IF YOU WERE EVER GONNA DESTROY YOUR TV...

.
.
...Monday is a good day to do it.
.
.

LIL' BIT SCHIZOID (Camel Toe Behavioral Feedback)

..
This particular board with the 1st version of the Parallel-O-Tail/Camel Toe got nicknamed "The Wishbone" the moment it was first seen in glassed, finished form.
.
After two long sessions on Friday and Saturday, I have this to report...


Cons:

1. There are extremes at both ends of this board. The split tail, plus an extreme amount of belly the foils into bladey, very high rails in the nose (I'll try to add a pic of nose rail foil soon). Unfortunately the rails in the nose area ended up being the most dominate feature when riding this board. It is really hard to keep the front of the board from digging rail when bottom turning and initiating a cutback.

2. To compensate for the tendency of the nose to dig rail, one must concentrate on riding the board off the tail. Your back foot ends up so far back on the tail that amount of flex the tail has to offer is not being engaged most of the time. In the end the nose belly has worked against the effectiveness of the tail flex.

3. When I have managed to do a square bottom turn straight up to hit the lip there is a moment right before hitting the lip when you can feel one half of the tail flex independently of the other half under your foot. It's a strange sensation that does catch you off guard.


Pros:

1. On the few cutbacks I was able to initiate with my back foot forward enough to more fully engage the flex of the tail, the functionality of the flex did show potential.

2. As far as overall trim speed goes, the tail slot does not seem to hinder speed, as the board gets up to speed quickly and maintains drive down the line.

3. Though the the belly/rail foil combo in the nose has posed a problem during bottom turns and cutbacks, there have been a few high line glides in the pocket that felt like there were ball-bearings between the water and board that allowed for riding the high line right in the hook for an extended period of time. But, while that's good, it's not worth the difficulty that it poses during bottom turns, etc.


Moving Forward:

Based on the Pros and Cons above, the next board with Parallel-O-Tail will have the nose belly removed. It will be shaped into a blank where the stringer ends above the tail portion of the board, and it will have a shorter slot in the tail.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

ETERNAL RAINBOW RIDE

.
.
Tip 'o the hat to Albert Hofmann, who shifted into cruise control yesterday at the age of 102.
..
This post thanks to anonymous tipster.
.
.
.
.

INSIDE A RAINBOW

.
.

.
.
By Jeffrey Manson
.
.
.

AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW

..
Board by Elias Crouch
.
.

AT THE OTHER END OF THE RAINBOW

.
.
Little does anyone know that Jack Sykes of Line Up Surfboards/Glassin' has a fume warped twin brother, Psycho Jack, that lives, eats, bathes (in acetone), and sleeps confined to the glassing bay. Seen here coveting the "Camel Toe" with his drawing of a basking shark on the deck that will be gone as soon as the hot-coat is sanded by Jeff Beck.
.
.

GRAY ON GRAY ON GRAY MATTER

.
Mental block this A.M., courtesy of fog and south wind lump.
..
Fittingly so, woke up this morn to see passage into the playground, across from my home, blocked by chain link fence. One of the last sand lot playgrounds in town. Probably out of order until the sand is replaced by that spongy rubber stuff.
.
.

δελφίς

.
The name "dolphin" is originally from Ancient Greek:
.
δελφίς (delphís; "dolphin"), which was related to the Greek δελφύς (delphys; "womb").
.
The animal's name can therefore be interpreted as meaning "a 'fish' with a womb".
..
While sleeping, the bottlenose dolphin shuts down only half of its brain, along with the opposite eye.
.
The other half of the brain stays awake at a low level of alertness. This attentive side is used to watch for predators, obstacles and other animals. It also signals when to rise to the surface for a fresh breath of air. After approximately two hours, the animal will reverse this process, resting the active side of the brain and awaking the rested half.
.
.

SUNDAY MELTDOWN

.
Every cell in the body is pinning for relief but da heat just keeps a comin'.
.

.
.
Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightning" (Layin' it down in above clip: 1964. Originally released: 1956)
.
.
.

CLOUDBREAK '99

.
A couple of polaroids from a photographer that was on my 1999 Tavarua trip mentioned in the Grow & Bottle post a week ago.
.
.
North Shore charger, Dave Wassel, kickin' through a meaty section. Dave was the trip's M.V.P. Always sitting the deepest in the lineup, and always lookin' to make sure anyone that took licks surfaced ok.
.
.

REBOOT

.
.

.
.
Terence McKenna: Culture Is Your Operating System
.
.
.

BETWEEN TWO MAGNETS

.
"Of all the forces that can pull a surfer away from the sea, a woman is probably the strongest."
.
—Anthony Friedkin
.
.

.
.
Artist: Dead Meadow
Song: Drifting Down Streams
Album: Howls From The Hills
.
Visuals altered from the film: Logan's Run
.
.
.

HAPPY TRAILS

.
"...like junkies addicted to smack... surfers who've gone through the years need waves like other people need to eat, sleep and get laid."
.
— Anthony Friedkin
..
Audio: "Who Do You Love/When You Love"
.
.

.
.
.

SUNDAY DRIVE

.
One of those moments where daddy proves he doesn't always know best: Pays to enter the state beach, proceeds to drive up on to the bike/walking path, and then decides it's a fine day for taking the family for a drive out on the beach.
.
Mommy and daughter wait alone while dad is pulled off to the side and tries to explain himself outa this one to a cop.
.


.
One of the patrolling lifeguards said this was the 4th person to do this in '08.
.
.

GROW & BOTTLE

.

.
October, 1999— After scoring a week of perfection in Tavarua while filming for my first, little known, surf film, SCRATCH MISCELLANEOUS, I arrived in Manly, Australia for a 10 day flat spell. No car and lots of doing nothing. Time moving really slow. One particularly long, solo lunch under mid-day heat took me through a couple bottles of Pellegrino. In the age old act of boredom, the condensation bathed labels were peeled from the bottles. Some time was then passed gluing them into the pages of my travel journal.
.
.
.

RUNNING FREE!

.




.
Rolled by this van during a lunch break surf check today...
.
.

.
.
.

RUNNING FREE?

.
...Then, a little later in the surf check, this dude rolled by me.
.
.
It was made all the more humorous to me with all the recent talk of the Camel Toe Tail / Banana Split / Plumber's Crack / Coin Slot / Moose Knuckles / Mud Flaps, etc. still fresh in my mind.
.
Needless to say, the guy was letting it all hang out in a wake laughter and a couple of heckling hoots and whistles from people in the parking lot.
.
.

.
.
.

FINS FOR THE CAMEL TOE

.


.
I sacrificed a dawn patrol opportunity this morning to go draw up a fin template for the Camel Toe with the Dove.
.
For this board I want long based twin fins, but at the same time I don't want all that base glassed on the tail to retard its flex. The solution we went with was to notch out the rear of the fin to reduce the amount of base tied to the board... form must follow function. Plus, though I've never ridden notched fins, they supposedly have a bit of good "twang" to them as seen in a Rastovich interview that Pranaglider/23 Breaths posted a while back.
.
.

.
.
.

THE CAMEL TOE, A.K.A. THE...

.
Though I've only shaped a few boards here and there, I've been doing a lot thinking over the last year or so about how to design flex into boards... usually to then collaborate on the ideas with Copper Dove when he shapes me a Nine Lights board.
.
One of the most exciting things I've seen on my quest for flex was the photo of Michael Mackie's Demetri Milovich/Winterstick inspired flex tail fish in Andrew Kidman's book, ETHER, that I got a copy of last January. Below is a pic of one such Mackie fish (ripped from Young Man Grand).
..
Going off of Mackie inspiration, I recently had the thought: Rather than elongating the swallow tail pins for flex, why not totally cut out the stringer from the normal tail portion of the board? Thus creating two separate, independently flexing halves that can be stood on by the rear foot simultaneously. When I drew it out in front of a few friends, the term "Camel Toe" couldn't help but to be mentioned— was a good laugh.
.
One can come up with plenty of reasons why this might not work. The first I thought of is, if too much water channels up through and gets "caught" in the tail cleft it might cause drag. But I'm hoping that at speed the water will be sheeting off and past the cleft's bottom edge more than it will be collecting in the cleft. Obviously, structural strength, or lack there off might prove to be an issue too. The worst that can happen is it ends up riding like crap! Or I snap it at the tail.
.
Over the last week I've had a chance to borrow the Dove's shaping bay and decided to take a crack at shaping the "Camel Toe" board myself out of an EPS blank that's been sitting in my garage for a year. I decided to incorporate the C.T. into a shape influenced by the fishes and displacement hulls I've been riding, plus a magic session I had on a 4'11" Casper related board called the "White Pony" that Richard Kenvin brought down to the last Cardiff AB3. Pic of the White Pony below, cropped and enlarged from a photo by Maggie Marsek.
.
.
Note: With much respect to R.K., though this board was not an attempt to "copy" the White Pony, I'm sure I would have shaped certain elements of it differently if I hadn't been lucky enough to experience the W.P.— If anyone reading this likes the idea of doing cutbacks on a board that makes you feel like you're riding on a fast moving cloud that turns on a dime, then I highly suggest you contact the Swift Movement. 619/696-0677.
.
The blend of influences resulted in a bit of a mutant: 5'0" tall, pulled in nose with extreme belly, wide mid section and tail (though not as wide as the W.P.), bladed rails in the nose section that blend into full, tucked rails in the mid section, and the C.T. tail that will get glass on single foil twin fins.
.
To keep my toes from getting injured in the cleft, I'll probably cover the length of the deck side of the cleft with a thin, cut out strip of traction pad. If the C.T. tail proves to work, then I'll figure out something more aesthetically pleasing, 'til then... little strip of trac-pad it is.
.

.
Amongst other minor irregularities, I pulled a few chunks of foam out of the rail foil of the nose... blading out EPS takes a certain finesse I was lacking today. Oh well... Fuck It, Glass it, Ride It!
.

.
The C.T. tail is Also Known As the... Cleft Tail, Tweezer Tail, Deer Hoof, Banana Split, Parallel-O-Tail, Pincher Bug, Plumber's Crack (via Lawless), Tulip Tail (via Twinfin), Swedish Coin Slot (via Parallel Universe), Mud Flaps (if it ends up it's too flexy and bogs), and Double Trouble (If it doesn't work at all)... I'll post feedback after I ride it.
.
Note: I'm sure other people have probably made tails like this too. If anyone has any feedback on something like this tail, and you are willing to share, please do.
.
.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

..
While driving I'll often pass by something photo worthy and shine turning around to get the shot. But today, when I sped by this parade of kids, I couldn't help but to flip a u-ey.
.
.