Thursday Spring Has Sprung SUP Surf!

After what has seemed like an endless cold, wet winter, spring appears to have made an appearance and this week has been increasingly nice out! I was able to get out for a little SUP surf after work yesterday and had a good time but wowee am I out of surf shape! Here's hoping we get lots of beach time in this weekend!

Feeling Blankity Blank

Steamer Lane from on high, a cam snap from video I shot with my 3DR Solo drone. Here's a direct link to the video this is from.

I'm going to start doing more flying and videowork and expect to be posting more videos to YouTube.

Here's a link to my channel, if you're down, give a sub and help me get to that fabled 100 subscribers number that'll empower me to choose my own special, custom URL.

Beyond this, life goes on. We celebrated Sully's 11th birthday this last weekend with a long and occasionally epic Nerf war. In the run up to his birthday we acquired many, many new (to us usually, most are used) Nerf blasters. To the degree that we now have a rather large arsenal that requires upkeep to prevent it from completely taking over the living room.

And I'm still getting out and SUP surfing as much (almost) as I can. I'm mostly sticking to Indicators, Middle Peak and Steamer Lane these days as Cowells' generally meager waves are either too crowded or there's just not enough of them. Links to SUP Surfing videos as well, mostly mine but occasionally mixing in another SUP video as need be.

Next up is summer break and lots of time off from work and time to spend with kids. Summer plans include trying to get out and camp again, we didn't go at all last summer and I missed it. Maybe even some bike camping if we can make that work.

News Round Up

I just renewed the domain for this blog another year so I might as well pretend I'll get my money's worth by making a post today. And then I'll promptly forget about this space for a few months. Unlike the last several winters, we are getting rain this year, lots of rain!

The photo on the right is Pinto Lake from a few weeks ago when it flooded all the way out to Green Valley Road. This is among the most polluted and nasty water in California, I can't imagine what the bacteria did to the crops it flooded.

In other news, I've now joined the world of 3D printing. Prices have come way down and it is now entirely possible to get a decent printer ready to go out of the box for around $200. I originally ordered an Anet A8 DIY printer kit from a site called GearBest. They took my order, took my money and then let me know they were planning to sit and do nothing for more than week because of the Chinese Lunar New Year. I cancelled that order and bought a Monoprice Select Mini through Amazon that was delivered two days later.

After some initial bumps in coming up to speed, I've now gotten a whole bunch of excellent prints out of it and am making useful and cool stuff. Our long term current printing project is to create a whole bunch of those castle wall blocks and build our own castle. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes and includes gates, towers, fortifications and more. I found the files on Thingiverse which has an amazing variety of cool things to print. It has been lots of fun to have and it makes every morning a bit like Christmas to come down and find something new under the printer nozzle (yeah, not quite as poetic).

I'll post some photos of the castle as it comes together as well as some of the other fun stuff we've printed out like these very cool low-poly(gon) Pokemon! That's Totodile, Bulbasaur and Squirtle in semi-clear and black PLA. There are others but they've been absconded with by my youngest child and may have even been sold! We are ordering some colored filament to keep making them!

Other stuff? Let's see, with the winter storms, it has been a bit harder to get out and surf lately. Poor conditions and timing have made things tough but Sully and I surfed a little last weekend and I went out for a short surf yesterday on water that was too windy and wild to be out long on. Seriously, the abs workout I get just from maintaining my balance is impressive!

Catch Up Post

Its been a little while since I've caught up over here and that's a shame. Especially since I spend a majority of my online social media time on Google properties already (and Blogger is a Google property) but it seems like Blogger's been kind of forgotten about in the move towards more dynamic and interactive socialization.

Anyway, starting off with a couple of stylized photos from recent weeks. Both were snapped and then processed in an iOS app called Superphoto that has a ton of cool filters that it was worth the couple of bucks.

Some more photos that are far better and more amazing via Twisted Sifter.

I had a short Twitter argument with a deranged Hillary supporter by the name of Maggy. Go say hi, she's super fun and not totally insane at all. Nope, nope, nope. See how many tweets it takes for her to dismiss you as an idiot BERNIEBRO. I got it in 4! And then she blocked me because I can't bend the knee for Hillary. No wait, that's not quite true, I WON'T bend the knee for Hillary.

I am part of the #BernieorBust movement. I will not be voting for Donald Trump nor will I cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. They are, in large part, two sides of the same richer than fuck and don't give a fuck coin. I cannot support either of them because they are beholden to the 1% and couldn't be bothered to give two shits about the lower and middle class (functionally the same thing these days).

The argument that Bernie supporters MUST support Hillary Clinton is a complete fail on the part of the DNC and Hillary Clinton. Parroting Bernie's positions on issues isn't going to fly, not when she scampers back to Wall St. for more money at every turn. And we're supposed to actually believe her bullshit when she says she'll reign in the Big Banks? No, sorry, Hillary, we're simply NOT that stupid and the insults and smear and attacks aren't helping either.

Neither is the deafening silence from the Clinton campaign in the wake of yet another seriously fucked up primary event, this time the bogus convention in Nevada run by a Clintonista, supported by Barbara Boxer's lies and then propelled into the news machine by a complicit and bogus media "presence" (that apparently wasn't even present).

Yeah, sorry. #NeverHillary #NeverTrump #BernieorBust #FeeltheBern

In other election news, Rachel Maddow's chosen sides and chosen poorly. She's no longer an objective news source as she's very clearly decided that Hillary Clinton is and should be our next president and that's that and we should NOT question her or her surrogates when they sodomize the democratic process over and over again. Nope, we Bernie supporters should get ready to support Hillary except that's not really acceptable to a vast and ever-increasing number of us.

Anyway, what else has been happening? I've been making a whole bunch of time lapse videos with my SJ4000 "NoPro" action cam. This one is of the Wednesday evening regatta off Indicators (near Cowells and the wharf) in Santa Cruz.
I have a whole bunch more on my channel if you feel like checking more out. And some surfing videos as well. Here's one of the walk down from West Cliff to Cowells and then out into the surf. Or click this link to the same video and jump ahead to the paddle out about 2 minutes in.

Its no surprise that I absolutely love Santa Cruz and love living here. And with the weather starting to get better and better, the time off from work is that much more awesome! This weekend saw my youngest son and me out catching waves together. I still need to get my older son more involved but he's not a big fan of being cold and wet and we've been having some trouble finding booties that fit (and don't cost $60).

And this next weekend is Memorial Day and the weather is forecast to be excellent which means I'm going to get out and surf until I can't surf anymore!

Surfing Contests, Practice and Skills Improvement

Sunset over Its, 2/11/16.

Today is the Titans of Mavericks surf contest up in Half Moon Bay and it is nothing short of amazing to watch the waves these guys ride.

More so since I've become more and more of a surfer as I've progressed through my SUP evolution from flat water cruising and exploration to a mostly dedicated SUP surfer. I can't lie, its still really nice and a different kind of fun to go touring without worrying about swell, other people and everything else.

Something I am thinking about and realizing more and more is that I need to practice my in the water skills more. Not my on the water skills, I'm pretty good at catching waves, steering through crowds of people (though I will almost always seek to find emptier spots since my envelope to catch a wave is substantially larger than a surfer's, also a source of their gripiness about SUP's in general). In the last week, I've had a couple of getoffs that have resulted in my board becoming a weapon and smashing into me.

The first was when I tumbled forward off the wave and the board came down on top of my shoulders with the initial hit concentrating on the left side. Aside from some tenderness when I touch it, there's been no problems from that one. The other was from a fairly short outing yesterday where I got tumbled and my board bashed me in the chest. Again, no immediate harm or pain, just a little wind knocked out and then complicated by getting caught in the wash zone for a couple of minutes.

We have another three day weekend ahead and good weather on tap. We'll be getting some new booties first but then we will be spending a good chunk of time making sure they work!

Oh and here's a short video I shot with my chest mounted cam over the weekend. This will give you a decent idea of what its like to strap on a leash and head out into the surf on a big SUP!

Weekend Recap

A sunny morning stopover always makes for a good start to the day.

One of the benefits of having weekends on and weekends off with my children is that both give me an opportunity to have fun, different kinds of fun but lots of fun nonetheless.

This last weekend was a very good one. After an expensively annoying last week. I need to stop thinking I'm getting ahead, everytime I do that, I get smacked in the face with an expected expense on top of expected expenses I forgot about...

West Cliff at sunset is pretty awesome!

The highlight of the weekend was spending a few hours at the beach and in the water and my older son decided to join us and play in the water too. He usually sticks to digging or reading in the shade but he came out and we all had a really good fun time playing together!

Seeing as how it is now Wednesday, let's add in a bonus recap of the last couple of days, specifically the afterwork portions of the last couple of days.

I've been super fortunate enough to be able to get out and enjoy some of the recent swell while also becoming much more familiar with my new SUP.

We got out for a short bike ride

Suffice it to say that I spent a good chunk of the last few evenings with a giant shit-eating grin on my face as I caught waves to ride the length of Cowells two evenings in a row! The  guy I bought my board from said it was un-pearlable (that's when your front digs into the water and you slide off the front of the board usually) but I've proved him wrong and I pearled a few times before getting a better stance and launch sorted out.

Unlike the bigger board, the shorter one can zoom right down a wave face and go right down the line happily. It also carves back nicely and I'm starting to get into harder and deeper turns.

Pro tip to other SUPers catching waves: Keep using your paddle on the waves, you can gain speed, retain balance and save waves and more by keeping an active paddle. I keep seeing folks standing on their boards with their paddles held mutely in their hand as they cruise along.

More fun on tap this weekend!