It's All My Fault

Mea culpa!

I got a new board. I waxed my new board. I shortened the leash loop (even though I don't plan on wearing a leash with it often). I checked surf report. I was ready to surf it the following day. Fail!!! There were no waves worthy of this board today. In fact, those things masquerading as waves weren't even worthy of my piggish longboard hull. There really wasn't any there there (to paraphrase Gertrude Stein).

It's my fault that the waves didn't deliver. You get a new board and the curse begins. No waves for you . . . at least not on that board. It's like when you wash your car—not that I wash mine often enough to test this theory—and then it rains. Same thing. Your car puts a curse on the weather. My board put a curse on the surf. I'm sorry, fellow surfers. Forgive me.

Be the 29th kid on your block to get one!

You won't see this kind of workmanship and ingenuity from a pop-out or a mass-produced foam board. Jack's and Val Surf ain't gonna have anything this mind-blowing either.

You've got to see it up close to believe it!

Ruling it with wood and foam.

Just plain beautiful.

Thank you, Jon. It's boards like this that get happily surfed to death. My mom has a friend who always wins in Vegas! Always. It's uncanny. And she only plays the slots. She says certain machines call to her. I'm not kidding either. At one point, she won six figures in one fell swoop. Hit the biggest jackpot that machine had to offer. What's my point? Well, boards sometimes call to me. It doesn't happen often. The last board that did this was my Chris Slick . . . and I surfed that board until I figured we'd both had enough. There were enough heel dents, fixed dings, snaps, crackles and pops to show how much I loved that board. My next Chris Slick, the one that replaced the first? Not so much. That one never called to me at all. I just settled on it because I wanted to always have a Slick in my quiver; the magic isn't there either. It's just a board.

When I was at Sacred Craft, I didn't even know Wegener. I'd seen his interview on Liquid Salt, but had never spoken to him. I didn't even know he was one of my local shapers. Nevertheless, I saw a Bluegill in his booth and was immediately awestruck. That board, like well-built guys who slowly take their shirts off because they know it will make you look, made sure it got my attention. I didn't even know what it was. I didn't care. I knew I had to have one. (This is the same thing that happened the first time I read about surf mats. I'd never even seen a mat, but I knew I must have one.) There's a picture on this blog of me checking this board out in the booth. Even after we left Sacred Craft, I couldn't stop thinking about this board. So, I checked Jon Wegener's site . . . only to find no mention of the Bluegill. Well, that didn't sit too well with me. I wanted answers, dammit!!! That led me to send Jon an email. The rest, as they say, is history.