Signs of the Times

     Spring is just around the corner, and even though it has felt like Spring for much of the Winter, there are a few things that come the changing of the seasons other than warm weather and sunshine. One of them is ice cream, and the fact that Jeffreeze is opening this Friday makes me so happy I get brainfreeze just thinking about it.

     And I'll be riding my bike there more, to partially (barely) offset the caloric consumption of a gargantuan Jeffreeze small soft serve. Since this winter has been so warm, and we haven't had many waves (up until the last two weeks anyway), I started road-biking a lot. I didn't really decide to, I just kind of suddenly felt like getting into it, and bikes have always been a part of my life, be it BMX or British 3-speeds, or what-have-you, and road riding was the next logical step. I bought the above Nishiki Sebring as a single speed, rode it like that for a bit, discovered the magic of gears (I still really like single-speed riding, and am in the process of setting up another bike for that), and added more stuff along the way. I have been commuting when I can, and nothing makes a work day better, in absence of a good morning swell, than getting an hour's bike ride in beforehand. Also, figured pretty conservatively, I save about 2.30 on gas each way, probably more now that gas has gone up a bit, and that makes it that much better. Of course, we won't talk about the cost of bike parts to a restless tinkerer...

    And despite the lack of surfboard construction recently, I have been surfing some, and here's proof! Every time someone captures me surfing, I'm just going straight on a crumby wave. Someday I'll see what I look like turning or something. Maybe an air...

     I have also been doing lots of prep for gardening this year, whether it be reading about it, working on the garden, or starting seeds. I found a book at the thrift store in the fall, Square Foot Gardening,which has a different method of gardening much better suited to small spaces, as opposed to traditional row-type gardening. I definitely recommend it, and I can't wait to see the results this growing season.

AHHHH! OK HENRY I'LL STOP WRITING NOW!!!!

Jeff Mangum/Music Tapes Philly Show Review

     Since it's a rain day, here's my rambling, less than cohesive, review of the show. 

      We went to the Jeff Mangum/Music Tapes show in Philly the other night. The show was at the Irvine Auditorium (photo above not from that event, but sans the stars in the background, it could have been), which, if you've never been there, is a really cool place to see a show. It was weird seeing Mr. Mangum and the Music Tapes (who opened for him) in a theatre setting, as I have previously only seen them in smaller, seatless venues such as Maxwell's, but after standing at shows forever, it's nice to sit, and our seats were good, even though there didn't seem to be a bad seat in the house.

 

     The Music Tapes (photo above, also not from the show), led by singing saw-loving Julian Koster, were as fun and weird to see as always. The set was a mix of mostly old and some new songs, all of which were good. Koster has a wonderful singing voice, and I feel like that shines through much better during live performances versus albums. He told a great story about a Romanian circus family who passed down there secrets through songs, and proceeded to play one of the songs. Koster creates not only great and unique music, but alternate worlds and universes in which that music dwells. It's always Christmas there. In every performance I've seen of him, he exudes such vast quantities of music and joy that a spectator would be hard pressed to not enjoy the show, even if his music isn't their cup of tea (which I'll admit, it's not for everyone. I bought my Mom a copy of his album The Singing Saw at Christmastime last Christmas, a copy which I now own. I replaced it for her with A Christmas Gift to You from Phil Spector). A really fun set.
     Jeff Mangum's stage appearance was preceded by five guys carrying one guitar each. This was an acoustic solo performance, and I was surprised to see five guitars. He entered  the stage with a casual wave then began playing. He played most, if not all, of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, some songs from On Avery Island, and some other various songs. No new stuff, though, which I hoped for but didn't expect. Mangum played the songs well. They echoed album versions so closely that you could almost hear the band that would be backing his percussive acoustic strumming. Some of my favorites from the show were songs other than the Aeroplane songs, such as "Engine" and "Little Birds," two songs with almost exactly opposite emotional content.
     He did some songs with the Music Tapes, too, which were really good, but left me yearning to hear other NMH songs, specifically "Ghost" and "King of Carrot Flowers Pts. Two and Three," with a full band playing them. I think that's the only time I'll go see Jeff Mangum again, if it's a full reformation of Neutral Milk Hotel. One can only dream.

A video from the show, another of which can be found at this website, as well as the setlist.

"Rubby Bulbs," one of my favorite NMH songs that wasn't played at the show.

 P.S. This is ostensibly a surf blog, and I finally got a good post-work solo surf on some clean waist high lines the other day. It had been two and a half weeks, the longest I've gone in a long time, and it felt like I hadn't paddled in years. I live for winter surfs like these: lined-up, empty waves. Doesn't need to be big. In fact, I almost prefer smaller, because it brings less people out. It was also nice that it was above 50 degrees after 4 pm at the end of January!

A Fool and His Fin

    Had a good surf on Thursday morning. It was my second time out on the mini-Simmons, and this swell was much more powerful than last week, the lines at WJ were connecting for so long, w/ the best rides, at least for me, coming just outside of the Rockpile and heading south. Was having tons of fun, but then, for some reason, I went to take off on a pretty nice wave, and the tail just slid right out from under my feet. I knew right away: a fin's gone. And it was. That's the second time I've made box fins that they have gone missing during a surf, which is discouraging. The first time I knew the reason, they were cedar-core, which is a soft wood, but I thought the glass would help it. This time, they were all fiberglass, so I thought they'd last, but something must have given, because the set screws were still set, so the glass must have broken. Real bummer, because even though I planned on trying out different fins in the future, I would have liked to test these a bit more. Plus, I liked the yellow/blue color scheme. Oh well, I've got some FCS FK-2's coming, which I think might be a little small, with only a 7" base, but they were cheap (used) and if they don't work for this they'll work for future projects. That's it for now.

Ayler  - Omega is Alpha
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      One of  my favorite jazz musicians, Albert Ayler, playing one of my favorite songs of his, "Omega is the Alpha," off of his Live from the Village Vanguard album. Really wild stuff, it can suck you in.

      Another one of my favorites of his, "Spirits Rejoice." However, this version isn't as good as others I've heard, but I can't find any others, and it's 9 AM on a beautiful Saturday morning, so I'm not going to sit on the computer any longer. TAKE IT EASY.

Who laughs this way? Ho Ho Ho!

       Well, Christmas is almost here, and we've had some fun waves the past couple of days, with a good next few days to look forward to. Surfed WJ and Sunken Rocks for two hours today, and got lucky enough to have it all to myself while six longboarders crowded around Beach One. I had a chance to get reacquainted with an old friend: SF 003, the hull I made. These waves proved to be perfect for getting used to the board again: not too big, but lined up nice and with some speed to them. I had a blast. On one of my best rides, as I coasted over the disappearing shoulder, I looked and saw the last blip of the sun before it set for the day.

    Sunset sessions on smallish south end surf in the wintertime are always very peaceful. I wish the moon would've risen earlier, I probably would have kept right on surfing into the night.

Recent Developments

     So, it's been a little bit so I figure it's time for an update, and a rain-day washout morning is the best time for that sort of thing. We had a great swell this past weekend, with days upon days of ever-changing solid northeast windswell, ranging from chaotic to semi-clean, from shallow take-offs to steep drops. Wind never switched offshore, but that's OK. Surfed Wounded Gull, Sandal, and had inaugural WJ surf on Saturday, which was great to get back down there after a couple months hiatus and surf some nice long lines. Sunday's surf at Wounded Gull was punctuated parenthetically in the middle by the 32nd Annual Dog Day 5 Mile Road Race, in which I beat my past self by about 1 minute 15 seconds, for a total of 41:14 (which when you factor in the delay between when the siren sounded and when we actually crossed the starting line is more like 39:14 or so) which is better than I thought I'd do considering I haven't really been running. I have been surfing a lot more than last year, though, so I guess the lesson is: surfing is better training for running than running. Probably not, but a man can dream.

   If you remember, back on Valentine's Day I posted about skinning Frank's Rastafish with plans to make something out of it for him. Well, with 005 finished for Mark, it was about time to start this one. The dimensions are 5'4" x 19 5/8" x 2 5/16 ", with a single wing and this little fang-fish-squash thing of  a tail, which was entirely my design. No, it was Frank's, and that's the truth. That square hole is where the leash plug used to be. Still a bit to go shaping-wise, but it's coming along.

     Check out that cover, first printing 1968. Been reading this book I picked up at the thrift store last week. Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazine from 1891-1911, edited by Sam Moskowitz. This collection has been really interesting so far, with the first 30 or so pages giving a really detailed history of the popular magazine in the United States and England, along with the prevalence of science fiction material therein. Really great stuff in here, divided into sections such as Catastrophes, Marvelous Inventions, Monsters and Horrors, Future Wars, Man-Eating Plants, and more. The titles of the stories are really great as well: "Where the Air Quivered," "The Voice in the Night," "The Ray of Displacement," "Itself," and "The Mansion of Forgetfulness," just to name a few. There's a couple well known names here, H.G.Wells and Jules Verne, but most of the stories are written by authors I've never heard of. One thing to think of when reading the works of forward-thinking imaginations of the past: Would they have been disappointed in the future? Maybe, because Robert Barr, in his story "The Doom of London," imagines that by the year 1950 electricity would have run its course and been replaced by "vibratory ether." It must have been a strange, strange world back then. I guess it still is.

A rare shot of Wounded Gull.

KAK was a psych group formed in a San Francisco in 1968 by Gary Lee Yoder, who would later be a member of Blue Cheer. A really wonderful album from '69 that has since been re-released with some great extra tracks. A blend of really good psych-jams veering towards the harder side, such as "Electric Sailor" and "Bryte 'N' Clear Day," and some mellower stuff that really balances the album, such as "I've Got Time" and my personal favorite off of the album, "Flowing By." The whole album is a solid piece of '60s psych rock that is definitely worth a listen. 

Here to Hear

03 - Electric Sailor

05 - I've Got Time

06 - Flowing By

07 - Bryte 'N' Clear Day

Heavy Friends

 

     So, there have been some amazing waves the past couple days down at WJ. Yesterday we were privy to some chest to head-high and well beyond waves complete with stinging sleet-like back spray projected by the 30 mph + offshore winds that created some of the most sickly devastating hollow lefts we've seen in a while down there. The word "awesome" has a few different definitions (it is probably important to note here that whenever the definition of a word is given, it is without exception the definition given by the Oxford English Dictionary), and more than one can be used to describe the waves yesterday. Sure, 3.a: in weakened sense: overwhelming, staggering; remarkable, prodigious. colloq. (orig. and chiefly U.S.), describes our the waves, but so does 2: Inspiring awe; appalling, dreadful, weird (except for maybe the "weird" part, but even that...). These waves were heavy. It was an intense privilege to be able to see these waves, let alone ride them. 

     Ryan, still on the sidelines (he's just come off) from a debilitating injury in Puerto Rico, was able to get some photos of us our there. None of these do the waves justice: they are just stills of roaring energy. But still, some cool shots. 

      I believe these are of myself. I'm really just going off of stance and what Ryan told me.

      Can't tell who these one is, but the waves are pretty nice.

      A sandpiper. But yeah, so yesterday was very, very nice. Fortunately, the swell stuck around for today, and I was able to get out this morning before work. At first it was just myself and this seal that kept on watching me, wondering what I was probably. Then one other guy came out. The waves: waist to chest, glassy lefts, and lining up nice. After I caught a bunch and the tide filled in a lot, it was time to go to work, and I waited for a wave. Then one came: a head high left that I was in the perfect spot for, between WJ and the rockpile, and as the only other guy out cheered on I got it and screamed down the line on SF 001, barrel overhead and chasing hard, holding high lines on the twin keels, the wave walling up in front of me and me barely able to make it to the end, but I did, way down the beach. It was without a doubt one of my favorite waves in the past few months, maybe this whole winter season. That kind of ride is why I surf.

                                                                                                                                                 Blue cheer.

    Now, hopefully there will be some swell left for tomorrow morning. 

     On another note: my friend Pat has started up two new interesting blogs: one, called Casualties of the Loudness War, is a music blog, and Pat definitely knows a thing or two or a million about music, so check it out. The other, called Step 1: Make Use of Your Time, has a pretty unique concept and seems like it will be really interesting to follow. Check that out also.

Puerto Rico was nice but...

...this is home. I got the first role of b/w film shot with my OM-4 developed, and found some nice pictures in there. Just take a minute and look at the above wave. It's beautiful. And no one was one was out. This picture to me sums up wintertime surfing in NJ: cold, hollow, big, and empty. I don't remember when this was from, but it's within the last couple weeks.

The above two pictures are from I think three Wednesdays ago. It snowed hard while Don and I were surfing beautiful lefts with no one out. I had to go to work, but I got a couple pictures of Don out there. The top one is Don waiting, and the bottom one is of him dropping in. It's kind of hard to see on this scanned picture, but he's there.

Yesterday's Gone...

...but we still have photographs. Here are some from Sunday, which may seem a little redundant but I love how the first picture, while not nearly the best wave of the day, shows how the bar is built up just right so the waves at WJ bend with the bottom. Almost looks like a point break type wave. I don't really like how the horizon isn't leveled in this picture, but it was about 13 degrees out and I think at this point my hands were frozen...

 

 

 

 

Chad & Jeremy - Yesterday's Gone

When I Woke Up...

     I woke up at 5:30 and fixed myself a bowl of oatmeal with pumpkin puree, walnuts, raisins, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and then sat down at the computer to check the weather. It was 10 degrees with the wind chill. Usually I would try to get to ocean by sun up, but today I figured I'd wait just a little bit for old Helios to swing that sun a little higher.

     So I got over to Holgate at about 7:45, took some pictures, then got in the water at 8. I was the only one out for at least an hour, which was something I thought about while I was out there: All alone with super clean waist-to-chest high waves and the sunshine warm on my face. A dream? No. As a succession of duck-dives took my breath away, the cold reality made me realize that maybe that was the reason I was the only one out. Still, after being in for three hours, I never got cold, except for my hands, but that's because the glue I had used to patch the holes came off, and my gloves were getting flushed pretty constantly. Looks like it might be time for new gloves, which is a bummer, since I just bought them this past fall. I don't think the slices in them are defects, but I don't know where they came from since they are usually either in my wetsuit bag or on the back dash. Mysteries and Wonders. But at least this may give me an excuse to pick up some 7mm mitts, which will pretty much guarantee that I won't get the wintertime blue fingertips again. We'll see. 

     But yeah, back to surfing. As you can see from the pictures above, the waves were a little soft this morning, but these pictures don't really do them justice, and they definitely hollowed out a lot more as the tide filled in. I took my hull out and the first long left I caught was a decent length barrel which I flew through just narrowly escaping. For the first hour and forty-five minutes I had a blast on that board, I think I'm getting the hang of riding it, stepping forward or back to trim, getting down really low and feeling the board just take off like a shot down the line, and no pumping it. And it has such a smooth feel to it. The leaning-way-over bottom turns are a blast every time, getting down so low then flying up the face. I had a lot of long swooping lefts on the board today. But I guess I started to get tired or something because I kept screwing up and making dumb mistakes. So I went to grab 002, my new thruster.

     Anyone want to buy my deformed child? $100. Just kidding. Kind of. I've had plenty of really nice rides on 002, it's the board in my quiver that I prefer for large, powerful rights. But the problem with the board and softish waves is that since I accidentally shaped too much rocker into it, it is slower than I want it to be. Right in the curls not a problem, but on slower, smaller, or less powerful waves, when the board gets ahead of the wave it just stalls. Like some cars I've had. It's extremely frustrating. Plus, every time I look at the board and see the twist, I become disgusted. Also, the nose is too pointy. I might chop it off.

     I guess the board teaches me a couple lessons: 1) Don't just shape rocker into a board without taking time to take measurements and really think things through. I kind of just dove into it and figured what would happen would happen. This is what happens. 2) Take your time. I don't know if the twist happened in the shaping process, but if it did, I shouldn't have let it happen. Even if it is my second board. I still don't know if I feel the twist when riding, but it absolutely has to make some difference. And since a picture hanging crooked drives me bonkers, just imagine what a twisted board does to me. 

     In a way, it's kind of good that the board doesn't work perfectly, because I think if it did I would just be cool with it and that would be that. But since it has these problems, I pick at it and feel for them when I ride, and try to think of ways to make it better. I think someone sometime somewhere said you learn more from your failures than your successes. I don't know about that, but there's some truth to it anyway. 

All I know is that these sandpipers were there before I went surfing, and they were there when I got done, running away from the whitewater then chasing it back to pick up whatever remnants it let behind. I hope they had a good session, because I know I did