And then come the sharks....

 I got out for a pre-dawn session the other day on the green Mohawk...

     I finally got a chance to try out this short canoe that my grandfather gave me in November. I paddled it around the marshes in off of Cedar Bonnet Island. It was really nice out and pretty relaxing. Which is what I felt I needed since we've been buying this house.
     Imagine you catch a wave, and it's a really exciting, beautiful wave and everything's going fine, then you wipe out towards the end. You don't make the wave all the way. It was fun, but you didn't get there, so you paddle back out. Then you catch another great head-high peeling left that holds up really nicely, you get covered with a nice barrel for a few seconds, but then you wipe out again. You catch a rail or something, you don't know, but for some reason you eat it. So you paddle back out. The current's strong and your arms are tired. So you go for another wave, but you nosedive. You're really starting to have a terrible time. You get mad at your board. You nose dive again. You quit surfing for good. You catch another wave, big, one to two foot overhead or so, hollow, heavy, and you're trimming fast down the line, but then you wipe out again. You feel your taut leash go slack while you get churned around in the underwater deepening darkness: it's broken. Just when you think you're about to run out of air, you surface and look around for your board. To your relief, it's only about 20 feet away, but then you see the first wave of a massive set getting ready to release all of it's tremendous energy right onto your head and your leashless board. There's not chance to reach the board before the wave, and it's a long way to shore. And then come the sharks....
     Yeah, so it's been a pretty good reminder in why I try to take part in The Way Things Are as little as possible - no TV, no news, no voting, no protests, as little to do with the senselessly irrational, illogical way that governments/corporations/people do their thing. I'm just happier and way more sane (saner?) that way. But of course, you can't exist apart from that which you are, like it or not, a part of. So that's what's up.

   
     It hasn't all been a downer, though. The weather's been beautiful, and yesterday I got a complete darkroom setup for free, which I plan on setting up at our new home, pending the logic of fools. That's right, it's Darkroom: Take Two. Some of you were present at my first attempt at a darkroom: it wasn't really a failure, the darkroom got made and I had all the equipment (also obtained for free via craigslist), but it didn't get much further than that. Hopefully this time, with some nicer photography equipment and also more time (?) I'll do it. We'll see.

      Also, sailing season's coming, and I've been busy with a lot of stuff getting the Gannet ready for that: refinishing my tiller, painting the rudder housing, painting the fenders for the rowboat, etc. It's always fun, just a lot of work before and after the season. It's nice being around this year instead of up at school, I can definitely get the boat in earlier.

     On the Strange Flora front, while I wait for the blanks that I ordered for others' boards to come in, I'm going to shape a fourth board for myself out of a 5'10" fish blank I've got. It's going to be similar to Frank's Chemistry "Boombastik," because every time I ride that board I love it so much. I might take some elements from other small-wave performance boards (i.e. white diamond, dumpster diver) but I'm hesitant to change too much about Boombastik's design, because I always have so much fun on it. I'm thinking I might give it a little more of a squash tail, but not too much more. I'm going to use the Probox fin system, so I can mess with fin positioning a bit, which will be kind of interesting. If everything goes well, I'll be able to get the board shaped and glassed within the next two weeks, and then just wait until I go out to Greenlight in Philly to pick up the blanks and the finboxes. Should be interesting. Stay tuned.


    
      And for some music today, "Powerman," by the Kinks, off Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneyground. An amazing song from an equally amazing album. In Britain in the time of Alexander Pope, John Dryden, Johnathan Swift and all the rest, satire in verse had the power to bring down corrupt government officials and make public disgraces of some of the most greedy, money-grubbing powermen. When the Kinks came around, satire may have lost some of its previous power to make social change, but that doesn't mean it was any less biting. Here they are, in some their most rocking, satirical finest.



P.S. I never remember my dreams but the other day I did and in it the whole world was being methodically destroyed by a race of aliens that had laid siege to the Earth, and there was not a thing anyone could do about it but wait. I woke up thinking it was real, and it kind of is.