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I've been holding on to a board for the past year that I've only ridden once. That wasn't a great day, but I'm now surfing better and am thinking about getting it out in the water.

A year or so ago a work colleague offered me a foamie for my grandnephew to use. His kids were now adults and it was sitting on a rack in his garage. At the time, he offered me a permanent loan of this other board. I of course said yes without knowing what it was. 

Today we're going to work on thirds. No, not musically, long-istically; e.g., rear and mid sections of a 9' longboard. Here you can see where I removed the wax so I could do a quick check of foot positioning. What we're hoping for is to successfully move back to get better pivoting for carving turns and move forward to get a better trim position. The latter should produce better speed to setup for better turns.

Here's a poor resolution video from early Dec 2024 at Private's. Starting to move through turns a bit better. I'm the foreground wave for a few seconds.

Here are a collection of shots of a board that belonged to Norman Crowell. Norm was married to my mother-in-law for many years. This board hung in the garage rafters of the home we moved into in 1999. After he passed away, we gave the board back to his daughter Leslie. I think it probably still lives in her home on the Westside of Santa Cruz.

Norm was part of the first generation of surfers in Santa Cruz. He made this board based on instructions found in Popular Mechanics in 1936.

As I started thinking about surfing in summer 2023, I pulled out two old boards to check their conditions. They'd been stored under the deck since we moved from the Westside up to Felton. The shorter green board is 7'11" x 22" x3" and was shaped for me by my old friend Mark Goin in 1991. I'm betting I got this to do more surfing at Getchell's with my old boss at UCSC Tim Price.

In late 2023, I sent the green board into Brian Ebert at https://besanding.com to have the major dings fixed. Here are a before and after.

Thoughts from my notes over the 2024 season.

I'm still not smooth enough with some turns. Need to watch for multiple input changes during sweeping turns. Good place to try a cue word like smooth (breathe, eyes up, increase gas, smooth turn input).

I've plateaued a lot and need to force myself to get some help from other drivers. 

Overdriving; going too hard pushes me off the line and a few times into a spin out.

AM sessions are almost always faster than PM sessions. So, what we need to dig into is how to optimize for the entire day.

As my head fills with surf training from various sources, I went back in the time machine to find some old classics. The shot above is recent as of Nov 2024 (new picture, old guy).

Here are a few clips I edited down for Longboard Sessions.

Longboard Sessions 3 and 4 11/29-12/4 2024 at Cowell's Beach.

This past week, the swell and tides were in my favor. Everyone else too. If you can’t see it, there are 4 folks behind me and 1 in front of me. Gotta love Cowell’s.

Luckily, the guy in front of me kicked out and I got a nice setup for the section.