tuesday blahfest

and the swell has only dropped since then...;( at least it's afforded me time to work on drywalling the shaping bay, which is pretty much done thanks to Jon and Ramin helping out. I have get some more tape and mud, then spec out the shelves and the lights. getting there, slowly but surely. i'll upload pics of the room later.
 
 

k st 6am

solitary dawn patrol today, another beautiful morning. not great surf, but some fun ones here and there, the outside sand bar was working and i caught a couple long rides. a few seals splashing around near me too. legs sore from half dome hike but it felt good to be in the water.
 
 
 
 

better than it looks...

looks messy, but some gems coming through if you're in the right place at the right time. plenty of push too, my first wave i lazily tried to back out, but got dragged over the falls. best ride was a 5' set wave that had a really choppy bouncy takeoff then led into a smooth fast bowl section. i landed a little floater past a section and carved a few turns, a much longer and faster ride than I anticipated when I first paddled into it. this will likely be my last session before Yosemite, unless I can sneak on in tomorrow Am...not sure what time we're leaving.
 
 
 
 

crumbly crumbs

not much to ride, but a few little mushy drops and some needed exercise after feasting on too much polish food last night
 
 

bday weekend surf

scored some great sessions in small, clean surf with ryan, ramin & nic. got a lot of fun rides, including 2 little airs, and a teeny little frontside barrel for my bday. OB didn't forget ;) thanks everyone for coming out for some wings and brews for my bday too, appreciate it, especially joanie for organizing. even got to follow up the beautiful weekend with a monday morning foggy slop session with ramin and gillian. it looked like shit, but everyone actually got a few nice little rides, totally worth it in my book, but i'm a hopeless optimist when it comes to surfing...

migraines & mishaps

so yesterday i woke up with a terrible throbbing headache. i tried to get out of bed and do the whole get ready for work thing, but it wasn't happening. just keeping my eyes open was making my head hurt. went back to bed for a few hours, woke up with my head still pounding, and let the office know that i was gonna be working from home. ended up taking a few advil and sleeping until 11:35.

spent the rest of the day working in the living room with a dull headache, but also decided I'd do a Home Depot run to get some materials to drywall the shaping bay finally. went to Home Depot around 5, and picked up everything I needed including 6 sheets of drywall. there was no way to fit the drywall in the car (the sheets are 4'x8') so i threw them up onto the roof racks with some help from a random guy in the parking lot. strapped them down and made sure they were secure, and started driving really slow. I calculated the slowest, most direct route home would be to take skyline to sloat, and then just take 46th all the way home. Turning onto Skyline, I slowly brought my speed up to 30 mph. The speed limit there is 55, so people were flying by me. Just as I was approaching the country club, a big gust of wind blew, and I heard a loud CRACK!!! and saw broken pieces of drywall flying behind the car. Not good... Luckily there was nobody tailgating me, so the drywall just landed flat in the road. I pulled over as soon as I had a shoulder. The top 4 sheets of drywall had broken practically in half, with only the bottom 2 sheets still fully intact. shitty. I made some adjustments, and continued on my way, keeping it around 20 mph and pulling over anytime there were cars behind me. It sucked. After that I crawled home incident free, and hopefully have enough drywall now to at least cover the ceiling. I think next time I'll need to use the motorcycle trailer to haul the drywall more securely and with less wind resistance, maybe with some ply or 2'x4's to brace it on the top and prevent it from flexing so much.

leash free bonzer session in Huntington

down in OC for momma's day, and spend saturday with the fam and the dogs at Huntington cliffs. Eric is the man, and let me borrow his 6'3" bonzer, a real pretty artsy board. unfortunately, i forgot my leash, and the waves were 4-6 and chopped. the bonzer was a fun ride, easy to get into waves and felt drivey through sections, but I couldnt get used to the vague feeling turning it, but it was my first time on a bonzer and i didnt have a leash so i was being conservative. despite my best efforts, i wiped out twice, once on a right, and then trying to pigdog a left. pearled both times, and had to swim all the way back to the beach after the stray board. i ended up swimming almost as much as surfing, but it was a blast. anyways, gotta run, mother's day brunch is a callin'...happy mothers day!

shaper session

 
So last night i headed to SC after work to meet up with Wu Wallace, who I'm buying a fishy board off of. He brought the blank along, and will be sending it to the glasser soon. It's an interesting shape because it doesn't have a swallow tail, more of a really wide rounded tail, with the rest of the dimensions similar to a retro fish. I'm gonna have him make it a quad, and if it rides as planned it will be really drivey and fast with plenty of guts to get past flat spots, but will hold well and turn fluidly because of the rounded tail. Definitly a unique board, it will be a good addition to the quiver, especially for summer OB. We had a little session on the west side, got a few good sets that were big and hollow enough to pull into, but the lulls were long and it got dark quick. Wu was really cool, we chopped it up about surfing, shaping and boards for a good hour before heading out. I'm stoked to be getting a new board and building a relationship with a shaper, and starting to shape myself. Gotta get the bay drywalled still and order some tools, time to crank out some boards!

fatass linda mar jiggly jetty

yesterday wasn't nearly as big as Surfline forecasted, the shitheads. Linda Mar was warbly, fat, and sets were about head high. Good enough size, but not connecting well like the previous days, and just not as much fun. I was with Taylor and Ryan, and we decided to hop back in the cars and head down to the jetty. Checked Montara on the way down, and it looked decent, although I didn't notice anyone out. Jetty was OK, some decent wedges refracting off of the jetty, with some really punchy and fast chest - shoulder high sets. Ryan missed Taylor and I in the parking lot, so drove around for a while looking for us. By the time he found us and decided to suit up and paddle out, I had to end my session and scoot to work. It was a fun session though, not barreling clean, but some pretty fun walls and sections on the better sets. One wave I actually was able to get my fins free and whip my tail around over the top of the wave, but I didn't stick it. Still, that's the closest I've ever gotten to pulling off one of those tail wafts. I had been reading and analyzing how Dane Reynolds does those, and sliding your front foot forward when the nose of your board leaves the wave and kicking the tail out seems to work, provided you have enough speed to release off the top. Too bad I only seem to have enough speed to do that occasionally, but I seem to be getting more consistent, so a short term goal of mine now is to learn how to stick those. The physics of it seems very similar to doing a lipslide or a disaster on a skateboard, so I think it will just take a lot of speed runs, practice, and wipeouts until I get the hang of it. I'm heading down to Davenport to meet up with this guy Wu who is shaping me a 5'9" fish, a little early bday present for myself...Can't wait to meet him and see what artwork he has in mind for the board, one of the other finished boards that he showed me has this wild graphic on the bottom of a shark puking a rainbow. It's out there, but really unique so I'm looking forward to getting and learning how to ride a fish well.

super fun Linda Mar

 
 
 
No time to write, but LM has been really fun the past couple of days. Sets are lining up nice all the way to the inside, making for some rippable walls and racy sections. Swell is building into tomorrow, surfline is saying 9-12, so I'm stoked, and gonna make sure I actually make it to the beach by 6:30 (as opposed to 7:45) to maximize my wave count. More pics here:
yesterday: http://picasaweb.google.com/cbogart/LindaMarFog?feat=directlink
this am: http://picasaweb.google.com/cbogart/CinquoDeMaioLM?feat=directlink