So were the rest of the surfers, dug into their camps and well into their post-surf rituals. Their hoots echoed off the cliff walls as she paddled toward the empty peak in the silvery light, spun, and glided into the first wave that presented itself. She found a high trim line and stuck to it, swooping and gliding all the way to the channel. Hooting ensued. A fellow camper came over to chat.
"Your wife rips."
"Thanks."
"What's she riding?"
"Big Fish*."
"How big?"
"6'9"
My new friend scratched at his twelve-day beard. "That's not a fish," he said, squinting into the setting sun.
I could have sworn it was. I shaped it for her, and the order card read, "Big Fish."
"That's a twin-keel funboard," he said. I had never heard of anything so horrifying, and certainly didn't want to claim it when he asked who the shaper was, so I told him it was a Rusty.
He nodded and lit a cigarette. "Typical," he said, then walked back to his camp site.
*The above board is the 'fish' in question.As teachers on spring break burned out on paper-grading and poorly-formed sandbars, my wife and I have the spent last four days sampling some of Northern California's excellent pointbreaks.
Waves have been scored.
The other day, while watching locals dismantle their gorgeous wave from a safe distance, my wife pointed out that they were all on big boards.
Not guns, mind you, but big boards. Longboards. And this spot is nothing to trifle with, even on an 'average' day. I had trifled with it earlier that day on a 5'11" disc, and I had become intimate with the reef in a way that could have gotten me investigated had the reef been an page and me a member of congress.
The next day we returned, but this time I was equipped with this big-ass 7 foot egg in all of her thick, low-rockered, wide-nosed-and-tailed, flexie-finned wonder:
I've blogged about this board before here. I know it's weird looking.Long story short, I was enthused. Score another point for big boards.
And score again for das Frankenfish, the 7'9 mutant conceived by Brent, Lagunitas IPA, and standard case of DS squared (Daddy Sleep Deprivation Syndrome).
As per tradition, said surfer waived the glasser-suggested 'curing time' and got to work putting this big quad fish through its paces. But first he put his kid to work polishing her up. Them's resin pinlines, son!
Is it a fish? Who cares? What's in a name? Tell my wife, or passengers on the Frankenfish, or the locals we saw yesterday what defines them or their board, and they could tell you it's not important. They could tell you what is important is the swoop and the glide. The high trim line, the rail-burying bottom turn, the fall down the face, legs burning, heart flying.But they probably wouldn't. They would most likely just paddle quietly back to the peak and grab another.
Or, if you were my wife, you might pause for a Tecate first.
