you’re a California surf enthusiast, like Adam, it makes perfect sense: blue for the immersion, the submergence, the surfacing. Blue for the melding of sky and sea and experience, and the endless cycles of light and ocean and paddling back out for another.

Then, maybe cracking, a PBR in the parking lot—it doesn’t get the blue ribbon for nothing.

Shana Tova

First board of the year!

I like New Year's Day more than New Year's Eve--clean slate and all that. Celebrated the arrival of 2012 with some foam mowing followed by a trip to the coast with the girls. Kites were involved, as were refusals to wear jackets.

Then tears.

Then ice cream with rainbow sprinkles.

Finished the (glorious!) day with a bit of champagne that we hadn't gotten around to drinking the previous night because we have kids and we're tired and we were busy with an epic Super Mario Kart session on the (glorious!) Wii, anyway.

This fresh 9'4 with a green high-density foam stringer bookended by dual cedar sticks will get a shiny candy shell at Almar Glass Works, then head to The Shop in Humboldt. There it will be ogled, fondled, caressed, until it speaks to someone so loudly that they will gladly hand over currency and make it their own.

On the way home, they will crack a window and turn the music a little louder. They will smile slightly as they imagine themselves flying across a wall of liquid energy, knees bent, fingers trailing in the purest green they could possibly imagine.

May we all experience such joy this year.

You Are Here

You are in Mexico, and the water is warm.

Your eyebrows are crusty and you've surfed a lot today.

The waves are small and clean and a deep-afternoon gold.

Should you paddle out for a few more?

There is beer on the beach, but yes, you should paddle out for a few more.

You grab your 7’6” egg, not bothering to leash or wax. You stroke out to the lineup. The waves are small, clean, and a deep-afternoon gold. The water is warm and your eyebrows are crusty and you are in Mexico.

You spin and catch one. Early. You glide and swoop. You lean back. You step forward. You throw your arms over your head because you’re in Mexico and the water is warm and you’ve surfed a lot today.

There is beer on the beach, but you should paddle out for a few more. You stroke back out to the lineup on your 7’6 egg. You spin and catch and glide and swoop. You throw your arms over your head. You should paddle out for a few more. You are in Mexico, the water is warm, there is beer on the beach and the waves are small and clean and soon it will be dark.

Blues for Yous

I don’t really know what do to with this word: community (I also don’t know what to do with the word moist, though that’s for another time). It’s not a tricky one to define—from the Latin cum for together, and munus for a gift, literally translating to ‘a gift to be shared’—it’s just that the word’s spread a little thin.

We’ve heard the term Surf Community as many times as we’ve heard our other surf clichés of the moment (Kelly Slater is a ‘Freak of Nature,' as well as everything that comes out of Dave Rastavich’s mouth, such as the endlessly repeating commercial where he states, ‘I’ve been gifted the opportunity to not have a 9-5 job…’Gifted? Good Lord. He also abuses blessing, for which there is no excusing). So are we experiencingcommunity when we surf? It’s a ‘coming together’ for ‘gifts,’ but, as we know, most waves are actively and purposefully un-shared. And what if you have not only nothing in common, but different values entirely than those in the water with you? What if they're dicks, or disparage others, or applaud when Rick Perry boasts of 234 executions while he was governor of Texas? Does it negate the community experience, or is there a sub-community of surfers who have little regard for human life?

What about when we’re out of the water? If we’re not sharing waves, or coming together, are surfers still in any way a community? If not, why are we constantly being told that we are?

Sorry for so many questions on a Friday, people. My eldest started pre-school on Tuesday, and I've been vexed with thoughts of her fragility.

What if her peers look askance at her bowtie noodle lunch? What if she puts her hands into the class orange juice again? What if she's the kid with a booger sheet stashed in her desk? Today is Show and Tell, which I think should go well. Christ, I’m a mess.

What am I talking about again?

Oh yeah, ChrisTofurkeys new 7somethin Cigar Volant. The young buck’s chasing down a sandwich with the same intensity he applies to beard growing and shredding barefoot on leashless logs in Northen California beachbreak. Dude’s committed is what I’m saying.

How much more blueberry can it get?

None more blueberry.