Fin Soup

Photo by Glenn Sakamoto

Headed up to the Fin Soup event up at Deus Ex Machina on Saturday.

The Deus guys have put together an interesting blending of their interests with only one rule. 

If we are going to do it, it has to be the best.

Strictly top drawer.

Sweet, this is gonna be a cake walk!

Spark up the Garmin, enter the desired destination coordinates, tell Scotty to "Engage" and partake in some barbeque.  Maybe a cold beer. It's a nice Saturday in SoCal what could be easier?

Turns out it's harder than it looks. How do you explain the subtleties of wave riding when people walk up to the table, slide their hands into a pair of hand crafted hand planes and say "what do you do with these things?".

I was repeated inclined to say, "you hang them on the wall for a while, then after you change your interior decor from beachy to new south western or ultra modern, you put them in a landfill where they happily decompose. 

They're green you know. 

What you definitely don't want to do is head down to the shore break and play in the water. 

Anything but that"

Fortunately for me there was a very inspiring collection of  boards from the short board revolution just across the way. 

This reminded me that every time I go out surfing I am standing on the shoulders of everyone who came before me and said I can make this surfing thing just a little bit more fun.

So I stayed, I talked. I did my best to describe the value of the time Jon put into the paipo when he put some belly in the nose and Vee in the tail. It's more concrete, more like the stand up boards most people are familiar with.  If they were still smiling and nodding I grabbed my mat and  gave my best shot at explaining the huge advantages of surf mats and variable inflation.

I think a couple of people got it.

Makes me feel like Johnny Appleseed.