“Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy a surfboard, that’s pretty close.”
The most important things in life to me are my loved ones and my surfboards. A month ago when my nearly ten foot blue companion had to be laid up surgery for an unexpected puncture, I felt incomplete, a whiter replacement getting me a good deal of waves but not feeling quite right under my feet. And so as I walked into Jose Barahona’s shaping shack yesterday with a delivery of new sleds for him from Orange County, I wasn’t expecting that I had a package of my own. The board we had been developing together, weeks prior, was done.
I bounced out of bed this morning, flung on a surf suit and grabbed my new friend, looking lustrous and smelling like a fresh resin shower. The bare deck was slippery in my hands, and grabbing some bars of sticky wax, I met ocean lover and marine mammal defender Jose Bacallao in the Brothers Burritos parking lot, where he too had a new baby; a green Aleutian Juice SUP crafted by Dave Parmenter. The time had come to test ride our virgin sea-vehicles, and we nearly skipped to the water’s edge.
Hurriedly waxing my board, we looked out at the fun peelers that were softly strolling in with the high tide, and as soon as some just-clingy-enough bumps formed, I plunged south side of the pier to witness Jose, who was already out, catch his first wave on his brand new SUP all the way to the beach.
Sick as a dog from a bad cold and cut up, bruised and beaten from ten days at a stellar left point break in Mexico, I was feeling a bit tired. But as soon as I got in with new blue, everything came together and I felt invigorated. The water washed away the ill feelings, and the stinging in my knee subsided, even though I was immersed in the Pacific. I started catching waves and was in a bit of disbelief. Fade right, pump down the line, hang 10, step back and slam off the lip. I’d never felt that good on a board the first time riding it, and the waves (even though I have a blast riding in wind blown messes) weren’t really the best shape. It was salty harmony; even though I was pulled to catching up with surf friends, my mind was reveling in the fact that this board has the potential of being close to perfect. Two hours of sliding and laughs, and my beaten body was down for the count. Day 291 of consecutive days of surf was in the bag, and day 1 on my new possibly magic board had just begun.
