TONGUE-LIKE FOOT

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A close look at one of the beached clams and its foot, found two days ago.
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Sure am glad I don't have to lay down and use my tongue to push my body as a way of gettin' around.
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GOOD DAY FOR THE SEAGULLS

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While it was fun but slim pickins' for waves this morning with the big swell gone and the new one yet to really fill in, there was a littoral feast of swell battered creatures washing up on the shoreline.
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SUNDAY RISE

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Took a drive checkin' local spots last Sunday afternoon.
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More photos will be added to this post later.
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ARE WHAT YA DO

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Glasser, Terence Brandt, with his resin stalactites. Took 3 years to form— lots 'o boards in those drips.
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SHADOW FALLS OFF THE MIRROR

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Two different looks of last night's eclipse as the Moon regained and reflected Sun's light.
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My wife and I didn't know to expect the eclipse last night (somehow missed the heads up at Wine & Woodsmoke). We happened to step outside when the Moon had regained a crescent of light and she said, "Wasn't the Moon nearly full last night?" To then process and realize what was goin' on, rather then be told, was a magic way to experience the phenomenon— As if to feel an exciting moment of self-reliance and relieving independence from the sense dulling bombardment of the Communication Age. To feel a rush of primitive senses that I unintentionally diluted as soon as I started fiddling with camera settings. But then that's always been one of my inner battles... total immersion vs. documentation. With documentation being a form of collecting, and collecting, I think, being a primal urge in and of itself... it's a hard battle to win... probably because there's no need to. Better to think of some inner battles as rallies rather than strict matches, I guess.
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GRAYSCALE

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Photos from today— "Same Day, Same Beach Town" installment #2:
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CLEARING THE WEBS

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With all the things that can weigh on one's mind, it was nice to paddle out on a Valentine's lunch break and only have to think one thing, "left or right?"
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As can be seen, I tend to favor the left.
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CROSS SECTIONS

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Same day, same hour, same beach town:
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CLOWN MACABRE

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A low-grade, low-fi, cheesey, short flick made sometime around 1999 I called CLOWN MACABRE, recently re-edited to the song Friends Don't Let Friends Win by Hella.
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Approx. run time: 3.5 minutes
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DOG EAT CAT, CAT EAT...

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drawn in 1992. click to enlarge.
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SURF BUMPS

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Quite the odd piece of driftwood.
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IF IT WASN'T FOR SURFING WOULD I EVER STAND?

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Oh yeah, there's always showering, contemplating at the fridge, cookin' da food, brushing the teeth, taking a leak, pumpin' the gas, and... shopping for stuff.
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If you haven't seen it yet, you might want to check out The Story of Stuff. It's worth the movie load wait.
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NINE LIGHTS "OPEN FACE SANDWICH" PROTOTYPE W/ FLEX TAIL

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Two sessions on this 5'4" and so far I'd say this is the most exciting feeling board I've ever rode.
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A prototype board by Jeff Beck of Nine Lights Surfboards. It utilizes a composite sandwich method of construction of balsa wood over foam, however only the deck and the rails of the stringerless e.p.s. foam has the outer composite of balsa wood. The bottom inner edge of the wood rails stop at the chine edge and from there the entire bottom underneath the tinted cut lap and opaque sea-foam-green pigmented glass job is only foam, no balsa wood— Thus the "Open Face Sandwich" variation of a composite sandwich board. Also the length of the wood rails end at the leading edge of the front fins area. By removing the wood rails i-bar like rigidity from the tail area, combined with the Open Face bottom, adds flex to the tail. The balsa wood layer of the deck covers the entire width from rail to rail and length of the board from the nose to the pins of swallow tail. That layer of deck wood running over the tail area seems to create a really responsive, reactive spring in the flex tail.
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On top of all that, the board was glassed with the flexible Resin-X (urethane-based). Jeff experienced some technical and aesthetic difficulties to glassing with the Resin-X (for example, as seen in the irregular color and edges of the cut laps) that present a learning curve to working with it, but one thing's for sure... it is flexy.
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The Open Face Sandwich & flex tail construction combined with the Resin-X and you can really feel the tail load up with flex under your back foot during the first half of a turn and "snap" back to it's original tail rocker during the second half that creates an acceleration out of turns I've never felt before. The word that best describes the feeling to me is INSANE!!! I've really never felt anything like it out of a board before.
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The "Open Faced" foam bottom.
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A section of the tinted balsa wood deck and rail.
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Twin with small trailer fin set up.
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Sometime soon Jeff will be shaping another Open Face Sandwich flex tail board, but will glass it entirely with epoxy resin in order to learn just how much of the functional flex is coming from the Open Face flex tail construction versus the
Resin-X.
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