andygates: (surf)
andygates ([personal profile] andygates) wrote2007-02-13 09:52 am

Aquaboy rides out

Today's theme is water:

Swim is coming on a bit.  500m set in 11:54, which was nice and on-target for my 35:00 1500 lake goal (also warm-up, 200, 400 sets).  Still having to really concentrate on everything, but there you go.  The new pool is massively more suitable than my local one: cooler, with three paced lanes so I can trundle away in the Mediums without having to play Space Invaders through a wall of marching grannies.  At last, a use for flexitime that isn't just legalising tardiness.

A convergence of nudges has me Jonesing for more surf.  [personal profile] ravenbait sent me a nifty pic of the surf firing up the East Coast, and I traded the Tales Of The Old Horsemen (a "reminiscences of toothless old gimmers" genre piece) which I mistakenly got for Dad [1] for a UK surf break gazetteer.  Add to that a start on the Zombie Board Project and, well, meep

The Zombie Board is a karmic nugget of niceness: a freebie from a hitcher I used to give occasional lifts into town.  It had been lurking in the back of his workshop, unsurfable with a huge ding in the back.  But it's a vintage three-fin Watercooled shortie, and despite the yellowed glass and the fist-sized divot missing from the belly, and the deck so battered it looks like it's been ball-peened, and the thrice-repaired nose and twice-repaired tail and wholesale delamination - despite all that, it has character, so I'm going to restore it.  Starting with getting a decade of wax off, stickers embedded in its strata, and getting the damn thing clean; then it gets plugged and glassed, the old repairs get tidied up, I investigate injecting epoxy under the glass to re-bond the deck, and it ends up with a halftone comix zombie babe paint job.  Just because.

Back at New Year, there was some muttering about some of us n00bs taking a day at a surf school.  Who's interested, and can anyone recommend a decent one?

[1] Dad's too far gone now to read, which, to be honest, is the first time that neurological degeneration has frightened me in a long time.  Walking, shakes, moods, continence - no worries.  Not being able to read?  That's terrifying.  But I'm not going to dwell, as I'm sure to find a much swifter or more stupid death.

[identity profile] ehutch.livejournal.com 2007-02-13 05:52 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm up there for a swifter or more stupid death too... Not dwelling here either. We'll just see if we can get smeared under a car, or run over by one on the weekend, or just simply drown instead. Bring all 3 forms of kit and let the challenge begin...

[identity profile] andygates.livejournal.com 2007-02-13 08:32 pm (UTC)(link)
All three?

Do I say "Yes, Beastmaster" yet?