Last Sunday under the tutelage of the illustrious Wu Wallace, I glassed my first board. It's a 6'4", based loosely off of the dims of my 6'5" JC SD3 step-up which I've come to know and love, but is pretty beat. It took all day to glass, but was actually really fun. Definitely a good learning experience, and I'm looking forward to glassing my next shape sooner than later.
lil' tubers, floaties, shallow bars, and good vibes in the water. ran into dave and mark in the lineup, and saw josh getting in as i was getting out. hoping for more of the same fun in the sun tomorrow
my buddy chris and i took a day off from work on Tuesday to go up to Infineon Raceway in Sonoma and learn some supermoto riding techniques. it was 8 guys and 2 groups, so 4 people plus an instructor on the track at one time. they ran it on the go kart track, and we did 4 different configurations of the track to keep things interesting.
after a couple sessions to get warmed up and some classroom training and drills, my group got moving pretty good. one guy brought his own bike, a KTM 450 SM, so he would routinely blow past everyone on the straights. it was an absolute blast, and almost the complete opposite of sportbike/street riding in terms of body position for cornering. balls on the tank, ass hanging slightly off the outside of the seat, foot sticking out on the inside, and outside elbow pointed way up. we also had some wet and dirty apexes to deal with, which made things interesting, you could feel the front end push, and using your foot to help keep it connected started to make sense.
as my confidence grew, my corner entries got faster and faster and i was trail braking hard on both brakes, sliding the rear end a bit, and scraping pegs through every turn. eventually i railed through a right hander with the bike decked out, and lost the front. the bike spun out in front of me and flipped off the track into the grass. i hopped to my feet and ran to pick the bike up, its wheels still spinning in 2nd gear (these things are near impossible to stall). the instructor was behind me, and pulled over to make sure i was OK. i was expecting him to tell me to head to the pits and sit the rest of the session out, but instead he offered me his bike, and i was on my way. needless to say i took it easy for the next couple sessions, focusing on weighting the outside peg and pushing the bike under me while keeping my body upright and as much weight as possible over the front tire. finished the day without any more drama, and learned a hell of a lot, especially about traction and using that rear brake.
i rigged up a helmet cam for the last session of the day. no fancy editing, just ~2 minutes of me chasing my friend Chris around the track. if you crank up the audio you can hear me banging off the rev limiter - we kept rotating bikes, and some were geared taller than others, some had slicks, some had dual sport tires, so it kept things very interesting.
anyway, it was a really great experience, with such underpowered bikes it definitely felt like the go kart racing equivalent of motorcycling.
it was good this morning, solid head high with some + sets, minimal friendly crowd. lots of peaky waves, but the ones that walled up through the inside were really fun to carve around on. that guy frank was out there shredding on his longboard, catching all the biggest set waves.
a few screengrabs from a session in capitola with nic and joel last weekend. some fun rides, despite the angry guy in the lineup swearing and throwing kelp all over the place.
despite getting out of mountain view at 5:15 i didn't make it to fort point until 7:05. i knew traffic would suck, but i figured i'd make it by 6:30ish. i'd barely have time to catch one wave before having to get out, so I reluctantly didn't surf and just took a picture of a decent set wave, then went to grub on some Noriega Pizza and delicious wings. A bit of a consolation for not making it in time to get wet. Tomorrow AM should be fun though, low tide in the morning. Swell is dropping a bit, but should still be working with that low of a low. Hopefully I'll have some water pics tomorrow.
had a busy day on saturday. went up to marin to watch jon run a 20k trail run in the morning, and totally goofed and didn't bring a board because i thought the waves would be small but the southern energy in the water filled in nicely up there. i'll post a few pics later, but for now i want to get up some pics of my evening session at Steamer Lane. It was surprisingly uncrowded, only a handful of guys fighting for waves at the slot, and then a few loggers milking the softer middle peak sets. I only had an hour to surf, so tried to maximize my wave count by sitting on the inside of the slot, catching whatever leftovers came through and the odd wave that would swing wide and run through to indicators. Got a couple of nice longish rides, but more often than not I ended up scratching into the closeouts that nobody else was going for. The backwash off of the cliff made the drops steep and bouncy, so I pearled a few times too, which is always fun in front of all the hecklers on the cliff. joanie graciously took some pics, even though I knew she was cold. I kept the session pretty brief and we headed to New Brighton to set up camp before it got too dark.
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