Apologies to all my loyal readers for the slacker approach I've taken with this blog lately. I've been busy with summer things, and this summer that includes plenty of alright to decent to downright amazing days of surf, and many of them on weekends no less! This summer also includes a decent amount of ice cream: Soft-serve Swirl with Chocolate Sprinkles in a Cone, please.
Got to do the lam coat on both sides of 008, which has been waiting patiently for me to finish it. With the long weekend coming up, I'm going to hopefully at least get the glass-on keels set and the board hotcoated, and possibly, though not probably, get it sanded and pinlines laid. I think I've already got the weekend overbooked in my mind with countless projects, so we'll see how it goes.
Amazing Tom and Jerry episode brought to my attention by FRANK
Are you comin', or are you ain't? The Jamies, with "Summertime Summertime." Great summer song.
...and I feel fine. That's right you may have heard that tomorrow may be the beginning of the end, which is true in the sense that any day could be the End, and truer in the sense that for many, many people, tomorrow will be the End of their world, and it could be the End of my/your world. Who knows?
And since any day now could be the End, I bought a new board this week. Well, new to me. A 6'2 swallow tail Bonzer, shaped by Malcolm Campbell. I've been reading about Bonzers for about a year and a half, and I have to admit at first I wasn't that interested. I thought that fin setup looked kind of funny. But as I started reading more, I liked what I heard, especially the lightning-down-the-line part.
There are those concaves. So this one came along and it was reasonably priced, so I grabbed it. I can't wait to try it out, because it's a completely different fin setup than I've ever surfed. Now all we need is a large swell. Hopefully I don't have to wait until fall.
When it comes down to it, I feel like one of the key aspects in all music is repetition. It could be the decision to repeat a musical phrase for an entire song and elaborate on said phrase, or not to repeat a part at all. I find a lot of the music I like has lots of repetition, like the song above. Brain Eno with "The Big Ship" off of Another Green World. Eno is a master of making repetition interesting. I am still waiting for someone to make a surf film using Eno's transcendent "Discreet Music" as a soundtrack. The entire song. Below is half of it. The surfing would have to be very good.
This came on shuffle on the way home from work. Amazing ELO song recorded for their 1973 album On The Third Day, but unreleased until one of the reissues. That's Marc Bolan, of T.Rex fame, playing guitar. Funny coincidence, because yesterday, while shaping 009, which is my first board from the EPS block I procured, I was listening to The Slider, T.Rex's spectacular 1972 album. So spectacular, in fact, that I'll also include a track from that.
...this block of foam came straight from Brooklyn one morning. That's right. Last week the block of 2# EPS finally got delivered to the distribution center in Brooklyn, so I drove up and got it before work. Of course there ended up being waves that morning, but I had to do it, I had been waiting for almost a month for it.
There's the first blank cut from the block, with cedar stringer salvaged from some job. It was tricky cutting it the blank out; Jeannine had to take one side of the hotwiring device while I held the other, but it went relatively quickly with no set-backs to speak of. Gluing the stringer in also presented difficulties, but I've since devised a better way. I'm excited about shaping this board, as I've never shaped EPS, or worked with epoxy. The block of foam should yield a minimum of 10 - 12 blanks, if my figurin' is correct. Maybe more.
Part of the reason I haven't posted in a while is because I've been devoting a lot of time and energy to exterior pursuits. We built a vegetable garden the other weekend, and we've been doing lots of work around here trying to make what looks like the post-war rubble of Warsaw into something a little more pleasing to the eyes. Been planting lots of seeds (the spinach will be the first crop the garden will yield, as the spinaches have already sprouted!) and doing lots of reading on gardening and growing vegetables. So, often times, at night, when the options before bed are A)do a blog post or B)read about companion planting or composting, B) has been getting the priority lately.
Also, speaking of gardening, were you wondering how Henry has helped with it all?
That's how. Henry, who has always loved to dig and roll around in dirt (but somehow never gets dirty), suddenly has a large quantity of gloriously rich mushroom soil delivered right to his backyard. So he rests right in the ways, covered in dirt. It's a dog's life, I guess. Of course, getting him to keep out of the garden has been a trying task.
Recently found this album at a thrift store, and it's pretty good so far (actually listening while I write this post). Buck Owens, "Tall Dark Stranger," off the album of the same name, 1969.
This blog was started as a way to chronicle my adventures into surfboard shaping and just surfing in general. Since its inception, it has evolved into a log of whatever I feel like rambling about and sharing with the world, including, but not limited to: photographs, bicycles and bicycling, film, music, gardening, cute pictures of Henry, and more.
