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.

The Stuff of Life

All the literary heavies have succumbed to the powers of the grape at some time or another. Hemingway refered to wine as, 'The most civilized beverage in the world," Emerson demanded wine to wash himself clean, and it can't be more simple than the declarative statement of Roman poet Petronius: "Wine is life." Even the sciences back it up, as Louis Pasteur claimed it to be the, "most healthful and hygienic of beverages."
Based on the comments I get on this blog, I am clearly preaching to the choir, but it must be pointed out the great things wine has inspired: poetry. Literature. Civilizations. Sweet sweet love (though Shakespeare warns us it, "provokes the desire but takes away the performance").
And surfboards.
Ranger Fred makes some damn good wines up here in SoCo.
He also makes lots of children and clean lines on cold beachbreak waves. His 9’0 performance log sported a ‘glasser’s choice’ order card, so Leslie busted out a Zinfandel deck with champagne bottom inlay.
Probably the last thing a winemaker wants to see on his days off but, hey, he left it up to a lovesick temperamental artist with an affinity for reptiles and carnivorous plants, so what did he expect?
Pintail keeps it smooth off the back foot.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, "wine from long habit has become an indispensable for my health. Much like pulling in to a glassy barrel" (the second part is my own addition).
I'm a sucker for the 'reverse wrap' glass job. Leslie rolls her eyes when I wax poetic about them, muttering something about sanding into the weave blah, blah, blah, but the tucked laps really tie the whole bottom together.
Cheers.