I apologize

[Doc]

I got a text inviting me to go s****** this last week...
With my nephew and 2 of his friends...
They are in their early to mid 30's (I think)...
They meet every year and camp and s***...
for 3 or 4 days on the n**** coast...
I was only able to get down for one afternoon...
I met my nephew at S*****'s on Friday...
Nothing special, but a few fun w***s...
Met his buddies who I recognized from some past s***s and other visits...
They left to snag "the" prime A*** Cape campsite...
I p****ed back out and caught a few more...
Then mosied up the c**** to their spot...
As I drank some b***s one of my nephew's friends gave me a sticker...
An E******** Surfboards sticker from a recent trip to San D****...
He reminded me that I had lent them my E******** L***board...
Some 20 or so years ago when they were all in h*** school...
Which was their first experience s***ing...
Now they're all s***ing and while maybe not ripping...
Are capable and catching w***s...
I have to say I was kind of surprised and stoked...
These a 3 pretty cool and respectful people...
And now they're s***ers...
I have a feeling they'll stay with it too...
Sorry...
They are in the lineup now.

D**

[Gazsurf]

dick

[Doc]

I fixed it Wanty

D**

[SooLoo]

You are still a Delta Bravo...
you ****bird...

[Wilbur Kookmeyer]

Interesting thought Doc. If you think about it, would they be surfers now had you not lent them that board? What would their relationship be with surfing if not?

Oddly enough, this idea has come back to haunt me in just the past few days. I learned on an old used up rental i bougt from Island Water Sports in Deerfield Beach. I paif $40 for it. It was a 7' 2" single fin. The boxed fin had a stripped screw so it was loose and wablled and would slide back and forth in the box. It was delammed prety good and had plenty of the requisite duct tape and of couse a bungee leash.

I learne don that board, and pased it amongst a handful of friends over the next handful of years. Scott, Mike, Keith, Andy...all learned on that board.

In the end I am the only one that continued to surf once adulthood came calling, and even though my relationship wiht it is somewhat distanced now, I remain connected in a way that none of them have nown in well over 20 years.

Fast forward to this last week and I get a FB message from a guy whose name I do not recognize. Turns out it was Andy. The user name was his radio name as he is an on air personality somewhere where it matters I suppose. I had not heard anything from or about Andy in probable 22 years. He, like the others, of course had left surfing some years ago. However, tucked away in his attic, some 30 years after I bought it, sits that 7' 2" Natural Art.

I can't even imagine what kind of condition it is in.

But I do know...I must get it back. I have to see it. no matter what condition it is in I absolutely need to feel that board once again. Like some kind of full circle, like somehow it will make it all ..... make sense. Like maybe it will help me understand what my own life has really been about, and how different it became the first time I paddled out on it.

There are answers in that board, and I must have them.

[scubetubeular]

Cool post Wilbs.

Doc, once I deciphered through all your aster***s I enjoyed yours too.

[smithgrind]

There are answers in that board, and I must have them.

The answers you seek lie within the next time you paddle out. Drop all the trappings of your privileged western life and get wet...it's been too long.

[fossilgrom]

"Don't look for it Taylor...you may not like what you find"