Almost ready to set sail

It's my birthday, yay!  28, and doing pretty well.  My overall, larger term goals haven't been changing so much lately, but i feel that on a smaller scale, goals of mine have been shifting, like becoming more focused on putting together my surfboard repair situation, being more organized, a lot of minding of detail with the awareness of big picture as the driving force.

Since I took these pictures I've used additional scrap that was going to be thrown away at a friend's workplace but I used it to restrict airflow at the gaps between tarps.  I just used twine to secure those, whether they'll stand up in a stiff wind is to be seen but the location is so protected I don't think this setup will receive huge wind loads but first big wind, like 50 or 60 miles an hour plus, I want to be there to make sure and be ready to make whatever adjustments at the moment to keep it weather-tight.  This structure facilitates dust control, but i will use a vacuum inside, probably one of the ones in the yard, and when I upgrade sanders I want to get one that plugs into a vacuum hose.  There is a vacuum that has an auto-on/off but it's expensive and that requires downgrading or business expansion.

I need to create some counter space but I'm ready to work on some boards, so time to get to work!

This is a cactus flower that I've never seen bloom in our garden before, very niiiice!

Farther and Further and Furthur

Some of my more important projects have been coming along and I'd like to post some of my progress.

Digital Camera
So I was lucky enough to be in the right place for my friend G to want to trade his old pocket digital camera cause he got a new one.  I've so far exchanged a 12 pack of Newcastle with some finer brews to be named later.  This is a tool that I intend to use to create a better presentation on this blog, for surfboard repair pictures, and general documentation.  I would like to get a scanner next to be able to share more fluidly my little art creations and ideas but the ideal is coming together slowly.

The camera is a Canon Powershot SD790is and so far I have been having a good time with it.

Surf Shack
I have all the materials for a 12ft x 16ft steel pipe and plastic tarp structure.  The only things holding me back from putting it up are:
1) Anchors (need to make/buy)
2) Tarps for sides and floor (need to buy)
3) Enough space for the damn thing (need to make)

 This is the area I will build the shack in.  I need to move the bike rack and take the small tree down, but it is comprised of suckers coming off a main trunk previously thought dead.  We have no shortage of trees and like to add them periodically to the yard so I don't feel too bad cutting this one down, although if I just butt the shack up against it, we would still lose the bike rack area.

This is the basic setup for the structural skeleton of the shack. I got the connectors at www.creativeshelters.com

 This is a steel frame awning that has been floating around the yard for a few years.  I have wanted to use it for a bike rack for awhile so this is my chance to turn some trash into some treasure.

And this is where the bike rack will go.  It doesn't need to be tall enough to block our views out of the windows and bikes can be packed pretty well into a space.  I need to see how much length I need to store about 10 bikes (my goal) but it's looking good so far.  I bought a Craftsman circular saw on Craigslist this morning so now I need to get down to measuring, planning, measure twice, cut up some spare wood we have in the yard, put in some screws, tarp it up to we have a little protection from the elements and voila.





 We'll see how it all turns out.  More to come, just though I'd share where I am.  Somehow it makes me feel better with moving forward.

Some more digital wizardry, from in town to The Rock! Peace! (It was a good surf)

Mission Statement

"An Old Greek definition of happiness is the exercise of vital powers along certain lines of excellence in a life that affords them scope" Edith Hamilton. The Greek Way [book]

The purpose of this blog isn't to just occasionally have a place to dump random information and achievements.  A traveler, Daniel from BC, visiting my house was a promoter of ideas.  He was taken by the idea of systems analysis and management and had a lot of good energy and ideas about how to pull things together.  He said to represent information visually is a very powerful tool and that the feedback of others can help to drive progress.

I want to use this space to gather the results of my various projects and to display the things I do and create, however minimal they may seem sometimes, in an effort to have something to look at, if only for myself, so that they may experience progressive change and avoid stagnation.  And if this can of use to anybody else, then so be it, but at face value i feel it's important to have a place to gather and organize these things.

The areas and pursuits of my life I want to share with you are mostly artistically and creatively based.  Without means of expression and creation I feel useless and unmotivated, but with outlets to serve as both a mirror to myself and a looking glass to my past, present, future and dreams.  Here is a short list of things I do that can be displayed visually or graphically which I want to share in the future on this site:

-surfing, surfboard repair, design and shaping; and the construction and organization of a future surfboard repairing/shaping bay
-drawing via pencil, crayon, ink, and on the computer (simple mspaint pictures)
-writing
-photography
-philosophy
-board sports, execution and progression within the framework of my life.
-integrating my active lifestyle with creative impulse

So far my tools for displaying information via the internet are limited but I am working towards being able to represent things within a creative context so that my ideas can find grounding and be downloaded into physical actuality.  Tools that will help me in this pursuit:

-computer scanner
-digital camera
-an enclosure for surfboard crafting so the dust doesn't blow all over the damn place.
-scheduled times during the week for creating, 2 or 3 hour blocks for me to focus on simply being creative
-wall calendar for planning out creative blocks of time and keeping track of fitness, stretching, surfing, etc.

Justifying my path is an important thing to motivate me.  I can't seem to just go through days on end without some sort of exercise, mental physical or soulful, and really all three deserve to be visited every chance I get.  "If you think of something, and if you feel like that thing is the really right thing to do, then all there is left is to do it." Father of Dave Rastovich (a prosurfer), from 'Blue Horizon'[movie].  With my education in Soil Science in the bag I feel free to explore these things and to see where I can take it all.

Ultimately my goal is a fusion of all these things into a sensory cornucopia of product, something of a portfolio.  I suppose this is choosing to represent myself as a brand, to understand what my brand is and how to use it to provide clarity to the world as I move through it.  To create a body of work that represents my own progression and gives me a chance to reflect further on how to bring greater focus into my life.  I wish I had something to show at this point but this is only the beginning.  My goal is to post once per week and to move towards acquiring the things I need to make this blog more of a presentation.  I hope this brings me closer to all this.

Small steps and small boards

New developments are always in the making, that's what makes life so fascinating.  But to make them come through action is required.  For example, my intention is to build a surf structure to repair and shape boards and to build it to my specifications.  I want a steel pipe frame structure, like the pipe used on chain link fences.  It won't cost more than $500 to fully construct and enclose but different opportunities keep manifesting and the sturcture has yet to be built.

I had the opportunity, for example, last weekend to go on a surf in my newly fixed car with a friend, my dog and another friend in his car, his dog and his dad from the bay area.  we went to santa barbara and caught some surf.  the surf wasn't great and we chickened out at jalama.  it was big and rolly there, sets breaking out the back and it looked fun but i don't think i had the right boards for that.  plus i pulled a muscle in my side while stretching our 2nd night there tyhat has been healing really well with the workouts and stretching i've been doing. work hasn't been affecting it at all which is really good, it's pretty superficial but needs to be monitored so it goes away before i charge hard again.  but the 'highlight' of the trip had to be getting sprayed by a skunk with my dog the first night there.  luckily we weren't too close to it, but it got my car and my friend's car pretty bad.  the smell is finally going away and i didn't notice it at all in my car today, which reminds me.  i drove to santa barabara and back today so i could buy a surfboard i saw yesterday, or rather last evening, on CraigsList.  It's a model called "the biscuit", a 5 foot 6 inch long  fat little stick that looks like a dinner roll.  it's the smallest board by 8 inches that i've ever had fun on and the only reason i know is because of the board demos Channel Islands Surfboards runs up the coast in the summers.  The last 3 times they've come I rode this board with these dimensions and I loved it, so I've been waiting for a chance.  The guy who sold it to me said he got 5 or 6 other replies in the 16 hours he had the board on the net, so it was a pretty high demand little piece.

The board is 5' 6" long, 20" wide in the center and 2 3/4" thick in the thickest part.  It came with fins, and there are some small scratches and dings, some uniform yellowing over the board from age, $222. I thought it was $250 so that's what I handed him, didn't feel like haggling...not for this board!...and he says he listed it for $225, so i look in my wallet and I am $3 short but he's in a late model import sedan so he's frying bigger fish than this.  I drove to the CI (Channel Islands) store near the harbor and looked at their boards.  I tell you, you could go in there with $500 and walk out with planty of change and a sick, repeat, SICK, board.  They not only have their main selection but they had a small room with sale boards of some sort, $500 down to $350 I saw.  The new boards in the store are $660, pretty much.  The spankingest newiest models are $745 (!).  I paid $440 for my first board in january 2002, an 8' rusty shortboard.  so all in all i got a fair deal on the exact board of my choice.  without the dings it probably would be more like $300, and fixing them myself saves the scrilla.

But I had to use some saved cash to pull off this preemptive acquisition to the quiver.  It puts me back a bit in getting this surf shack built but it's a very important board, this particular size and shape.  I feel like it will make small surf sessions more rewarding and it is the beginning of a quest by myself to start finding ways to expand my own performance envelope to use the engineering parlance.  The commitment to surfing can only take a person so far.  It should be something that is pushed by the other things in life as well as drags them futher along behind it in to the higher levels of practice.  Dialing in the equipment; wetsuits, boards, transportation, this is what it's about right now.  Derek Ho says on Hawaiian Surf Stories that if you're not on the right equipment, you're not having fun.  Ain't that the truth.  If you're not performing at the level you wish on a given day, you either need to reexamine your own commitment or the design of your experience visavis your wave riding technology.

I wish I could give you some ilustrative representation but i don't have a camera or a scanner, so use your imaginations! peace!

Another week gone by...

let's see...I surfed last sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, friday, and sunday, today, 6 out of 7 days.  maybe i didn't surf monday, it's hard to remember, i need to buy a calendar and a pocket planner to keep track.

Tuesday, Wednesday Friday and today I managed true dawn patrol, being at the beach by first light, waiting for the light to improve then paddling out.  It's nice cause I'm home and beat by 11am.  However, on Friday I was in the water for 7 hours (almost).  It was that good and I brought two boards for the conditions.  My leash came loose with the bigger board later in the day and it ended up on the rocks but with only a small ding through the glass in the nose, nothing that can't be fixed easily.

But most importantly, several realizations.  On Wednesday, a session before work, I felt like I reached a plateau, like I've put enough work in to get myself to where I am being a better surfer in the wave sizes I'm comfortable in...but this plateau.  It presents me with a threshold of sorts.  My ambition, what I think about and feel is right, is to ride bigger waves and to ride better the waves I'm already comfortable in, to keep progressing, in essence.  Now the work and focus that is going to have to go into this next step is going to be as important and as challenging as all the work it took me to get here.  I'm going to have to start pushing my comfort zone, looking at more appropriate equipment for riding at size and commit to ongoing fitness and diet.  Studying more progressive surfers, bigger waves and getting the whole repair/shaping thing going for myself are the keys to open these locked doors.  Staying stoked and getting in the water as often as possible are the only barriers to any of this, really.

I'm getting some materials online, most notably The Boomer's Bible, a wonderful piece of Bible-inspired, punk-anarchist-humorist-urbanite-...whatever.  I'ts cool and i can load up my order with other things I'd like (surf vids, some history).  Just a little something to give me inspiration and to spend some hard earned cash on, give me a sense of novelty in my multimedia.

In other news, I'm rapidly approaching a time where I can purchase my surf shack.  I'm looking at creativeshelters.com because they have a sick design-a-structure software tool that gives you measurements, parts, optional accessories, check it out if you want to put up a steel frame (pipes and fittings) tarp structure.  I don't want to piece it out, I'd rather just buy the whole damn thing after saving and slap it up so I can fix all these damn boards.  I swear, every board in the house needs something.  It'll be good practice to get back in the swing to fix boards professionally again.  In one of my daydreams today I imagined being a glasser/sander.  Not exactly the glamourous position but what am I really going for here?  A poem to leave you with until next week...

Far off, unknown, beyond the range of thought,
scarce reached by gods, the years' rough haggard mother,
stands a primeval Cave in whose vast breast,
is Time's cradle and womb. A Serpent encloses,
the Cave, consuming all things with slow power,
and green scales always glinting. Its mouth devours,
the backbent tail as with mute motion it traces,
its beginning. At the entrance Nature sits,
the threshold-guardian, aged and yet lovely,
and round her gather and flit on every side Spirits.
A Venerable Man writes down immutable laws.
He fixes the number of stars in every constellation,
makes some of them move and others hang at rest.
So all things live or die by predetermined laws...
When the Sun rested on the cave's wide threshold,
Nature ran in her might to meet him; the Old Man bent
grey hairs to the proud rays. [1]

Claudian (c. 370-408), Roman poet

Claudian, full name Claudius Claudianus (c. 370-408), Roman poet.

This passage ends the second book of his poem, On the Consulship of Stilicho

(accessed 1/9/10) http://survive2012.com/index.php/2012-the-year-of-the-dragon.html

Surfin' the gnar

 Some pictures courtesy of Daniel from BC.
  These top three are just of the conditions this morning from the beach.  I might be in them somewhere but who knows.

Above and next 5 pictures are of a nice cutback and set up for the next section

Above and all below pictures are of me at the end of one of my rides. Nice day!

Grand Opening!

Hey everybody!  Just started this thing up here.  started up here this thing, I mean.  Try to please the Grammar-heads.  My intention is to use this blog to record, assist, and present my ideas so I can have a vehicle to channel my passions, wild as they are.

I suppose it bears no purpose to fully introduce myself now...no sense in making this seem like a job interview or a personals post on CraigsList, which is like the lead into a joke...what's the same between them?  something about being depressing and prostitution...I was never good at making the funnies in classicist form.  Just on the go, quips, jibes, shit that I think won't get me in too much trouble although...  Why the hell am I talking about this.

Ah, so I guess things will present themselves as long as I keep up on the postings.  Which depends on how well I use the possibility of this tool, so please, sit back, relax, and wait for the future.