Blue Tuesday

Spring's a season of vexation.  On one hand, things warm up outside and we can all stop wearing socks. On the other hand, there's the itching. Oh, the itching!
Surf-wise, we're also on the opposite end of the shred stick from Fall. The wave period drops lower than a limbo bar at a gymnasts bat mitzvah party, and the onshore wind speed climbs higher than my grandpa's WWII khakis.
In his poem The Enkindled, subtleperv D.H. Lawrence writes of spring,

                                   THIS spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
                                   Wild puffing of emerald tress, and flame-filled bushes.

I get the 'bursting' part. The 'bonfires green' makes sense, perhaps, to those living outside drought-plagued California (more like, 'bonfires banned because of severe fire hazard'). The only wild puffing I've seen is from my eyes, which I desperately want to scratch with the force of a thousand fingertips. Oh, the itching!

We'll chalk up that last part, "flame-filled bushes" to some typical D.H. Lawrence stuff, which could be boring or gross, depending.

The best remedy, as far as I can tell, for spring's one-two sucker punch to the histamines is a new surfboard.

This one's Cat's:

9'5", 2+1 Bronson, which is crazy fun all around shred sled with a pleasing combination of curves and flats that can handle a vast swath of Northern California conditions. Which is what we see in Spring. For example, this week's forecast calls for everything from 2-3 foot swell to 2-3 times overhead. Spring!

The engine room features some serious edges complemented by patriotic-hued fiberglass fins. The center fin's a flexie, so it wants to snaaaaaap! out of turns.

This is the part of the board where some shit happens

Spring's blows are lessened a bit by a new, blue shred sled. Couple that with some Port Charlotte "Islay Barley" release, and you should be set until Fall, of which D.H. Lawrence writes,

                                                        I go slowly,
                                                As under the hairy belly of a great black bear.
What's with that guy?

Of Zeus, NPR, and New-Model Shredding

Zeus was a tricky, horny trickster. One time he appeared to Leda in the form of a swan, snuck into her bed, and did some stuff so that later she laid some eggs.
Interestingly, her husband was also in bed doing stuff that particular evening, so when the twin boys hatched from their eggs, they were considered part divine, part mortal.
Leda called them Castor and Pollux, which probably sounded better with a Greek accent. They were transformed into the constellation Gemini so they could always be together.
What does this have to do with surfing? Technically, nothing.
But late last night in my shop as the dust swirled and lines were drawn, I was thinking about the twin fundamentals of our sport--the Trim and the Glide. The Castor and Pollux of our sport. Inseparable, immortal, they shine down on us from a surfy heavens.
Hopefully, their bastard stepsister (Helen of Troy) will shine down as well: the Shred.

Damn!

It's not often we get an action image with my logo on it. Not because my clientele aren't continuously schralping hot curls--they are!--but because they tend to seek out the foggy, the remote, the mysto spookzones that tend to discourage photography. This ain't SoCal.
However, sometimes the skies clear and the swell lines up and local stokemeisters like Chris (pictured above and below) get an itch to sample a not-quite-Northcoast spot that sees the occasional telephoto on the beach.
Chris is shredding this week's featured board: the NPR.
The NPR is an offshoot of the Clover, which is a great head-highish and under shred machine. Last winter I shaped myself a more streamlined version for larger waves that featured a slightly different rocker profile, adjusted thickness flow, and a modified bottom contour. It was dubbed the Clover PR, for Pocket Rocket.
Not the best model name, for sure, but I didn't have time to come up with a better one. The surf was crackin!
It looked like this:

6'9

I dug it. A few folks tried it out, then ordered their own. A few tweaks later, and a few more folks ordered them until a bunch were ordering them and it deserved its own name. The NPR, or Northcoast Pocket Rocket, is a full-volumed aquatic fun machine designed for waves that are on the head high to well overhead range. They've been ridden with everything from one to five fins. I like mine as a quad, but that's just me.
When local shredder Chris ordered his, he went full Glasser's Choice on it, and we handed it off to Patrick at Northern Light, who did a bang-up job making it look right.

6'10

Brown opaque bottom wrap and a lovely robin's-egg-blue deck tint. Classic!

After the maiden session. Not heel dents on the deck, just a stoked-out wax job by someone who couldn't wait to get in the water and do this:

 Damn!

Smoke This

I like it when they go from this:

To this:

To this!

Deep blue 7'6 Bonzer for local shred-and-jazz enthusiast Guitar Jim.

This is the Cigar Volant model--a hi-pro, beachbreak shreddy egg that rocks anywhere from one to five fins with joy in its sweet, foamy heart.
Resin cigar bands really tie the board/concept together.

Lotta junk in the trunk on this one.
The feels that laminators, sanders, and polishers get in their guts when they see a bonzer with e-wings and glassons come through the production line is completely canceled by the feeling the surfer gets when laying into their first fingertip-dragging, rail-burying, fully-involved bottom turn on a head-high wave. Value added!

A Very HHG Jewishy Christmas in New England

Shaped, Glassed, Wrapped in Northern California.

Unwrapped, Jumped On in New England.

Intracontinentally stoked.

This year's  Headhighglassy Kind-of-Jewish Christmas in New England Tour saw much family, much stoke, a few alarmingly underheated homes, rain, snow, high winds, freezing temps, freezing rain, freezing snow, and enough fine bourbon to fill every bathtub in the fine state of Kentucky. The highlight was my eleven-year-old niece's first custom shred stick, ready to rip NC waves with the unfiltered stoke of an eighty-pound ten-year-old girl.
Of course, back home the local beachbreak has been pumping. The weather, according to the local paper, has been 'epic' both at the beach and inland. The sandbars, previously as unruly as a cowlick, have smoothed into shape.
Still, it's nice to be swathed in down and wool, drinking steaming mugs of hot tea while the gray light outside fades and my girls gorge themselves on My Little Ponies, which Santalah Clausenberg knew would keep four and six-year-old girls occupied for hours without interruption--long enough for the grownups to pull another tiny dog onto our laps and sample some more fine bourbon.
I took a brief hiatus from shaping in late 2013 to work on some other stuff, including my website, which can be found right here.  I still don't know how to feel about it, but it was time and makes things a bit more simple, and what could be better than simple?
Other highlights include talking to tiny dogs in New York accents, storing perishables in cars (!) when there's no more room in the fridge, complete Rainbow Loom takeover, debating the current existence of Megaladon with a fourth grader, catching my seventy-year-old parents grabbing each others' asses in the kitchen, and watching kids fall over in snow. Doesn't get much better than that.
Anyway, here's some more pics of an 8'0 Broadsword in some snow.

 Happy New Year!

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.

Blues for Tues: of Mini-Simmons, Thanksgiving, and Snickers

Nothing says, "America's fuggin rad" quite like the calendar stretch that encompasses both Halloween and Thanksgiving. The two holidays capture America at its best: creative, free of secular nonsense, and steeped in sharing.

They also capture the best as aspects of consumption, which, when it comes to Russian River pinot noir and Snickers Bars, isn't a bad thing at all.

These four weeks also hold the promise of epic surf conditions for California--active storm systems to both our north and south, warmer water temperatures, and an end to the devil winds of summer.

Not so much this year, though.

The good news is that despite this season's meager surf offerings, creativity and consumption have flourished. Especially if you're Fred, who has already consumed several waves on this baby blue 5'7, and expressed his freaky side on their wide-open faces.

And a solid community put this thing together: foam by the good people of US Blanks, glass by the talented hands at Almar Surf Works in Santa Cruz, and fins by Marlin Bacon of 101 Fin Co.

Have a great Thanksgiving. Don't forget to call someone and tell them you love them, even if you're exaggerating a little bit--they'll never know, and you'll feel that much better as you dig into some beaujolais nouveau.