Technology is great.... daily updates on surf forecasts,  look at buoy readings, check the surf from your computer or phone, E-mail a surfboard order.

Yeah, Technology is great... until it's not. Your computer goes south and doesn't come back, like mine did earlier this month. Shoot, I was stuck doing things the old fashion way, like going down to the beach to see what the surf was like instead of checking the surf cam. Oh wait, I have a phone and can look at the surf cam with it... never mind.

Things happen though. The shaping machine ( technology ) breaks so no surfboards get shaped. My shoulder ( old technology ) has gone out in the past so no surfboards got shaped. Kind of the same thing. Computer ( technology ) goes out so you can't write your blog. Actually you can write, long hand on paper. But, can't get what you wrote by hand on the web without a computer. Well I don't know how anyway.

The computer got fixed just in time for this last swell. Which meant I could follow the latest buoy readings to see how the winds in the channel might be affecting the surf. Check the reading late at night then first thing in the morning... before dawn you can't see anything on the surf cam. but, you can get an idea of what the surface conditions will  probably be like from the buoys. As well, see if the swell is on the rise or not, what the water temps are etc. That's the info you need to know what board to take to the beach and what wet suit you might want. All the tech we take for granted now until we can't access it. But, I'm still going to take a few boards and a couple different wet suits to the beach just in case.

Here's a picture of some old surf technology... and the way it was carried. On the head for the most part. Darn things were heavy, and , we didn't have cool foot ware. Bare foot all the way down a long path to the beach. If the little stones in the dirt didn't tweak your feet on the way down. with  30 lbs. of surfboard on your dead,  getting the bottom of your feet blistered on the way back to your car could be a problem too. Once the sun started baking the dirt on the trail in the summer sun... like walking on hot coals.

Only an old surfer knows the feeling.   

D.R.

How's that.. even one of these guys has a wet suit.