Today’s Storyboard: let that light shine

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Today’s Storyboard:

(where we tell you a little ditty ’bout a board)

So, about a year ago my buddy Pete Mendia was visiting Ventura to talk boards

and his plans for the next year, but mostly and more importantly to just go catch some fun waves with his shaper and enjoy the great outdoors on God’s green earth here in Ventura. After a fun mid week surf at an empty beachbreak by my house, we decided to cruise over to the factory to examine all the latest shapes and brainstorm about some new crafts…one of my favorite things to do as well, even though I spend a pretty large chunk of my life inside my snowy lair.

Before we got two feet into the factory, Pete goes, “Hey what’s that board?”

to which I look and see him pointing to an unassuming 6’2” over in the corner that has a huge stain in the lam. I reply, “Oh, I’m trying to figure out what to do with that, see the big dirty spot on it…there was a flaw in one of the rolls of glass we got where some oil from the manufacturer had gotten into the fibers of the glass.” Pete goes, “But is it just a looks thing?” Me: “Yeah it’s just aesthetic; structurally it’s good.” Pete, “Board looks sick! I like the roundtail.” I respond, “Well, it’s got that big ugly dirty spot, but I suppose I could paint over it and you could take this one too. It’s a bit thinner than normal, but it would probably go real good at a warm water spot in just boardies…and would be real knifey and responsive on the right pushy kinda waves.” Pete: “Yeah, I’ll take it.”

So we picked out some colors and I busted out the posca pens in the living room that night.

 

This board was a combination of a G-4 outline with an older Blackbird rocker and bottom (heavy concaves through the back half; pretty much an early version of the inverted fulcrum rocker and HD caves). This, almost overlooked, board ended up getting the privilege of adventuring through Indo, Hawaii, the Bahamas, Cali, Mex, and more than a few East Coast hurricanes; and got to sit back and enjoy the ride while Pete did some of his best surfing of the year on the unlikely candidate. So, I was thinking about how all this played out, and thought about how

there were some good life lessons to be learned from it all:

1. Sometimes the overlooked, and unlikely…what you might even call the marginalized….sometimes they end up being the real treasures.

1. That every board is equally important. A mindset that builds every board with the ideal that it needs to be the best it can possibly be…that ethic seems to always reap a reward for everyone involved.

1. Looks can be deceiving. Just because it had a dirty spot on the surface, she was actually a board of great character and substance on the inside….she just needed a little extra care to let that light shine.