Orange Egg

Does anyone remember the van with the external speakers in Robert Altman's (brilliant) Nashville? For some reason it was a highlight for me, as was seeing Elliott Gould in full 70s, gold-necklaced, hairy-chested glory. The van, a rolling audio advertisement for Hal Philip Walker's political ambitions, asks the question, "does Christmas smell like oranges to you?"
Well, for local wave-enthusiast Lucas, international shredder and dashing man about town, Christmas came a bit early this year, and it's definitely orange.
7' something egg, glassed with the lovely lady-hands of Leslie Anderson at Fatty Fiberglass. Lots of finboxes for lots of fin options.
Tight.

Bread in the Bone

Summer’s like renting a shitty house—it’s a little sketchy, you never fully unpack, the lease is strictly short term, and you’re always left wondering what happened to your money at the end of it.
On the positive side, you don’t really care when stuff breaks, catches on fire, or gets stolen by someone’s pervy shut-in cousin.
Last week saw a fun run of small surf up here North of the Bridge, with classic summer conditions: cool, foggy, and small peelers against a palate of gray water and sky. Pelicans, dolphins, and a whale or two were spotted cruising through lineups, and hoods—and, in one case, booties—were shed to welcome the warming water. It’s good to be back in California!
Foam was mowed, as well, including this 6’6 Lil’ Pill with an e-wing and five fin setup. Good for summer waves and beyond.
Damn, that's a terrible photo!
Still, you get the point--a little pulled in, a touch more rocker, a bit sleeker foil throughout.
Lots of fun stuff in the trunk.
Another terrible photo! This one's going to Leslie later this week for some laying on of hands, resin, and fiberglass. I've also seen her lay beers, glasses of wine, and bearded iguanas on surfboards. And corn snakes.
It's good to be back in California!

Smoked Egg

Hola Amigos, the next few weeks find my lovely family and me participating in our annual Screw-Up-Our-Kids'-Sleep-Schedules tour of the East Coast. Overall, things aren't much different over here. They have things called 'bagels,' that are really good. They also have something called 'humidity,' which is really bad. It is indeed a land of balance.

The greatest thing the EC is offering me right now is an air-conditioned room with 42" flatscreen upon which to watch World Cup soccer. Does it get any better? No need to respond.

What it doesn't have is my computer, with its HeadHighGlassy-ready gigabytes of fresh board porn. However, BrotherFromAnothaMutha Fred fired off these snaps of his new 7' something egg, which I pass on to you. Fressshhh!

Fatty always groans when she sees 'smoke tint' on an order card. 'Blah,' she says. 'Boring. Talk them into red.'

She always smiles when I pick them up, though.

When pressed, she can be made to admit that smoke tints are pretty bitchin'. This is all part of our process.

Check out those laps!

Lines Carved in Late Spring

Aloha Amigos, as we all know, spring is a time of change. Up here NOTB, the fierce Gulf of Alaska swells, exhausted from battering our shores, stagger back north to rest and reload. Our surf attention shifts to the south and, as our inland valleys heat up, fog grips our coastline. The winds are ceaseless, tearing in from the sea with the force and aggression of a pissed-off lover. It’s no coincidence the Furies in Roman Mythogy—the three goddesses of vengeance—appeared as a punishing, relentless wind that was born of the ocean. Even William Wordsworth (1770-1850), naturey-ist of Romantic poets, mentions the wind in his Lines Written in Early Spring:
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
Scholars seem to argue that this line is evidence that, to Wordsworth, nature has the capacity to feel, not just be. It experiences pleasure as it welcomes this most welcome season.
Surfers would probably call bullshit. The last two lines show the speaker forcing himself to understand pleasure, and they follow the word breezy. Clearly, Wordsworth’s spring finds him in a constant state of reminding himself, amidst spring’s furious winds, that the season is indeed lovely, that his allergies will clear up pronto, and it won’t be too long before things turn offshore, the water temp creeps up a few degrees, and glassy barrels abound like so much low-hanging fruit.
A bit much? Perhaps, but Wordsworth did spend a lot of time on the south east coast of England, and there isn’t any evidence to support that he didn’t select a surf-friendly wave-sled from among the planks of a wrecked steamship and shred some coldwater peelers…
Speaking of wavesleds!
8’6 cedar stringered Broadsword for Ft. Bragg George. George is a big guy, and I like shaping boards for big guys—they know what they want, and they can kick my ass. A winning combo that keeps me on my toes.
This is the smaller (8’0), blonder cousin to George’s board. It’s headed to Hawai’i after a brief tour of our chilly waters. Wish I was, too…
There is a family resemblance in the hindquarters.
Hopefully, you're finding wind-protected nooks to practice your craft. Take comfort in knowing that the furies will eventually loose their grip, the sands will turn their collective faces to the sun as they warm, and these winds, too, shall pass.

Twins

Ever since the first zygote divided into two separate embryos, humans have reserved special places in their rites and mythologies for twins.
The Igbo peoples of Nigeria saw twins as a curse, and would sacrifice them to the forest (as detailed in Chinua Achebe’s excellent novel Things Fall Apart).
The Navajo honor twins as descendants of the twin gods of sun and moon, believing that they will help restore order to the chaos of the world.
Americans like to stick a fake goatee on one of them and call them Evil.
Dr. Spock’s evil twin showed up in 1967, sporting the trademark Evil-Twin Beard.
Cartman's evil twin broke social boundaries, becoming the first elementary school kid with an Evil-Twin Beard to go prime time.
Surfers have our own preoccupacy with twins--twin fins, twin pins, Twinzers, the Hobgoods. Even our own Leslie Anderson isn't immune to their thrall, as evidenced by a pair of longboards that recently left her shop.
Jason's diamond tail log with 3/4" red cedar stringer seems to have shared some embryonic developing time with its twin below, blogged about here:
Both were shaped by hand in Sonoma county with smaller Northcoast waves in mind . Both feature single fin goodness, volan glasswork, and resin art by Leslie.
But what is perhaps most intriguing about twins is how they differ--which one is more popular with the ladies, which one is more fearless in the hockey rink, which one dances with their tongue out.
The differences in the above boards are equally intriguing—the bigass cedar stringer vs. the high density foam one, the diamond tail vs. the rounded pin, the clean shaven vs. the goateed one (one of these is not actually a design feature).
Although some may see one of the above boards as an evil incarnation of the other, I prefer the Navajo interpretation that twins are two parts of the same whole. That they, together, can separate the good from the evil, and order where before existed only chaos.
Or at least score us some waves when it’s head high or under.

The 6'10 Chronicles, and Literary Nerd Contest!

I love 6'10 rounded pintail season!

I also love weekends like these--'unseasonably' warm temps, a good swell in the water, and my lovely wife's experiments with Brussels sprouts and the perfect warm winter salad. Doesn't get much better unless, of course, you can factor in a lovely Fatty Fiberglass job.

Leslie couldn't resist putting her stamp on this one--a retro style Hastings blue tint, wrap, and deep red pinline on a thoroughly contemporary step-up shortboard. Local he-ripper Mr. M will be stoked.

Something old made new again, or maybe something new made old again.
ANNOUNCEMENT! I hereby declare the First Whenever-I-Feel-Like-It HeadHighGlassy Literary Nerd Contest. The first LitNerd who can tell me the name of the Junot Diaz short story where the line "something old made new again" is used to menacing effect wins a free Jamie Murray Custom Surfboards t-shirt (American Apparel, so you know it's schweet!).
Hint: the line is delivered by a man appropriately named Barbaro.

What's that? Are those 101 Fin Co. bamboo thrusters?
Another Announcement! 101 Fin Co. bamboo fins+ the Lokbox removable/adjustable fin system=insane.
Last Announcement! Come on out to the Toad in the Hole Pub in downtown Santa Rosa's Railroad Square (116 5th street) this Thursday night (Jan 15th) for their first monthly Surf Movie Night. This month features live music from the local surfabilly rockers Mr. December--upright bass and ukulele. I promised not to divulge the movie, but it's a good one, and, as always, the Guinness will be poured by an actual Irishman. Come on out!