Step 4!

Step 1) get a hull

Step 2) ride it

Step 3) gather your thoughts

Step 4) write me an email...

here is Eric's email from yesterday:

"Ok I am finally writing this because I finally got to get a taste of
the red board on the kind of wave it does its magic at...
rode malibu - I have to say, I am embarrassed to say, I think I got
one of the funnest waves of my life on it -- on a crowd-gone-home,
dark evening lined up
(besides my first wave ever as a kid, going straight in hawaii).

Damn that board is epic.  This is a very special surfing, surfing
points on such thin railed, forward, flat, awake foiled dreams.  (for
those of us who like to surf small waves, and with feet somehow
parallel, in some psychedelic and remembered death kind of way, chop
up the babylon flavor in a metaphorical meditation

Thank you!  I can't wait to get it out to a long lined up point again,
some midweekday.

Irie,
Eric"

GO HERBIE GO!

Herbie and I are off to Shelter Surf Shop today to visit Graham and shape a board with him...stoked!

No Way

Seriously?  it's saturday?

Well either way, Morg won the Follow the Light Foundation's big-ass grand prize grant for being super badass...big ups and I couldn't be more proud, I heard he also won the people's choice award too, SNAP!

Word on the street is he won because he put a picture of Herbie in his portfolio...it's highly likely.

I cruised over to his house only to find that he hasn't even cashed in his big check yet, its just sitting on his mantle.....

 

The nerve.

Pleskunas Spoon

I took a short vacation up to Santa Cruz for the first half of the week with Stephanie, we got some time to go visit Scott up in his mountain abode and he showed us some of his friend's finds...here is one that caught my attention:

The owner wasn't present but Scott said it was an old Pleskunas.

There was at least one layer of carbon/kevlar hybrid in there:

Cool board!  TONS of flex, I haven't gone that floppy with one yet but I'm always curious to try something new...

Santa B.

Just found this great little video that Brandon made, cool to see some good friends shredding and having a good time...THIS is surfing:

Inspirted

Inspiration coms from many different places around my shop..........I saved this cup for months in the hopes of using the scheme on a board sometime.  Eric C's velosim got the treatment I've been waiting for!

Uni Fin Video

Here's the clip I promised with the flex pattern of the molded unidirectional fin I made last week; note the twist along the trailing edge from the tip to the middle or so of the fin...this is what I'm most excited about; go flex your normal flex fin and you'll see a totally different flex pattern that doesn't 'twist' like this one:

Molded Uni-Directional Fin Flex from Ryan Lovelace on Vimeo.

Ride report coming shortly!

Deephouse

Shopservations by Sam Diephuis

Sam shot me an email a few weeks ago looking to come up and take some photos, as always I said yes and he showed up a couple days later.  We ended up hanging out for the whole day and talking about life and attitudes and relationships...The conversation at times took a turn and focused more of flatulence and related topics, but that only cemented the fact that he's a really rad guy and that working with him was gonna be productive and above all, fun.

Over the years there has been a thread that links all of my friends and people that come through my shop; it goes along the lines of personality and personal taste.  We're all completely different people with different interests and experiences.  But it feels like everyone who is even remotely interested in alternative surf craft or even just looking into the possibilities within it are bonded by some kind of similar lifestyle or personal belief, maybe its a typecast of people; but what it has taught me is that everyone has something to bring to the table.  What they wear doesn't matter, how they paint or what kind of cool trendy instrument they play or what's on their iPod doesn't make a difference; how they got to riding the boards that they do doesn't even matter.  If you can get over yourself and that can all be put aside and the similarities be focused on, an incredible conversation is always there and good friends are everywhere.

We are all on our own path but I think we would all be surprised at how often our paths are running parallel.

4689

A couple shots of Miguel's spoon from my trip to Portugal, 

thing one came together cleeeeeeeeeean!

Follow The Light

My fantastically talented pal Morg Maassen is a finalist for the Follow The Light Foundation's grant this year; he's up against some fine photographers but I don't think it's been much of a contest since Morgan put in his submission:

Morgan Maasen FTLF from J P on Vimeo.

Good luck at the finals and congrats Morgan, you're the man!