As I regain health, I’d love to pen a flip account of my last two months—ending with But Boards Must Go On!—were it not for the fact that I can recall, exactly, how terrifying it all was.
But it’s true, Boards Must Go On. The moon pushes and pulls, tides rise and fall. Pulses of energy gather into waves, hurl themselves at distant shores, reconstitute in different forms. For the briefest of interplanetary eye-blinks, some of us get to tap into that energy, and surfboards are a simple, ingenious way to do this. So while I’m humbled by many things lately—my wife and her infinite stores of patience and love, my mom’s homemade chicken pot pie, caregivers, viruses—I’m also thrilled to be harnessed by something larger than the self. To be a part of a community of weird, inspiring people who call or email or stop by to demand, in no uncertain terms, that their surfboard needs be met. Fortunately, they’re also patient, and this afternoon as I popped in the iBuds and stepped into the shaping bay for the first time in a month, I paused to feel this transference of energy. This live-wire scream of the planer, these grains of foam dust whirling through spider cracks of light, this unshakable throb of possibility. Health waxes, illness wanes. Boards are shaped. Handed over. Ridden. We are immersed, enslaved by joules and the law of conservation. Sometimes this doesn't work to our favor. Sometimes it does. And sometimes it just feels pretty fucking good.
Onto the boardporn!
Esteban's new double-wing quad stealth fish.
The stealth designation is given to any board that immediately goes into a board bag, is sneaked past any economically co-dependent members of the household, and is incorporated (with crossed fingers) into the existing quiver without mention or fanfare.
Although it's doubtful this one will escape notice, a man's gotta try.As per usual, Leslie Anderson at Fatty Fiberglass makes the stuff pretty. All color, except the resin pinlines, done during the lamination. Badass.
I hope you are all well.
