The War Pony Chronicles: St. Valentine's Edition

What a weekend for surf enthusiasts in Northern California.
The sun stopped pouting and came out of its room, waves of varying size and life-ending potential were served up like scripted folksiness in a Sarah Palin speech, and sweet sweet love was in the air.
Managed to score some waves, spend some time in the shaping bay, lunch on some fish tacos, take the girls to the park, fire up the grill and crack a local zinfandel with m'lady--and that was just yesterday. Feels like spring!
The local beachie, where waves are like a box of chocolates.
The surest sign that spring has arrived, however (besides asthma), is the first time the fan cranks up in the shop. Although scientists earlier today created the hottest temperature ever (4 trillion degrees celsius), my shop's come pretty close. Nowhere near that on Sunday, but it's always comforting to hear the soft whir of the fan over my industrial-strength earphones...
Anyway, forged from the heat of spring, the bittersweetness of dark chocolate valentines, and the birthdays of presidents 1 and 16 was local she-ripper Caroline's 6-something War Pony.
You can't spell SHRED without SHE.
The War Pony is a souped-up fish for our steeper northern breachbreaks. Curvier, slimmer, cedar stringier than a traditional San Diego style fish.
But I've not forgotten about you Northeasterners, or Clevelandites, or Michiganders, as you prepare for another round of snowy winter weirdness, and will share a moment from my weekend that was not entirely blissful: my three-year-old little lady enjoys running ahead of me on our beach walks, which can be inconvenient, but isn't discouraged due to its pride-inducing moxie. Yesterday, as I basked in a euphoric post-surf glow on one of our rare windless afternoons at the coast, I watched her spring, gazelle-like, toward an amorphous, dark relief in the sand. As I got closer, I recognized the form as bloated, decomposing seal, upon which she was suddenly seated. Closer still, and I was able to identify her right hand--perfect in its pink, cherubine innocence--probing deep into the swampy mammal's sagging eye socket.
My firstborn, pride of my loins, was overjoyed. "Daddy!" she cried, "it feels like wet Cheerios!"
And then, as if tying a red sating bow atop a box of candies for St. Valentine himself, removed her hand, held it briefly to her glowing face, and asked me, smile as pure as light, "wanna smell?"

Father and Son

For a short time in third grade a secret admirer left celery in my locker. The individual sticks were neatly trimmed and placed in small sandwich bags. The first few offerings were anonymous, but later featured notes written in a girlie script.
Then my vegetable devotee began to get creative. Once, there were a few scratch-n-sniff stickers included. Another time a slender packet of ranch dressing accompanied the celery. A note read, “celery and ranch is cool!”
And for a brief time in the third grade, it was cool.
Until I learned that it was not Rachel Stein leaving me the celery, as I had hoped, but my sister. My mom made her do it out of fear that I wasn’t eating enough leafy greens.
What does this have to do with this 5’8 double-wing quad fish for Northcoast surf enthusiast David? Not a lot, other than to point out that it’s nice to have family looking out for us once in a while.
Accompanying David’s order was this 5'10, 80's inspired resinwork grom fish for his son.
Much cooler gift than a sweater.
Speaking of Father and Son, Cat Stevens penned a song under that title, converted to Islam, changed his name to Yusef Islam, ditched his music career, gave a sizable chunk of his fortune to humanitarian causes, sort of called for the death of Salmon Rushdie, then performed on The Colbert Report. In that order.
Just in case you’re keeping tabs.

Situation Identification

A pause for some of this:
And a little bit of this:
Before we return to our regular programming:

A Board for all Seasons

As the holidays fade into the rearview and we settle in to some serious winter weather, there are some that refuse to let the gift-giving spirit die.
SF surf enthusiast Sebastian is one such man. His single request after the shaping process: a happy birthday message to his lovely lady to be written on the stringer, then memorialized in fiberglass and resin by the talented hands of Leslie Anderson.
The gift of an 8'2" Broadsword is a romantic one, indeed. With a 4+1 fin setup, round tail, and chocalately cedar stringer (US Blanks has also been in a gift-giving mood with their cedar stringers lately) it's dependable, versatile, and capable of some seriously fun surprises well into the relationship.
It can also handle much of what Northern California can throw at us.
And right now, Northern California is throwing us rain, wind, and rip currents. By proxy it is also throwing me, personally, two very restless girls under the age of three who don't want to spend their entire weekends huddled over crayons, or helping their dad make spaghetti sauce, or watching ten minute clips of Cinderella on Youtube.
They want the impossible gift of sunshine though, right now, they'll be more than happy to settle for another round of hide 'n seek. It's the least I can do.

Tomorrow the Green Grass

7'2 BatTail Egg.
For Spencer.
A student.
The future is bright.

The Full Blood Princess

I've written before about Bedroomers--boards so elegant, so innocent, that to leave them in the holding pen (guest bedroom) with the other sticks awaiting pickup would be scandalous.
How can one, in good conscience, place a finely foiled, fragile-as-china displacement hull in the same rack with a mush-shredding gremmie thruster?
What ethical shaper can allow an outer bar gun, high-polished and sleek as a needle to share the same space as a brutish, wide-backed, sand-finish quad fish?
None that gives a damn, I say.
So, on occasion, one of the more enchanting products from the Fattyshack is moved into the bedroom where, if mood strikes, one might gaze upon its lines and be hastened toward an exquisite idyll.
Or until one's wife tells them to cut it out.
So imagine my surprise when, still feeling the effects of East Coast jet lag, I woke in the wee hours this morning to find the lovely Mrs. HHG not just contemplating, but dreamily trailing a few fingertips, along a rail of this full-tint glossy log from her side of the bed. Imagine the betrayal--yet the thrill!--that accompanies such a discovery.
Also try to imagine an intense need for an egg sandwich on sourdough, which is what finally pulled me from the throes of this unanticipated spectacle.
Anyway, this model--a 9'6 Squareback--is designed for the soft and the cruisy up here on the Northcoast. She's headed to 2 Mile Surf Shop in Bobo, where she will hopefully find a good home with a tip-riding enthusiast. And while we're hoping, let's hope Drew and the boys keep her separated from some of the more nefarious shapes I've seen lurking on their racks.

The White Stuff

New England Dispatch: currently it's snowing, raining, foggy, and below freezing simultaneously. Not sure how this can happen, but there it is. Every time someone opens a door to the outside my California born-and-raised daughters start crying.

The weather does inspire a few of my favorite things, though (alcohol, sweaters, and beards), so I'm all for it.

Ironically, it's not so different from my shop in Northern California, where white-out conditions descended after a dust-collection snafu (Dustgate '09). When I appeared inside after the incident my week my three-year-old said, "Santa came!!!"

And perhaps she was right, especially if your name is Sean and you ordered yourself a spiffy new quad fish this holiday season.

Sean ordered it clear, perpetuating a seasonally-appropriate white-out theme.

Although unglassed quad fish photos aren't really cutting-edge in the surf blogosphere (as recently pointed out to me in an email by gentle reader Tony from North Carolina), these pictures celebrate the last gasp by my beleaguered point-and-shoot, another victim of Dustgate '09. RIP.

Happy Holidays!