“Too thick” he said, turning it over on the racks.
I thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t go any thinner,” I said. TommyT’s about one-night-of-drinking shy of 200Lbs.
“Too chunky,” he replied, sighting the board down from the nose. “Chunky monkey.”
“It’s pretty well blended…”
“Chunky funky.”
“The foil’s spot-on—“
“Chunkin’ donuts,” he said, moving toward the tail. “Chunk in the trunk. Reverse slam chunk. You chunk my battleship…” and so on, seemingly oblivious of my presence.
I told TommyT I’d be happy to thin it out a bit.
“Thin it out by half,” he said, sighting a rail.
That would have netted TommyT a ¾ ” thick board, but TommyT’s not a numbers guy, so I said OK and handed over a mask so he could watch.
“Thinner,” he said occasionally. “Like a coffee table. Like twenty pages stapled together. Maybe fifteen.”
I asked him if he’d ever surfed a board like this in the adult stages of his life.
“Nope.”
“It’s going to be under water when you paddle.”
“So?”
This was a good point. TommyT’s 6’4” with arms like telephone poles. He could probably paddle a car door into overhead beachbreak and never feel a thing.
I got to work, and a half-hour later offered the newly-reduced item for his inspection.
“Tail’s too thick,” he said. “Thick as a brick.”
I paused.
“Thick Cheney. Thick Van Dyke.”
I took a deep breath.
“Thickie Don’t Lose That Number.”
“Any thinner and you’re going to have problems getting into waves,” I said.
“So?”
Another good point—his board, not mine.
Twenty minutes later and it was done. The tail was thinner than a CD and the rails sported a dime-size radius, but TommyT was stoked. He pulled a beer out of his back pocket and cracked it, grinning.
“Think I’ll be able to get up on it?”
“No.”
“Imagine what it would be like if I could!” He said. “I’d friggin rip!”
TommyT’s 6’1” hi-pro quad fish, fresh resinwork from the Fattyshack, ready for ripping.
Feels good to be back on the West Coast!
